The little ballerina by Sierra

The little ballerina by Sierra - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” they asked.
“I want to be a ballerina!” I replied in kindergarten. Six years old, so innocent, so little. I wanted to dance and glide across a stage like I saw on TV and in the movies.
Fast forward to 3rd grade. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” they would say.
“I want to be an astronaut!” I had seen a documentary about space and was instantly captivated. I thought I was going to walk on the face of Saturn. The stars were my best friend and I dreamed about flying to them one day. I had no idea how small I really was.
5th grade came around the corner. “Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”. Less people were asking, and the question was getting harder to answer. There were so many options.
“I think I want to be one of the people who dig up dinosaurs.” It amazed me that creatures so big and so different than us use to own the earth. I wanted to find them and learn their secrets. Would this happen to me one day?
In the 6th grade my dad had gotten worse, his illness had not improved and we were spending more time in the hospital. “What do you want to be someday?” my grandmother asked.
“I’m going to be a doctor” I wanted to fix my dad, fix those like him. Fix anyone who was remotely sick. I dint want anyone to feel the way I was feeling.
When I was 14, the summer between 8th and 9th grade, I saw a motorcycle get hit by a car. We stayed there until the EMT’s came. I saw them pick him up and carry him away, and I still don’t know whether he lived or died. That moment, no one asked, but I told myself “I’m going to be an EMT”.
Somewhere around 16 I decided I wanted to work in the ER instead. The EMT’s only got the people to the hospital, they helped, but I wanted to help even more. I wanted the adrenaline, I wanted the fast pace, I wanted a job that was literally life or death.
“What are you going to college for?” everyone asks now. “Nursing” I always say with pride. “Why?” “Why not a doctor, they get paid more” “Are you sure? That’s such a high burn out rate”.
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s not about the money, as cliché as that sounds”. And it’s really not about the money. I want to help people. When I would visit my dad in the hospital, the doctors never truly asked my dad how he felt. It was the nurses. The nurses talk to you, they help you, they do the dirty work but they also develop relationships with people. You never remember your doctor ten years after you get discharged, you remember your nurse.
I want to work in the ER because it’s fast paced and high stakes, and that’s what I’m good at. But I’d be totally okay with working in the ICU or normal nurse duties on patient care. I just know I want to be a nurse and I want to help people. It’s what I was meant to do.
It took the little ballerina 12 years to figure out she would be in scrubs and not a tutu, but that’s okay, because dreams change and we move on to better things.