Walking down the hallway of my high school on the first day of ninth grade in a new country, I could not help but felt overwhelmed. The chaotic scene in the hallway amplified the intensity of my nervousness to a whole new level. I eventually found the classroom where I met my first American teacher. She enthusiastically greeted me at the door, however, I could not understand a word she said to me. I figured to just blindly nod my head with a smile to respond. Then, the class started. One hour went by and all I could do was sit at the cornered desk in the back of the classroom watching the lecture like a statue in human form. Feeling devastated, I turned to the advice that my parents gave me at the airport before they departed to the U.S. They said, in Vietnamese: “Dũng cảm, mạnh mẽ lên con!” [Translate: Be bold, be strong, son!]. This advice had always been my north star through many arduous challenges. However, at that moment in class, neither “dũng cảm” nor “mạnh mẽ” could make me feel less helpless. I was only twelve years old when my parents gave me that advice as we said goodbye at the airport in Vietnam. I could neither fathom the importance of the situation, nor the legality of the immigration process for me to be left behind. All I knew was that my parents had to go to the U.S. without me. As soon as I saw my parents disappear behind the wall of customs and immigration control, I released all of the tears that I had been trying so hard to withhold. “Dũng cảm” and “mạnh mẽ,” I stopped crying. The first day being back to my village without my parents felt bewilderingly empty. Would they be okay? How could they live there when they could not speak English? What if they got sick? Those questions kept me wondering all day long in my thinking. Nevertheless, I remembered what my parents told me at the airport. From that point forward, I learned to be independent. Sewing, cooking, gardening, cleaning, etc, I had done them all. I wanted to be ready to take care of my parents once the time comes. Three years went by and I finally received my visa from the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam. “Dũng cảm” and “mạnh mẽ”, at the age of fifteen, I traveled alone halfway across the Earth to reunite with my parents in the U.S. It has been seven years since that day and every day was an opportunity for me to learn and grow. The advice that my parents gave me at the airport, indeed, was not enough to help me face the challenges as a new immigrant. However, it was a reminder of the journey that I and my parents had been through. “Dũng cảm” and “mạnh mẽ,” I have never given up. Four years of nursing school are unquestionably long, but so were three years of being separated from my parents at the age of twelve. So far there were 63 academic essays, 78 exams, 594 clinical hours as part of the nursing training; I have done them all. People asked me what was so exciting about nursing school. I told them it was the thought that someday I would have the ability to care for many older adults, especially low-income immigrants who speak no English like my parents. This thought invigorated me to keep on persisting to become a nurse practitioner as part of my hope of reaching the pinnacle of academic achievement. As I am writing this essay, I am dreaming about the day I receive my graduate degree and become a nurse practitioner. When I told my parents about the possibility of me moving to out of state to complete my master’s training, my parents remained quite. Looking into their eyes, I could tell they struggled to bear the thought of having their son being separated from them again; even when they knew this was not as bad as last time. However, for my parents speaking, those three years of separation in the past were excruciatingly painful. I said to my parents, in Vietnamese: “Dũng cảm, mạnh mẽ lên ba mẹ! Con đi để con sau này chăm sóc cho hai người mà.” [Translate: Be bold, be strong, mom and dad! I go so I can take care of you both later on.]

During the senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to host my annual opera recital at Wake Robin Nursing Home in Shelburne, Vermont. After the recital, an older woman approached me. Her eyes were filled with tears. She held tight onto my hands and slowly told me how beautiful my voice was. She said it reminded her of a nurse who used to work there because he always sang for them. “Everybody misses him,” she said. Then she asked if I would ever become a nurse. I thought it was a fun complement, but then I looked into her eyes and realized that it was an honest question indeed. At that moment, I felt something special light up deeply in my heart as if it was something that I had been searching for a long time; it happened so suddenly and unexpectedly! I did not know how to answer her but promised that I would sing for my patients if I ever became a nurse. It was the first time in my life that I had considered being a nurse. Two weeks later, my parents asked me to bring them to the Social Security office to find out more about retirement plans. In that moment, my realizations came together. I had been too busy studying, trying to work toward the future that we came here for, but I had not noticed that my parents were aging every day. They were over sixty already, and the time when my parents would need my help for the simplest daily task would come before I knew it. I realized that I wanted to be the person who looked after my parents’ health and provide the same care to others like them. I began actively reaching out to people in my network who were working in the nursing field. The more I explored, the more I fell in love with nursing. On May 1st, 2017, I proudly announced that I became a first-generation college student pursuing a career in nursing. The nursing profession provides me the opportunity to scholarly and artistically engage both my brain and hands in the work of caring for others. During the second year of college, I applied to work as a Care Assistant at the Converse Home to put my learning into practice. Even though I had never worked at an assisted-living facility for older adults before, the impetus from growing up in a culture that was rooted in Confucianism - I was taught to venerate older adults at a young age - made the initial interaction between me and the residents easier. The conundrum arrived when I realized many of the residents could not remember who I was due to dementia or other short-term memory issues. For this reason, I chose to only wear green scrubs to keep my appearance consistent, hoping the residents would at least recognize the color if not my face. The green color was also very noticeable which was helpful for those with impaired vision. As I continued the work, I started to keep a record of residents’ important life events so I could help to fill in the blanks whenever a resident could not recall a memory during our conversation. They called me “the green memory keeper.” I did all I could to build trust and rapport in my relationships with all of the residents; including giving short performances from their favorite music genres even if I was not familiar with those. I knew I had succeeded when a resident, who was quite reserved, told me: “You are so amicable.” Many other residents also became more comfortable having me as a caregiver and trusted my advice for their health. Thus, beside fulfilling my duties as a care assistant, I began to engage more into helping the residents to change how they think, care, and act that could better benefit their well-being and prevent illness from happening. The high-level of engagement from the residents and the trust they had bestowed on me made me wish that I could be more helpful. In many situations, the residents even asked me diagnosis-type questions and also hoped that I could prescribe a treatment for them. My knowledge could not accommodate such requests. However, the curiosity from those situations and the desire to expand my nursing ability had galvanized me to steer toward the scope of practice of a nurse practitioner. I have made a promise with one of the residents that before her time runs out, I will care for her and others in my community as a primary care provider and we will take a picture together with me wearing the graduate regalia. This was not an ephemeral promise; it was a statement that I made from my passion and the accretions of everything I had contemplated thus far. It has been three years since the day I first chose to walk on the nursing path. Even though I was introduced to many areas of nursing as part of my training, primary care remains as my area of interest. I study with assiduity to accomplish my entrenched hope that I can make a difference in people’s lives through healthcare because healthcare was, and still is, a privilege that many socioeconomically disadvantaged communities do not have; particularly for refugees and immigrants like my family. As I am staring down at the quarter-life-marker, I have set a goal to become an Adult/Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner; a health professional that promotes pragmatic evidence-based interventions through the holistic approach to better benefit the wellbeing of their patients in this age group. I want to be able to serve my home communities -- Winooski and Burlington, Vermont, where many refugees and immigrants like me are struggling to seek quality care.