Nursing Scholarship Essay

Back in 1980s, Nigeria was a patriarchal society, they had this common believe that nursing is a female profession. During my junior and senior years in high school, I vowed not to be a nurse because of the job class and remuneration issue. Medical doctors, engineers, accountants and architects among other professionals were highly reputable and well respected. They were highly paid, whereas nurses and teachers were paid “peanut” for their services. Having to deal with the societal belief that men are superior over women on nearly every aspect of my life made me resent the idea of becoming a nurse. I just blindly refused in my mind to accept nursing as my career because I wanted to compete with boys. For this reason I went to college to study Agricultural Engineering.

I performed excellently in school, I actually outperformed boys in my class. Not until after I graduated from college that I realized that I had chosen a wrong career. I didn’t like what I went to school for. I spent five years of my life pursuing the wrong dream, I chose my career based on what I want to prove to others.

My husband is in medical technologist so we were living in one of the hospital’s quarters designated for its employee. This setting changed the dynamic of my life. I was being surrounded by medical personnel, most of my friends were nurses and I had several opportunities to visit them in the hospital. In conjunction with my own personal experience with nurses when I had my babies both natural and C-section delivery and when my first son was severely sick to the point of death. The kind of care my family and I received from those nurses were selfless and nurturing. Henceforth I made up my mind to go back to school for