Pursuing nursing as a career path is important to me because I have spent my entire life wanting to take care of and help others. According to the Myers-Briggs personality test, I am an INFJ which is the advocate personality type. It also suggested nursing as a career when I first took the test in 6th grade and every time since then. I have always wanted to treat people how I wanted to be treated and be there for them in a way that I wish people would been there for me if I was in that position. I do not know how to be anything less than caring or empathetic. Unfortunately, a lot of my generation is not like this and I have been called too nice by many people I have grown up around. In my personal life, my caring and kindness has not always been appreciated. Instead it was sometimes criticized and I was made to feel like I was too much for simply wanting to help and be there for the people in my life. I was depressed for a long time because of this disconnect. But then I went to school to be a medical assistant a few years ago and started working in the medical field in 2019. Since being in the medical field, I found a healthy outlet for my desire to help people and make a difference in their lives and I found others who are also caring, helper, and advocate types. My desire to help and take care of others finally felt good. Then the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic happened and I was transferred to my health care organization’s hospital from my primary care clinic and trained to work as a CNA to assist with the overflow of covid patients. I saw first hand patients needing our help to get better in a more drastic way than I had previously seen in primary care and I was ready to help in any way I could. I also saw many health care workers all over the world leave the medical field during this time. It made me upset for the world’s patients and feel a strong desire to go back to school to become a RN, but I was scared to try to pursue nursing and fail. A few months went by and by October 2020 my desire to be a nurse out-powered my fears and I registered to attend school for my prerequisites. I am now in my school’s associate degree nursing program. I now have decided that I want to go right back to school after completion of this program to pursue my bachelors in nursing once I pass the NCLEX and begin working. My long term goal is to go back again to become a nurse practitioner, whether it be for my masters in nursing or DNP. My work in health care over the last four years has been the most rewarding part of my life thus far. Making a difference in the lives of the patients I’ve encountered has given my life a sense of purpose and meaning. It has helped heal me from the depression I’ve had for the majority of my life and created joy in my life. It’s created a fire in me stemming from my desire to help others and has made me become dedicated to pursuing my education to not only become an RN but also a nurse practitioner in the future so that I can continue making a difference in the lives of patients I encounter along the way.

I am pursuing a degree in nursing because I have always wanted to help people and make a difference in their lives. I discovered the show Greys Anatomy a few years ago and became more and more fascinated with the medical background of the show as I was watching. I found myself following the Greys Anatomy medical twitter to read tweets explaining the medical terminology and procedures being named in the show. The more invested I got in the show the more I wanted to pursue a career in the medical field. I then went to school to be a medical assistant from 2017 through 2019. Upon graduation, I began working for Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, Louisiana in podiatry and primary care. I started learning about many chronic conditions that people are affected by and living with. In 2020 during the pandemic I deployed from the clinical setting to the hospital to work as a patient care technician on the Med Surge floor of our hospital, which had become a Covid-19 unit. In a time where many people were afraid of encountering and contracting the virus to a point they were leaving the medical field, I saw patients firsthand fighting for their lives. Seeing this caused me to apply to go back to school to pursue a degree in nursing. Upon completion of my current program I will have earned an associates degree in registered nursing. My goals for my nursing career include working as a registered nurse while going back to school for my bachelors and masters of nursing. As a registered nurse, I would like to work in the emergency room, a neurology unit, or pediatrics. I hope to be a charge nurse. I would consider being an RN supervisor in a clinic setting. I would also like to become a nurse practitioner some day and work in either primary care or psychiatry. My biggest goal for my nursing career is to make a difference in a patient's health outcomes and their lives. I chose this profession because I advocate for others and I am an empath, so I take the feelings and worries of other people on as my own. I would like to be a friendly face in a patient's treatment that motivates them to want to improve their health outcome and work with them to ensure that they achieve progress towards a healthier life.