My Dad: My Angel in Nursing by Jonathon

My Dad: My Angel in Nursing by Jonathon - March 2023 Scholarship Essay

A trajectory I had, but not a target. In 2018, I applied to the Health Occupations program
at Somerset Vocational and Techinical School, knowing I desired to go into healthcare, yet
clueless to which career. My parents, both working in vocational schools, were incessantly
“recommending” that I follow. Deciding on healthcare was the culmination of the lessons and
experiences of my life. I always wished to make others happy and help. Through healthcare, I
reasoned, I could learn how to assist efficiently; Saving lives. However, the program was
unfathomably disappointing. Instead of learning practical, lifesaving skills, I spent hours pouring
over legal procedures. While other classes were learning CPR and First Aid, I was learning how
to clean bedsheets. While I watched a fellow classmate join a rescue squad to actually save lives,
I had to mimic slowly exercising a bedridden patient. “Why,” I asked myself. “Why do I spend
my time learning these useless skills?”
In December of 2019, barely three months after starting my Freshman year, my father
had collapsed in our home, being put into a medically induced coma to save his life. After many
months, he returned home and found his legs atrophied, unable to walk. My family all supported
each other, but we had zero ideas where to begin. But the terrible irony of it all was, to help him,
I had to use the “useless skills” I had been learning the past year. Nearly every day, I would use
my training to wash the necessary laundry. His legs required constant exercise, which, when a
nurse was not able, had to be done by myself. Even legal procedures, the monotonous routines I
had once thought they were, allowed me to guarantee the constant rotation of nurses and
therapists ensuring my dad’s care.
We did the best we could, and despite my guilt, I will always assure myself of that. We
had our own responsibilities, and were not able, or knowledgeable enough, to give him the
complete help he needed. My father unfortunately passed away in May of last year. An
exhausted heart, overtaxed for two years straight, led to his death. Our hearts were broken, and
we have yet to fully recover. I doubt we ever will.

Moving forward, why do I want to become a nurse? In simpler terms, it is to fulfill the
desire to help people at their most desperate hour. I felt ill equipped to help an ailing family
member. I never want anyone to feel that helplessness. I’ll be the difference that ensures a patient
is healed, not forgotten. I will be able to give others tangible, life saving guidance in their most
vulnerable state. I watched my father suffer with far too little training to help. Now, by
becoming a nurse, I can make sure no one will ever have to endure what he had to. My trajectory,
my goal, my path is clear. Becoming a Nurse.