…We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope… Romans 5: 3-4.

I am in awe at the amount of change that has occurred in these past two years. My time at OSU has been immensely fruitful. The fall of 2014 I arrived at the best university in the world to study Neuroscience, fully confident in my aspiration to become a doctor in the long run. I expected myself to get into research as soon as I could, volunteer in whatever would look good on my resume and love every second of it. Mid-first semester I began to feel uncertainty in respect to my well-structured life plan. I found myself unfulfilled by what I was studying, the excitement I had when in the beginning of the year was plummeting. I feared what others would think if I quit being on the pre-med track, I especially feared letting my parents down as well as myself, thinking that I was tricking myself into taking the easy way out. I felt lost. I expressed my concerns with my family and receive an outpour of love and support. HSS was a blessing because I learned about other professions in the health field. My eyes were open to the core of the “well-structured plan” I had made before going into college. The foundation of that plan was the fact that I had fallen in love with giving myself in service to those who need help. Through the Health Science program, came across Nursing. I shadowed and interviewed different types of nurses and I was quickly pulled in. The more I learned about the profession and the vast possibilities that came with it, the more I felt that this was compatible with the core of who I aspired to be. Fast-forwarding to the fall of 2015, I began my first year in the College of Nursing at OSU and was accepted into the Honors Research Program. It was through distress and difficulty that I finally fully embraced the idea that this is my life and it does not matter what others think of me. I learned to let my faith be bigger than my fears. This is where the bible verse from above comes into play. I am full of hope and excitement for what is ahead of me. My second year as a health science scholar has been incredible. I feel fulfilled by what I am learning in class and clinicals, by what I am doing as a PCA, Catholic Minister of Communion and undergraduate researcher. I surpassed my initial expectations for my first two years and seek to do the same in these next two short years. My plan for the remainder of my OSU experience is to keep an open mind to the different paths that the nursing profession has. I plan to keep diving into things that I have a passion for as well as branch out into new interests.