Why I’m Pursuing a Degree in STEM: A Path Toward Nursing Some people can point to one single moment that changed everything for them. One conversation, one experience, one spark. For me, it was never just one thing. My decision to pursue a degree in STEM, specifically nursing, was built slowly over years of experiences that each added another layer to who I am and what I want to do with my life. It was built in hospital waiting rooms, in a classroom where I finally felt like I belonged, and in the living room of a teen group home where I learned that showing up for people matters more than almost anything else. Nursing was not a decision I made overnight. It was a conclusion I kept arriving at, no matter which direction my life pointed me in. I think the earliest version of this dream started with my grandmother. Watching her go through home hospice care was one of the hardest things my family has ever experienced, but it was also one of the most eye-opening. I was not just a bystander during that time. I was present. I helped with her care, sat with her, and watched as nurses came in and out of our home with this quiet kind of confidence that I found myself drawn to. They were not just doing a job. They were holding our family together in a way that we could not do alone. I remember watching one nurse explain my grandmother’s condition to my mother in a way that was honest but gentle, informative but not overwhelming. She turned something terrifying into something manageable. I did not have the words for it at the time, but I knew I wanted to be able to do that for someone else one day. I wanted to be the person who walks into the hardest moments of someone’s life and makes them feel less alone. That experience planted a seed, but it was my enrollment in the Academy of Health and Biosciences during my sophomore year of high school that really helped it grow. Before that program, I knew I cared about healthcare, but I did not fully understand the science behind it. The Academy changed that. For the first time, I was sitting in classes where biology, chemistry, and anatomy were not just subjects I had to get through. They were windows into how the human body actually works, and I was fascinated. I learned about cellular processes and how disease disrupts them. I learned about pharmacology and why certain medications interact with the body in certain ways. I learned how to think critically about patient care before I had ever set foot in a clinical environment. The Academy gave me a foundation that made nursing feel less like a distant dream and more like a real, achievable goal that I was already working toward. What I appreciated most about that program was that it did not just teach me the technical side of healthcare. It also introduced me to the culture of it. I started to understand what it meant to be part of a healthcare team, why communication between providers matters, and how patient outcomes are tied not just to medical treatment but to the quality of care surrounding that treatment. Nursing sits at the center of all of that. Nurses are often the first person a patient sees when they are scared and the last person they see when they finally get to go home. They are the ones who notice small changes in a patient’s condition before anyone else does. They advocate, they educate, and they comfort. The more I learned in the Academy, the more I understood that nursing is not a supporting role in healthcare. It is one of the most critical roles there is, and I wanted to be part of it. Outside of school, I have also spent a significant amount of time volunteering at a teen group home in my community. This experience has shaped me in ways that are harder to measure but equally important. Working with teenagers who are navigating difficult circumstances requires a kind of patience and emotional intelligence that you cannot learn from a textbook. You have to meet people where they are. You have to listen more than you talk. You have to understand that sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is simply be consistent, be present, and be someone they can count on. That lesson translates directly into nursing. Patients are not just medical cases. They are people with histories, fears, and lives that exist outside of whatever brought them into a hospital or clinic. The ability to connect with a person on a human level, to make them feel seen and respected, is just as important as any clinical skill. Volunteering at the group home also reinforced something I already believed but had not fully articulated: that healthcare is not equally accessible to everyone. Many of the young people I worked with did not have the kind of consistent medical care that others take for granted. Dental visits, mental health support, routine checkups — these were not regular parts of their lives. Seeing that gap up close made me more motivated, not less. It reminded me that nurses work in communities, not just hospitals. They work in schools, in clinics, in public health settings, and in underserved neighborhoods. Wherever people need care, nurses show up. I want to be someone who shows up in those spaces and helps close some of those gaps, even in small ways. I also want to be honest about something that does not always make it into these kinds of essays: the financial reality of pursuing a degree in nursing. College is expensive. The path to becoming a registered nurse requires years of rigorous coursework, clinical training, and licensing exams. I have thought seriously about what it will cost me to get there, and I have also thought seriously about what it will mean when I do. Nursing is a stable, in-demand career that offers real financial security, but more than that, it is work that I believe in. It is one thing to pursue a career because it pays well. It is another thing entirely to pursue a career because you genuinely cannot imagine doing anything else. I feel that way about nursing. The financial investment makes sense to me because the return is not just a paycheck. It is a life spent doing something meaningful. People sometimes underestimate nursing as a STEM field. They associate STEM with laboratories and engineering and technology, and while nursing absolutely involves all of those things in different ways, it also involves a depth of human connection that other fields may not require in the same way. Nursing is applied science. It is biology and chemistry and anatomy and pharmacology put into practice in real time, on real people, with real consequences. It demands critical thinking, attention to detail, and the ability to make sound decisions under pressure. It is one of the most intellectually demanding and emotionally complex careers a person can choose. That combination is exactly what draws me to it. Looking ahead, I know that the road to becoming a nurse will not be easy. The coursework will be demanding. Clinical rotations will test my limits. There will be moments where I am exhausted and overwhelmed and questioning whether I have what it takes. But I have learned something important from every experience that has led me to this point: difficulty is not a reason to stop. It is proof that something matters. My grandmother’s illness was difficult. Sitting with teenagers who are struggling is difficult. Pushing through advanced science coursework while balancing everything else is difficult. But every hard thing I have done has made me better prepared for the next one. I am pursuing a degree in nursing because I have spent years moving toward it from every direction. My personal experiences showed me what it looks like when good care changes everything. My academic preparation gave me the tools to understand the science behind that care. My community involvement taught me that people deserve to be treated with dignity no matter their circumstances. And through all of it, nursing has remained the constant. It is not just a career I want. It is a calling I have been answering for a long time, and I am ready to answer it fully.

I do not have everything figured out. I think that is actually the most honest thing I can say about myself right now. But what I do know is that I genuinely care about people, and that has shaped pretty much every decision I have made so far. Some of that came from my grandmother. Watching her go through home hospice was one of the hardest things my family has been through, and I chose to be present for it instead of stepping back. I was not sure I could handle it at the time, but I learned something important from showing up anyway. That being there for someone, really there, is one of the most valuable things you can offer another person. That lesson has followed me everywhere since. It shows up in how I spend my time. I volunteer at a teen group home, and those kids remind me constantly that everybody is carrying something. A lot of them just need someone to be consistent, to not give up on them. I try to be that. I also tutor younger students, and there is something really rewarding about watching someone understand something they did not before, knowing you played a small part in that. I do not do these things because they look good on paper. I do them because they feel right. I think about social norms more than people might expect from someone my age. There are parts of the world I have grown up in that push young people, especially young women, to shrink themselves, to be quiet, to wait their turn. I have not always known how to push back against that out loud, but I have pushed back in how I live. I show up. I take up space. I ask questions and I do not pretend to know things I do not know. At the same time, I am genuinely inspired by the shifts I see happening around me. More people are talking openly about mental health. More communities are investing in young people. There is a growing sense that caring about others is not a weakness, it is actually one of the most powerful things a person can do. I feel like I fit into that. Like the values I have been building my life around are starting to be recognized as something worth having. I am still figuring out who I am fully. But I know I am someone who notices people. Someone who stays when it gets hard. Someone who believes that small, consistent acts of showing up actually change things over time. I have seen it in the kids I work with, in the students I tutor, in my own family. I do not need to have my whole future mapped out to know the kind of person I want to be. I want to be someone who makes the people around me feel less alone. Someone who contributes something real to the communities I am part of. I am already trying to be that person. And every experience I have had so far has made me more sure that I am on the right track.

Some people spend years trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. For me, it became clear during one of the hardest periods I have ever been through. In the span of four years, I lost four people who meant everything to me. First my aunt to cancer, then my grandfather to COVID-19, then another grandfather after a surgery that led to a serious infection, and finally my grandmother to cancer. Each loss hit differently, but they all left the same mark. Grief became something I had to learn to carry while still moving forward. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized I did not want to just survive hard things. I wanted to help other people get through them too. The pandemic was a big part of that realization. Watching nurses and healthcare workers show up every single day, even when things were scary and uncertain, made me think about what kind of person I wanted to be. They were tired, they were stretched thin, and they still gave everything to their patients. That stuck with me. I wanted to be someone who could do that, who could walk into a hard situation and actually make it better for someone else. That feeling got even more real when my grandmother moved in with us for home hospice. I was not just watching from a distance. I was there, helping take care of her, keeping her comfortable, and just being present with her during that time. It was heartbreaking, but it also showed me what real caregiving looks like. I saw how much it mattered to have someone who genuinely cared by your side, and I knew that was something I wanted to give to others one day. After everything I had been through, I knew I needed to start preparing seriously. I enrolled in the Medical and Bioscience program at my high school so I could actually build the skills to match what I felt called to do. I took classes that would prepare me for a college nursing program and committed to finishing strong. I completed the program and passed the National Pharmacy Technician exam, which was a huge deal for me. It proved to myself that I could handle the academic and technical side of healthcare, not just the emotional side. Nursing, to me, is about being the person who shows up. Patients are going through some of the scariest moments of their lives, and nurses are often the ones right there with them through all of it. I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that, watching someone you love go through something terrible and hoping there is someone caring for them who truly sees them as a person. I want to be that nurse for people. Everything I have been through has shaped the way I see the world and the way I want to move through it. Losing my aunt, my grandfathers, and my grandmother was devastating. But those experiences also gave me something. They gave me a deep understanding of what people need when they are at their lowest, and a real desire to be someone who can provide that. I am not going into nursing because it sounds like a good career. I am going into nursing because I have seen what is at stake, I have felt it personally, and I genuinely believe I can make a difference. That is all I have ever wanted to do. I found the scholarship on the Bold application.

Something that has shaped my educational experience more than anything is having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects one's ability to pay attention and control impulses. I was diagnosed with it when I was nine years old, but it took years for me to understand what it really meant. For a long time, I felt ashamed that I was "Different". I struggled to retain information, often zoning out or losing track of assignments. I wanted to succeed so badly, but sometimes it felt like my own mind was working against me.  Over time, I began to shift how I viewed ADHD. Instead of feeling ashamed, I saw that I had a unique way of thinking. I learned to manage my ADHD by doing small things like creating To-Do lists and breaking assignments into smaller steps. These strategies kept me organized while also teaching me creativity and resilience.  ADHD has taught me to approach learning with patience, resilience, and empathy. Because I know what it's like to struggle, naturally, I want others in the same position as me. My experience has shown me that everyone learns differently, and our diverse ways of thinking are just as important as diversity in who we are.  At Howard, my goal is to contribute that mindset to the classroom and throughout campus. Howard's rich history in making leaders who uplift others aligns with my own personal goals for my future. I want to be a part of that culture where students push each other to excel, but also uplift others when needed.  Living with ADHD has shaped me into someone who never gives up, no matter how difficult the journey to the finish line may be. At Howard, I will bring the same energy: the ability to adapt to situations, the courage to keep going even when it's hard, and the desire to help others do the same.