My interest in going into nursing routes back to recent events. As a high school junior/senior, the question: "what is your future major," was not one that was uncommon. My answer to this was always, "something in the medical field, but I'm just not sure what area." In the summer of 2021, I started a job as a Health Unit Coordinator in a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at a hospital in my hometown. With this position, I get the opportunity to be on the unit helping nurses with various tasks, and by this point, I had set my sights on going into the field of nursing, but if you were to ask me why I wouldn't be able to tell you much more than that I thought it was a 'cool' job. After having been there for almost 9 months now, I can confidently say I have found my "why" for going into nursing. After watching and observing how my nursing coworkers treat patients, show compassion, act with bravery and intelligence, and view those who find themselves in a hospital bed on my unit as someone more than just a "condition." I have found that this 'job' requires much more than a degree and some knowledge, it requires compassion, grit, perseverance, extreme amounts of patience, empathy, and the list goes on and on. When I got hired as a HUC, it was during the second COVID-19 surge in the fall and early winter of 2021. Throughout the whole pandemic, I would hear that nurses were heroes and their jobs had become much more stressful due to the pandemic, but it wasn't until I saw it firsthand in my unit due to it being converted into a COVID unit. Getting hired at this time allowed me to understand why these people were considered heroes, they were forced to convert from a Cardiac unit where they all specialized, and then abruptly be converted into a COVID unit with a virus we all knew very little about. Being that I have been a member of this hospital for some time now, I have been able to have some conversations with some of the nurses I work with about nursing and what it takes to be a nurse. One nurse in specific told me that when he gets up in the morning to prepare for a shift at the hospital, he asks himself "what can I do to make someone's life better, what can I do to help them, even beyond their ‘condition/situation’.” The short amount of time I have been in this position has answered many questions and brought reason to many unknowns in my future. In my eyes, nurses are our heroes in blue scrubs.

My interest in going into nursing routes back to recent events. As a high school junior/senior, the question: "what is your future major," was not one that was uncommon. My answer to this was always, "something in the medical field, but I'm just not sure what area." In the summer of 2021, I started a job as a Health Unit Coordinator in a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at a hospital in my hometown. With this position, I get the opportunity to be on the unit helping nurses with various tasks, and by this point, I had set my sights on going into the field of nursing, but if you were to ask me why I wouldn't be able to tell you much more than that I thought it was a 'cool' job. After having been there for almost 9 months now, I can confidently say I have found my "why" for going into nursing. After watching and observing how my nursing coworkers treat patients, show compassion, act with bravery and intelligence, and view those who find themselves in a hospital bed on my unit as someone more than just a "condition." I have found that this 'job' requires much more than a degree and some knowledge, it requires compassion, grit, perseverance, extreme amounts of patience, empathy, and the list goes on and on. When I got hired as a HUC, it was during the second COVID-19 surge in the fall and early winter of 2021. Throughout the whole pandemic, I would hear that nurses were heroes and their jobs had become much more stressful due to the pandemic, but it wasn't until I saw it firsthand in my unit due to it being converted into a COVID unit. Getting hired at this time allowed me to understand why these people were considered heroes, they were forced to convert from a Cardiac unit where they all specialized, and then abruptly be converted into a COVID unit with a virus we all knew very little about. Being that I have been a member of this hospital for some time now, I have been able to have some conversations with some of the nurses I work with about nursing and what it takes to be a nurse. One nurse in specific told me that when he gets up in the morning to prepare for a shift at the hospital, he asks himself "what can I do to make someone's life better, what can I do to help them, even beyond their ‘condition/situation’.” The short amount of time I have been in this position has answered many questions and brought reason to many unknowns in my future. In my eyes, nurses are our heroes in blue scrubs.

One of my life goals is to become an RN (Registered Nurse). I have had this goal of working in healthcare since my adolescence, for a while I was indecisive as to what area of healthcare I wanted to do, but I eventually found myself loving the kind of work nurses do. I've grown up with family members and I even now work in a hospital with nurses and their profession amuses me. I find it so cool that these people can help a very sick or injured person back to their normal lives. Two of the particular areas of nursing, I'm looking to go into are either a flight nurse or sports medicine. My brother-in-law is an Aero Care flight nurse and I always speak with him and the various breath-taking experiences he's had thus far as a flight nurse. I have also considered going into sports medicine because I am/was an athlete, being in that setting is something I love to do. I find it so cool that I would have the opportunity to help injured athletes be rehabilitated back to health, and then watch them go on to be successful with whatever sport it is they posess. Thus far I have taken minor steps in the direction of becoming an RN, I successfully got a job at a hospital assisting nurses in a Coronary Intensive Care Unit so I could begin to be in the setting of an RN, and I also get a better understanding of my future career. In this upcoming semester. This goal of mine is something I hope to achieve in the upcoming years and when I do achieve it I will strive to be the best I can be, and give every patient I come across the best I've got.

To make the people in my life feel loved, I like to do various things. One thing to start is to show interest in their lives by having conversations with them and interacting with what they have to say. An example of this is calling up my grandmother in my free time just to catch up and give her some company for a portion of her day. I also like to do kind gestures for the ones I love, like buying my mom flowers, or cleaning the house so my mom doesn't have the burden of having to do so when she gets home from a long day of work. One of my favorite things I do to make the people I love feel loved is acknowledgment of their lives and their presence in my life. To me, making my loved ones, or even a stranger on the street feel loved is something I take pride in and enjoy doing greatly!