I like to think God laughed when I was born. Jesus had a manger. I had paper. My mother was a principal and my father a lecturer, and they made sure I grew up surrounded by books. Whenever my mother bought books for her students, she saved one for me. Education was my inheritance, and both my parents took it very seriously. My mother was also a storyteller. I would lie with my head on her belly as she made silly voices, and I would add my own part to the story. She would laugh, and I could feel her laughter. We’d spend hours developing stories because I would always interrupt her. I wasn’t a patient reader, but I learned to be when, at ten, I received a five-hundred-page copy of Half of a Yellow Sun for my birthday. Other children got toys. I got a copy of that big book, and I was overjoyed. Looking back, I’m glad I was, because that book gave me more than any toy ever could have. It kickstarted my journey with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Other writers joined the journey. Ifeoma Okoye’s Behind the Clouds, Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, and Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives helped me think about women’s lives beyond what I could see. I started thinking about motherhood, infertility, the expectations placed on women, and my own mother’s struggles, too. But an unexpected favorite was Percy Jackson. Learning that Rick Riordan began the series for his son, whose experiences with ADHD and dyslexia helped shape Percy, made me love it more. A parent had created a world to help his child feel understood. That mattered to me a lot because I believe every child comes into the world with a purpose. As a result, I grew up knowing that there was a me-shaped hole in the world, too, and I began feeling less afraid of being the person who belonged there. That confidence mattered outside my home. My parents were supportive, and my mother would not let anyone speak rudely to her child. Still, there was only so much they could protect me from. In the wider religious community, I heard hurtful comments defended as faith or respect for elders. I wondered how those words reflected what we claimed to believe. Kambili in Purple Hibiscus helped me think through those questions. I recognized her difficulty expressing herself. At her aunt’s house, she encountered another way to live, and I began examining what I had accepted as normal. Adichie’s books influenced my writing, my humor, and my girlhood. They encouraged me to question authority and embrace feminism without giving up my femininity. I began asking for more opportunities for girls. Through Females and More, I wrote our anthem and joined school outreach in Benin City encouraging girls to read. When we finally got a girls’ football team, I played as a defender. Reading took me into a competition where I advanced from the first stage with Arrow of God. Reading about women’s experiences helped me understand why their pain and struggles deserve attention. I want to bring that attention into nursing and women’s health, studying overlooked conditions and helping women find clearer answers. I want to keep writing, too, with the honesty and humor that made these authors feel close to me. Adichie may never meet the girl reading in that two-bedroom apartment. I would still like to thank her. She helped that girl become less afraid of taking herself into the world.

Pink, lilac, silver. Pink, lilac, silver. At thirteen, I thought patterns were the order of stones on Aso Oke. The night before a wedding, my mother and auntie brought out stones from my old roller bag, one I loved too much to throw away. My mother would wear it the next day. I spent the evening arranging and attaching them one by one. I liked watching the pattern appear. Then one stone interrupted the sequence. My mother repositioned the Aso Oke so I could see what had gone wrong. I found this deeply annoying. No one likes being told to look twice, especially when she is certain she got it right the first time. I wanted her to tell me which stone to move. Instead, she made me study the fabric until the interruption became obvious. At thirteen, I thought she was correcting my decoration. I understand now that she was teaching me how to notice. Before school became busier, I also drew clothes and gave the drawings to tailors who treated my ideas seriously. Then I stopped drawing. I stopped stoning Aso Oke. I moved toward science and treated those evenings as something I had outgrown. Still, I think part of me remained beside that fabric, arranging pink, lilac, and silver into a pattern. Years later, a scheduling mistake placed me in a bioinformatics class. I had already taken three genetics courses, and in secondary school, I had been one of the strongest computer science students in my class of 48. However, I had never imagined that those interests belonged together. I had run from biology in high school and treated computer science as something I happened to be good at but would never use. In bioinformatics, patterns returned as sequences, loops, genes, and data. Computer science started coming back. More accurately, I started coming back to it. The class did not hand me a new ambition. It showed me the shape of one that had been forming quietly. Genetics helped me understand what happens within the body. Computing gave me another way to examine that information. Nursing keeps the person at the center of both. I now want to combine nursing, genetics, and informatics to improve women’s health. PCOS, infertility, diabetes, and genetic disorders are personal because they have affected people in my family. I want to listen closely to the woman in front of me while also learning to recognize what symptoms and health records may be repeating. Data cannot replace her account of her own body. It can help healthcare professionals notice what a brief appointment might miss, question an incomplete answer, and look again. The Concrete Rose Scholarship would help cover part of my tuition as I transfer to a new school for the spring semester and continue preparing for nursing. Reducing that cost would give me more room to strengthen my clinical education while developing skills in genetics, bioinformatics, and SQL. It would support a career focused on helping women receive earlier answers and care informed by both human attention and stronger tools. At thirteen, I thought a pattern ended at the edge of the fabric. Now I know it can reveal what has been missed. Pink, lilac, silver. My mother taught me to look twice. I am building my career from that second look.

For most of spring 2026, the couch was my friend. Before I got my apartment, I lived far from UTA, so I often stayed on a friend’s couch between work, classes, and studying. April was especially heavy. The College of Liberal Arts (COLA) had several events, and our marketing team was small, just my supervisors and me. I covered events, edited and posted content, and filled in at the front desk when needed. Because our team was small, event coverage was only one part of what I handled. My official title is Student Technical Assistant, but my work moves between social media, data analysis, and whatever needs attention. I monitor our official social media accounts, prepare monthly performance reports, and review website pages for errors and compliance issues. I also worked through about 300 broken links and compared social media performance across 13 departments. My findings helped the team decide what to post and when. After one reel performed poorly on Facebook, I changed the caption format and hashtags based on the data, and a similar video performed much better. At the same time, my computer broke, my paycheck went to school expenses, and I was taking a full course load while protecting the grades I needed for nursing school. I studied wherever I could, sometimes between tasks. I was sleepy, tired, and sometimes unmotivated. Exhaustion showed up cruelly. I lost track of a nursing application timeline, and I could not get my transcript in time. At times, I wondered whether I should change my major. Missing that application cycle showed me I could not keep working from exhaustion. I began asking for help instead of assuming I had to carry every part alone. I completed an extra-credit video after speaking with my professor. My supervisor supported me as our team grew. I developed a consistent reporting system, worked during scheduled hours, and divided my week among work, classes, studying, and applications. I also protected my sleep, ate properly, and went to the gym because neglecting my health made everything harder. I finished the semester with all As, and I completed the next nursing cycle application and ordered my transcripts on time. I would carry that system into the 2026–2027 school year. I now work about 14 hours each week at COLA and take on-campus appointments as a MavUp tutor, bringing my combined schedule to about 17 or 18 hours when appointments are available. My busiest days would be Tuesdays and Thursdays. I start tutoring at 8 a.m. and go to class. Then, I start my shift, and after that, I go to my last class. MavUp appointments are inconsistent, but I enjoy listening to students explain where they are stuck and helping them with courses I have already completed. I am no longer sleeping on a couch, but my schedule is still difficult. Tuition, rent, food, and other costs have not disappeared. What has changed is that I now have a system and understand when to ask for support. My supervisor has noticed my accountability and growth, and I have learned that doing good work does not require pretending I was perfect from the beginning. This is the first job I have ever had, and I genuinely enjoy it. It combines people, communication, and data, and I think those skills will follow me into nursing and eventually a DNP. Work is still work, but its impact makes it worthwhile.

Prompt 1: What inspired you to pursue a nursing career? Watching students who began college with me walk out of the nursing building in royal blue uniforms has been one of the hardest parts of my educational journey. We once complained that our classes were too hard. Now they are in their Senior year, and I am just starting nursing school. Sometimes I pretend not to recognize them because seeing those uniforms still hurts. I did not want to postpone nursing school. I had the desire, the ability, and a 3.95 GPA. When I saw the full cost, I realized I could not begin something my parents might not be able to help me finish. I was told that the scholarship I had counted on could not be applied. This is because I originally entered the country on F-2 status. My parents chose that route so our family could be together. My father pays his own PhD tuition, my mother cannot work on F-2 status, and I work nearly nineteen hours on campus each week. Still, there is a gap. I have paused, reorganized, worked, and reworked my plans, but I refuse to abandon the future that still belongs to me. Money forced me to pause, but the pause also forced me to be honest about nursing. For a while, it was the career I thought I could choose if everything else failed. I took a semester off to decide whether I wanted Nursing or only saw it as a safety net. I spoke with nurses, and one told me that there are many ways to "nurse". As long as I knew what I wanted, there would be a place for me. What did it really mean to "nurse"? I researched and discovered more pathways than I expected. The patient connected them all: how you care for them, advocate for them, protect them, and show up for them. Fertility nursing and nursing informatics caught my attention because they connected patient care with genetics, data analysis, research, and women’s health. I had found my niche. For the first time, I could confidently say that I wanted to be a nurse. Prompt 2: If you had the opportunity to create something fun to make the world a better place, what would it be and why? Those changing costs and timelines gave me the idea for "Before You Leave Home", an interactive website where international students and their parents could simulate studying in the United States like a life-simulation game. A student would enter their interests, immigration status, budget, and goals. Then the surprises would begin: an insurance charge, an extra prerequisite, a scholarship restriction, or an unexpected housing cost. A budget meter would fall, and a timeline bar would stretch as each choice changed the plan. Students could adjust their course load, change majors, or compare schools and immediately see the result. They could learn how the system works before living inside it and discover fields that fit them along the way. I cannot change how I started college or the research I did not do. However, I can choose nursing deliberately and help another family see the surprises before they arrive. Mighty spent his final years making sure money did not stand between his daughter and her nursing degree. My parents have spent the last few years trying to do the same for me. Receiving the Mighty Memorial Scholarship would help me carry that generosity forward and begin the nursing education I have worked toward for years.

The Piercing Path: Small Birthmark to a Determined Researcher As a child, my doctor told my parents I would become a doctor because I had the same small, inconspicuous hole on both ears as he did—a birthmark that could be mistaken for an extra piercing. This prophecy echoed in our home, transforming the word ‘doctor’ from a symbol of pride to one of burden. Determined to forge my own path, I embarked on a journey that would redefine my destiny. My secondary school in Nigeria was known for academic excellence, but frequent strikes disrupted our education. The infrastructure suffered due to a lack of funds, and many courses I looked forward to were canceled. Favoritism was rampant among teachers, with students from legacy families receiving more attention. Despite these challenges, our hot pink shirts and purple uniforms remained a constant, almost as if the vibrant colors were meant to mask the chaos and reassure our parents. These obstacles taught me resilience and self-reliance. I sought knowledge independently, formed study groups, and focused on engineering courses to escape my ‘doctor’ fate. However, I struggled initially. My physics teacher, noticing my difficulties, sat me down and scolded the life out of me. His tough love and dedicated guidance helped me relearn physics, and I began to excel. His mentorship not only improved my academic performance but also ignited my passion for scientific inquiry and medical research. During COVID-19, our school couldn’t afford online classes, so my friends and I created a WhatsApp tutoring group to support peers in physics and mathematics, significantly improving their performance and confidence. This experience highlighted the power of community and collective effort in education. At 15, a series of family deaths due to inadequate medical attention highlighted the healthcare crisis. When my mother fell seriously ill, I felt helpless. The nights spent at her bedside, watching her struggle for breath, ignited a fire within me—a resolve to make a difference in healthcare. Volunteering at local clinics, helping at the local church’s yearly health checkup for the elderly and a daycare for children with behavioral issues helped deepen my understanding of healthcare needs and reinforced my commitment to medical research. My mother eventually recovered, but my ambition had just begun. After talking to my family, I learned about our history of diabetes. Curious about potential cures, I researched cell replacement therapies for diabetes. This therapy could potentially cure diabetes types 1 and 2 by replacing dysfunctional insulin-producing β-cells with healthy ones from donors or stem cells, restoring insulin production and reducing the need for costly medications. If introduced to Nigeria, it could be a one-time financial commitment, saving millions of lives. Learning about my family’s history of diabetes fueled my ambition for genetic engineering and research. I realized that to pursue this field, I needed to move to the U.S., where opportunities were more abundant. My father’s post-graduate studies facilitated our move, and I began planning my future in medical research. My post-graduate goals are to join research efforts focused on generating stable, functional insulin-producing β-cells from patient stem cells and developing methods to protect these cells post-transplant, reducing the risk of immune rejection and offering a long-term solution for diabetes. Through higher education in the U.S., I aim to develop effective and accessible cell replacement therapies for Nigeria and other developing countries. With dedicated research and innovative approaches, I am confident we can achieve significant breakthroughs in treating genetic diseases. I am eager to contribute to this field and make a lasting impact on global health, ensuring no family endures the pain and loss mine did.