“Your Career and Your Knowledge Is Really What You Make It.”

One of the things that you said in your packet that you sent back to me when I asked questions was that you knew from the very beginning that you wanted to do the emergency room.

Why was that such a passion for you?

So I grew up with older siblings and we would get very limited television time.

And I feel like the time that I would get on the television happened to be when ER was on TV.

And I'm probably dating myself because that is an old show.

But I just loved the excitement, the fast pace about it.

So when I was 18, I had my daughter and I knew that I needed to do something other than working at McDonald's my whole life to be able to support her.

And so I decided to apply for a scholarship and I got my CNA license.

And by the time I got done with my CNA license, I said I wanted to do nursing.

And so I went to the tech, which is who I got my CNA license through, and I started the gen eds.

And that took me about two and a half years.

I had a boyfriend that passed away during that time.

And it caused me to not be successful in one of the science classes that you have to have an A or B in in order to be able to get into the program.

And so I had to repeat that.

And then I got into the nursing classes.

And the thing about the nursing school at the Tuck here is the first half of your classes are all your classwork.

And the second half is all of your clinicals.

And so, um, in regular, like my bachelor's degree nursing program, they were spread out through the whole semester, all of it.

And so when I was in that program within like the third week of class, we found a tumor growing on the nerve in my daughter's face on a Thursday.

And by next Tuesday, we had to have surgery because they couldn't tell me what the tumor was, but she was four years old and they're like, yeah, we got to get rid of this.

And so then with her having surgery and being there missing a week and a half of class.

It just, it destroyed me because I couldn't catch up.

I spent time trying to catch up, but you really have to be able to understand the theory of those NCLEX questions.

And I just, it wasn't clicking for me.

And so I withdrew from the nursing program because I just wasn't successful at that point.