Following Footsteps by Elheyna

Following Footsteps by Elheyna - August 2025 Scholarship Essay

“Ena, what do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question my mom often asked me and my sister growing up. I’d always respond with something like, “A doctor maybe” with the reasoning of choosing that profession being the pay or quality of life that doctors often pursued. Yes, that may be part of the reason why I’m going down this path, but the reason why I chose this profession as my dream was ultimately, my wonderful mother herself.
My mom always did the most for me and my sister growing up. Everyone always says that their mom, “is the best,” but I think my mom may take the cake with that statement. She is singlehandedly the funniest, most compassionate and hardworking woman I have ever met in my life. No matter how many disagreements and heart wrenching fights that we had growing up, she will always be my rock and number one hero.
Growing up, my mom would always say that she wanted to work in the medical field to help others. She always reminded me and my litter sister to be kind, and to always show others compassion. “Always help other people, ha?” She’d repeat almost daily. Later in life, after being a stay-at-home mom for quite a while, she decided to go back to college with a major in nursing while me and my family were stationed in Japan. She took all the scholarships she could get, didn’t have to pay a dime. So, for four years, my mother was a stay-at-home mother of two and a nursing student, which is known to be one of the hardest courses of study by many. She graduated with honors and is now a full-time night shift nurse.
While my mother was in college, she would always tell me the same statement again and again. “Go to school early Ena, so you aren’t old and behind like me.” She’d repeat during dinner and long drives to school. I always took this as a joke, but as the years went by, I understood what she meant by that statement. My mother walked through life and made countless sacrifices so that me and my sister could run to our dreams and a life that she didn’t get to experience.
So, with this all being said, whenever someone asks me what motivates me to become a doctor, I no longer want to say things like, pay or quality of life. I want to tell them about the wonderful and incredibly strong woman who inspired me. I will tell them about how the incredibly smart and caring woman. That despite taking care of two kids as a stay-at-home mom, a military spouse, and in her mid 30s, she graduated nursing school with honors and phi beta kappa.
Therefore, with this upcoming school year, I am doing just that. I took the largest scholarship offer I could get and ran with it. An aspiration that I have for the upcoming school year is to be as tenacious, strong and caring as my mother who once was a student before me. I want to make straight A’s this semester, to follow in her footsteps and to be an honors graduate. But most of all, the biggest aspiration I have this upcoming school year is to make my beautiful mother proud, and to make her feel as though all of the hard work and sacrifices that she made for me were worth it.