I started going to college before I had kids and never really could decide what I wanted to do. I took some general courses and changed my major a few times and then I got married and took a break from school. I was worried I wouldn't have the strength or the will to go back. I had become so busy with life and working, I wasn't sure I could make time to start school again. But I had gotten a job at a hospital that I loved and shortly after I became pregnant. When I went to deliver my baby I had the best support from my nurses! They were caring and supportive through labor and then when our delivery didn't go quite as planned, they all stayed in touch during our hospital transfer and our long NICU stay. I made such a bond with these women that I knew that I wanted to be that support for someone else. I guess you can say the birth of my daughter is what brought me back to school and helped me to choose my career. I eventually returned to work at the hospital and went back to school for nursing. It has been the hardest thing I have ever done but I know it is so worth every struggle I have encountered. I never had a close relationship with my parents and I was determined to be everything to my daughter I cold possibly be. It is really hard most days not getting to spend every moment with her. But I know that when she's older she will be proud of me and proud to call me her mom. I will be able to use my higher education to provide my family with so much more financial support as well as help us to be able to give more back to our community. Me and my husband are very involved with our youth at our church and hope to be able to pore more into these kids that need so much love as well. My love for families and kids will continue to help grow my passion for nursing and help me to be someone my family can be proud of!

My name is Nora Whisnant. I am 28 years old, married and I have a 2 year old daughter. I was one of those kids who didn't have a lot of motivation from my parents to even go to college. I really only started going because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. so after taking classes for 5 years and still not knowing what I wanted to do, I took a year and a half break from school. I had no plans to return but then I have finally found my passion in Nursing. I am interested in this field because I have always worked in areas where I helped people or taught people and now I am excited to say that I get to make a career out of that. I have been working in hospital setting for the past 3 years and my nursing coworkers gave me the push I needed to go back to school. It is a daily challenge being a wife, mom, student and working but it will all be worth it to get this degree. I have learned from many of my nursing books so far a few important things: 1. always trust your nursing gut, a majority of the time it is right and can save your patient. 2. sometimes not saying anything and just listening is the most important thing you can do for your patient. 3. Critical thinking skills are a MUST as a nurse. These have shaped my future goals in realizing to trust my instincts and speak up for myself and my patients. It has also taught me that I want to be the type of nurse who listens and helps her patients in more ways than just physical healing. I am so proud to be a future nurse and can't wait to see what the future holds!

I started off going into college with little to no help from my parents. Neither of them went to college and my sister dropped out after her first semester so I didn't have much guidance and I didn't even know what I wanted to major in. After changing my major several times and transferring from a university to a technical college, I decided that school was getting too stressful while also working 2 full time jobs and I took a break. During my break there were a lot of ups and downs. We had to move because we couldn't afford our home, I lost my grandfather, and my mother went to jail. On the upside I got married, got my CNA and got a job working at a hospital on a postpartum unit. I was amazed at how quickly I fell in love with taking care of my patients and caring for them. I loved learning about their lives and helping them get ready to go home and care for their growing families. I became more and more passionate about this job with each passing day. Me and my husband eventually wanted to start our family and I was excited about delivering our first baby where I worked. Well we had a complicated delivery and our new baby girl ended up going into the NICU for a few weeks. Later on we ended up also having to do a visit at CHOA as well. I was overwhelmed by the love and support of my coworkers, but I was even more blown away by the care of our NICU nurses and their love for our baby! They were patient, kind, and explained everything to us in such a gentle manor. After my daughter recovered and we left the hospital and it was then that I realized how blessed we were. I wanted to be that 'light at the end of the tunnel' kind of hope for someone else. I wanted to give that love, support, and warmth to others that had been given to me and my family. It was then that I decided it was time to return to school full time and pursue a career in nursing. Doing so with a new baby, working full time, and having a husband definitely has some challenges. After 2 semesters of completing a few pre-requisites and applying I was accepted into the nursing program! I know I will be a great women's and children's nurse because of my experiences and I am forever thankful for the path God has laid out for my life. It may have been difficult but it was the eye-opening experience I needed to discover my true passion. With the help of this scholarship I will be one step closer to my dream and one step closer to helping others for the rest of my life!

I feel like most women would pick a famous or well known woman to represent a woman of STEM that they admire. But for me it's someone I know personally. There is a nurse named Heidi who I met through work and who I absolutely aspire to be like. She is kind, bold, and one of the strongest nurses I have ever encountered. She has lived and worked all over the world and is originally from Germany. She is known throughout the organization I work for because she made the women's and children part of the hospital into what it is today. For example when she started she established many new and important things that seem like everyday necessities to us now. One being she established an infant monitoring system that would lockdown the unit if someone tried to take a baby out of the hospital. This is something almost all hospitals use now and is required in most states. She established employee evaluations to help nurses improve and to be recognized for the good they did each year. She was an amazing manager who could rarely be found in her office because she was always on the floor helping other nurses! She eventually stepped down from the position and worked as a floor nurse. Me being a tech I got to work closely with her and learn many tricks and techniques from her before her recent retirement. She would always say to me that "A kind word goes a long way." At first I thought she was always referring to the patients. The more I worked with her I realized she meant with our coworkers too. She always believed that employee moral was important and constantly helped others, complimented them, and would find ways to let them know they were an asset to the hospital even when she wasn't the manager anymore. I hope to one day live up to the potential she saw in me and become a nurse who is known for her kind words, encouragement and dedication to working hard while helping others. I plan to one day also become a nurse manager and be able to support and aid other women as well as she did. I want to change the way nurses treat each other and I want to help grow the nursing field by lifting up others and encouraging other young women to becomes leaders in their chosen fields.

I think we can all agree that COVID-19 has not been the most pleasant experience for any of us. I currently work in the healthcare field, am a new mom, and a newish wife. So already it has been hard to balance my life while also attending school. When COVID-19 was first introduced into the world it was really rough on me and my family. Coworkers of my husband treated him differently because they knew his wife (me) worked at the hospital and so they avoided him. Even then my husband still ended up contracting COVID from someone in his office. So me and my 7 month old baby had to quarantine in the living room for 2 weeks. Talk about the most stressed I've been in a long time. I was working full time(while we were preparing to open our new postpartum unit), taking my kid to daycare in the morning and picking her up after a 12 hour shift. Only then to come home, cook dinner, bathe her and myself and get her to bed so I could stay up and work on homework. Then it was back up at 5 am to do it all over again. All the while trying to distant my kid and my husband while he quarantined in our room was a nightmare. I eventually had a mental breakdown and told my husband "I couldn't do it anymore!" After those 2 1/2 weeks I was glad to have my home life routine return to normal. Still while that was becoming normal, work was changing everyday. New policies and new ways about protecting yourself from the virus with PPE and all of the confusion about what we should or shouldn't do was crazy and scary. I think a lot of people still think healthcare workers were super brave taking on COVID but let me tell you we were all just as scared as the rest of you. One night I had been sent to assist on a full COVID patient floor and I was the most scared I had ever been in my life. But working along side those nurses, doctors, and techs I realized something. We are all just trying to do the best we can to help these people and get them healthy and back with their families. We are all just trying to help each other make it through each 12 hour shift we work. We are all just trying to be safe so we can return home safely to our families too. We are all tired, stressed, hungry, depressed and yet we greet each patient with a smile. We listen to the patients and we comfort them and help them feel at ease the best we can. It was in these moments that I realized that I don't know who I am if I am not doing this everyday for the rest of my life. I recently was accepted into a nursing program and I can't imagine a more rewarding and fulfilling career than that of a nurse. I am currently a patient care technician on a postpartum unit and I see how scary it is to bring your newborn child into the world in this environment. It comforts me when I can set a new mom's mind at ease be providing her with information on how to care for her newborn in these crazy times. So yes this pandemic has hurt me but it also has pushed me to realize that all I have ever known or done my whole life is take care of others. This journey is going to be tough but I am thankful to COVID in a way for helping me realize that this is what I was born to do.