Education’s role in my life is to give me to tools to be better able to help the people I meet in my life. I wish to one day become a nurse practitioner but must first take the step of becoming a registered nurse. I already have years of experience as a nurse’s aide and am now working as a monitor tech interpreting and understanding heart rhythms. I did not hesitate to answer the call to service and continue to work in healthcare during the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic despite the constant threat of getting the virus myself. My time working at both large and small hospitals has shown me that nursing is what I was meant to do and that I can touch so many lives for the betterment of my patients well-being. In order to achieve this, I must further my education. I am a first generation college student and survivor of the November 8, 2018 Camp Fire. I lost everything in the Camp Fire and insurance and FEMA did not cover any of my losses. This has made my education path that much harder and still I persist with my goals and look to scholarships like this one to help pay for my education. Education is not only a means to an end for me, but also a path of life-enriching learning. My teachers at Hiram college have already taught me so much about people and what it means to be a nurse and I wish to emulate my role models with how I care for my patients. Education for me means that I can have better tools to save lives and better help the world with the skills I will learn.

My own experience with mental health is similar to the original story; I lost my mother to mental illness but hers was a failed suicide attempt. Seven years later, I survived evacuating one of the most devastating fires in recorded history. My struggles with mental health have always felt endless and as though when I overcome one hurdle, there's another major and devastating event ready for me to cross again. My struggles with my mom I feel have affected me more strongly than my experiences with the fire. I was 15 at the time of her attempt and she had a long history of her own struggles with mental illness. It was not uncommon for the police to arrive at our home because she had varying breakdowns. On one occasion, she cut up her arms and legs with glass and wrote on the walls and mirrors with her own blood things like "leave now." She had a very troubled childhood and the PTSD from her experiences as an EMT only exasperated the issues she already had. She did seek help for decades but ultimately went into the local police station and shot herself in the head with a gun meant for protection against bears. This left her with permanent brain damage, blindness, and the need for professional care for the rest of her life. Despite surviving the attempt, she never came back home. Prior to escaping the November 8, 2018, Camp Fire, I had other near-death experiences. I found out as I got older that my mother would get so low into her depression, and with her being a single mother the first eight years of my life, could not trust anyone else to care for me. There was more than one occasion where she would not tell me where we were going in the car before breaking down crying and going back home. I found out later she was debating about driving off a cliff with me still in the car to kill us both so she would not orphan me when she passed. These experiences continued after she married the man who would become my dad until ultimately she trusted him enough to care for me and attempted to end her own life without involving me. It's a weird and unsettling feeling when I look back on so many of my experiences in my life and say "I could have died there." I've cared for the dead as a nurse's aide and helped prepare them for their families and loved ones to take to funeral homes for the next step. All of these experiences have made me less afraid of death and more focused on what I am working on in the moment. There's only so much time and people take it for granted. I want to make the most of my time while I am still living. Some may wonder why I tell such sad and occasionally graphic details of my past. It serves to showcase that mental health struggles aren't pretty, are difficult to talk about, but necessary to acknowledge. I feel that for far too long people have not had the space or felt comfortable to openly talk of their struggles and it only adds to the stigmatization of mental illness struggles. No one should lose someone they care about in the way I lost my mother. It will forever affect my relationship with her and the relationships I hold in my romantic life as I find it incredibly difficult to trust people now. Compared to how I lost my mother, losing all my belongings, childhood home, and job to the Camp Fire was easy to move past. I could easily get another job working as a nurse's aide and make enough money to replace my belongings, as insurance and FEMA money did not cover my losses at all, but it would not bring my mother back. Some days I struggle with PTSD from the evacuation itself but despite how life-altering that experience was, it still seems so minor compared to how I lost my mom. Objects don't hold as much value when everything that was once sentimental to me is now gone. The object's worth is simply based on how useful they are to me and if it is an inconvenience to have it or not. I think this understanding is one I would not have had without my experiences from the fire. I remember the policeman who came to tell us what had happened to my mom and how my dad crumpled to the ground upon receiving the news while I watched from the window. I remember feeling such shock and fear of the unknown when my mom wouldn't answer her phone. Now looking back on it, I feel so sorry for that policeman. He was so young and he had the duty to deliver such heartbreaking news. While it may not seem like it because of the nature of the news, it was still a service he did for our family. I can't help but wonder how he is doing and if he is coping well with experiences like that from his job. It would break my heart if someone willing to provide a service like that to a family were to end up like how my mom did. My hope is that by advocating for mental health and one-day working as the best nurse I can be, I can help people like him so they do not end up like my mother.

I answered the call to service by continuing to work in healthcare as a nurse's aide and monitor tech during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurse's aides do an incredible amount of heavy lifting during their shifts. I pick up extra shifts and am the one to lift, transfer, and physically move patients. I do this kind of physical labor for anywhere from 8-16 hours at a time and the amount of time spent moving from room to room means I tread up to 12 miles in a shift. My muscle tone and endurance have greatly increased since I started working in healthcare. I have also taken dance classes recently which helped my balance. On my days off from work and school, I like to spend time outdoors doing things like swimming if the weather permits and hiking with my dogs. Diabetes runs in my family as do many forms of cancer. Fitness and eating healthy have become quite important to me due to these genetic factors. Preventative care is just as important as fixing issues when they occur and fitness is a great form of preventative care. My family would take me snowboarding, camping, hiking, biking, and many other activities when I was little so I was quite fortunate that they saw the importance of fitness and instilled it into me. As an aspiring nurse, I would like to carry these teachings with me to encourage and educate my patients on the importance of a healthy lifestyle. One of my favorite phrases working at the hospital when we get the same patient back again is "Good to see you again, but sorry to see you back." I'd like to do everything I can to keep the amount of times I use that phrase to a minimum.

I'm currently working on furthering my nursing education. I have years of previous experience as a nurse's aide and am now working as a monitor tech interpreting heart rhythms which adds to my pool of experience. The grant will go towards furthering my nursing education as I would one day like to become a nurse practitioner working in critical care. Now more than ever we need health care professionals. There was a shortage of nurses prior to when the pandemic hit and COVID-19's presence has made that even worse. I've always loved working in health care and helping people get better. I did not hesitate to answer the call to action and continue to work in health care during the pandemic's duration. I will become a nurse practitioner one day and must take the step of becoming a nurse first. The grant would help me to cover nursing school costs and keep me on this path.

"You're the worst thing and the best thing that's happened to me" from Replay by Lady GaGa. This is the song that inspires me. It's catchy and I feel it captures the essence of what it means to have PTSD and to try and recover from it. Following the theme of PTSD, the playlist goes from reliving the experiences, feeling alone, struggling with depression, putting on false faces so others aren't worried, being angry with the world, weird dreams brought on by PTSD, accepting my own self-worth, acknowledging poor coping habits, self-reflection, admitting self-love, and finally to pushing forward.

I was working on a high acuity unit in a rural hospital as a nurse's aide when the full effects of COVID-19 hit. I have seen the full effects of what happens when patients do not survive and how it impacts the people directly caring for COVID patients. I watched as my nurse coworkers went from holding the attitudes of "this isn't real" or "I think this is being blown out of proportion and isn't as bad as the media is making it out to be" to becoming truly fearful of getting the virus themselves or of bringing it home to their families. One of my coworkers, who was a traveling nurse that stayed on at our hospital for an extended period of time, had gained a reputation as a conspiracy theorist for talking about how the virus was spreading and had the potential for world impact before it was ever named COVID-19 or talked about on a global scale. After the full effects of COVID-19 hit and we were rationing personal protective equipment such as masks and isolation gowns, people started really listening to her as everything she talked of came true. I remember being given a single disposable mask, intended for use with a single patient for a time period of a half hour at most, and being told to make it last an entire week of 12 hour shifts. I remember struggling to find disposable isolation gowns for rooms anywhere and resorting to reusing the same ones over and over. I remember, despite being disgusted by my overused mask, also treasuring the feeling of it on my face knowing that it was the only thing keeping me from getting sick and potentially ending up on a ventilator like the patients I helped to care for did. There were three of us night shift nurse's aides on my unit, all of us in our early 20's, and I was the only lucky one who didn't get COVID-19. My coworkers had symptoms so severe they couldn't walk more than 5 feet without collapsing. My family put in place rules for everyone who lived in their household to abide by when the pandemic first started. These rules included things such as always wearing a mask outside the house and sanitizing hands, abstaining from getting fast-food, wearing gloves when pumping gas, showering immediately when returning home, only going out for gas and groceries, only grocery shopping in one big trip every two weeks all to minimize COVID-19 exposure. I remember feeling irritated at the start of the pandemic for not being able to buy food on the way to work because I worked 12 night hours shifts and time for sleep was precious. It was frustrating sacrificing that time to have to cook at home but as time went on and my coworkers started getting the virus, I didn't mind the sacrifice anymore. I was feeling happier at home with my family knowing that it was safer. I also started to really fear bringing the virus home, having been exposed to it at the hospital, especially with a cousin who had a baby under a year old. There was also a growing resentment towards people outside the hospital who didn't care about precautions and who called it a hoax. COVID-19 doesn't target any specific age group so literally anyone can get it and it is random who lives and dies from it when they do get it. It felt like and still does, that some inconsiderate person could kill me or my family by standing too close in the grocery store line. It felt like no matter how hard I tried to help care for COVID patients, that people will actively decide to take risks and that our nurses now have to save them from themselves or the people they victimized by not following precautions. It all leaves me with the question; I got lucky before but would I be so lucky again.

Self-love has always been one of my biggest struggles especially considering how my personal history impacts it. I lost my mom when I was 15 due to mental illness and evacuated my hometown while it was on fire. I lost my childhood home of 20 years to that same fire. Coping with trauma and mental illness has greatly affected my feelings of self-love and worth, even pushing me to question whether I deserve to be happy in relationships or why I'm not as affectionate as I feel I could be. My body image has always been attacked by family members and friends, and I avoid posting things on social media due to fear of furthering my own negative image. I remember a family member who poked me in the stomach when I was sitting down and asking if I was getting fat or if I was pregnant. I was anorexic and fifteen pounds underweight at the time. I also remember being told I needed to wear makeup to be pretty or that I didn't need to wear bras because I was undeveloped as a preteen. There are so many other experiences I can think of that I know have affected my personal image and how I view myself. I still have trouble forcing myself to eat complete meals but recognize that as a problem and actively try to work on improving the issue with things such as homemade smoothies and protein shakes as breakfast is my biggest hurdle. My history with traumatic events in my life has pushed me into the field of nursing and towards mental health advocation. These aspirations are strong and only get stronger the farther along I get in my educational goals. However, I still struggle with small self-care things like adequate sleep and eating properly. It is difficult for me to get more than four or five hours of sleep each night and stepping back to de-stress is always hard. I believe our society pushes so many negatives on people and I agree that it has added to the growing suicide rates. The pandemic has only exasperated this issue by forcing young people to be stuck at home in toxic environments and removing other escapes. Financial difficulties are also a factor as many jobs are now closing because of precautions or lack of company income. I want to help our generation to become healthier and to recover from these events, especially my fellow health-care workers. I also want to continue healing from my own experiences and become an even stronger person from them.

One of the most challenging moments in my life was returning to my home of 20 years after it and my entire town were burnt in a fire. This was especially challenging for me as I evacuated while my hometown was on fire. To me, this was a moment of not allowing PTSD from that event to run my life and to start rebuilding and recovering mentally. It further ignited my passion for health care and helping patients who went through the same thing I did and with their own mental illnesses.

Shortly before I turned 16, my mother went into the local police station and shot herself in the head with a gun meant for protection against bears. She survived her suicide attempt and still never came back home. After a long ICU stay, she required far more care than my dad and I could provide and her state-appointed social worker placed her into a long-term care facility (LTCF). Eventually, she recovered enough to no longer require 24/7 care from a LTCF and her social worker placed her in a disability-equipped rented home that state-allocated money would cover. She is permanently blind but has home health aides who come to care for her and regularly attends a church that openly welcomed her. While my mother had many factors in her life that contributed to her final decline, I think that her experiences as an EMT most affected her. She only ever wanted to save lives and help those around her. She was a fantastic EMT but a job like that comes with a hefty emotional toll and leaves many of our frontline health-care workers with serious PTSD. Following many social media groups dedicated to health care workers in fields of nursing and for EMTs/Paramedics, I see a common trend of how their PTSD isn't well treated or stigmatized by their companies' administration. Having worked as a nurse's aide on a high acuity unit, I remember my nurse coworkers being chastised for taking mental health days when family members died or when they lost a patient they tried so hard to save. Our health-care workers do so much for our communities and they suffer greatly for it. The effects of COVID-19 are affecting our nurses and doctors and creating the same levels of PTSD that my mother had as an EMT. Our frontline workers need us to use proper precautions, get vaccinated if we are able, treat them with proper respect, and most important be willing to listen to them about their experiences. People with PTSD should be able to openly talk about it and receive proper help without stigmatization.

My greatest achievement is overcoming the hardship of losing everything in the November 8, 2018, Paradise Camp Fire, and the hardship of losing my mother to mental illness in 2012. At the time of the fire, my mother had been absent from my life for many years which put greater financial pressure on my father during his care of me as a single parent. Oftentimes, he struggled to make the house payment, which was originally meant for a two-income family, without my mother's additional income to supplement. Our home was completely lost to the fire and none of our belongings survived. Insurance did not cover a single thing and the nursing home I worked for at the time had also burned to the ground. I am thankful that the residents I cared for made it out of Paradise safely and consider that one of my greater blessings. I struggled greatly from the effects the fire had on me. My dad was thankfully safe on a work trip in Wisconsin but I had to leave my home with little warning. I remember the sky was black as midnight at eight in the morning when I started to leave, ash and charred bark fell like snow and hail, and the tall pines I grew up with lit up with fire. It took me over five hours to evacuate and numerous times, I nearly didn't make it out at all. I had been on the phone with my dad while I journeyed out and just before I lost cell service, I remembered thinking it may very well be the last time I talk to him and telling him that I love him. After surviving the fire, I struggled greatly with depression and PTSD from my experiences. I feel as though I have made a lot of progress since then, even getting a cute little dog who keeps me determined to live on, and I have since resumed my path with school. Rebuilding from scratch has taught me the value of working hard for the things that I have now as well as taking pride in all that I have accomplished with my schoolwork. I know what it means to be homeless, jobless, and what it feels like to be at the lowest point in my life. I also know what it means to leave a home while everything surrounding me was quite literally on fire. Traversing a homeless shelter for essentials after the fire was a humbling experience. To cover the costs of food and clothes, I worked as a nurse's aide in a hospital. This entire experience has taught me so much about myself and given me greater empathy for people from all walks of life. I know that I can fight tirelessly for the patients I care for because I have done it for myself in the past. I also have learned how much family means to me and how much I appreciate my dad for everything he has done for me, even when he couldn't afford to do so for himself. I will forever be a strong advocate on my patients' behalf and will continue pursuing my education to become a registered nurse. My greatest goal is to advocate for better changes in our healthcare system to help those who need it most.