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I had a lifelong interest in EMS, I started when I&nbsp;
was 14 years old, and on my 16th birthday I walked&nbsp;&nbsp;

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into my local fire station and I signed up to&nbsp;
volunteer. I didn't really know what I was getting&nbsp;&nbsp;

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myself into, but i could obviously tell like, "Oh&nbsp;
wow this is like a very male dominated setting."

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All I knew was, like, I want to be on an ambulance&nbsp;
I want to be going lights and sirens, that sounds&nbsp;&nbsp;

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incredible, that sounds so cool. And I was just&nbsp;
primarily only interested in the medical part, and&nbsp;&nbsp;

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I really just never gave thought to the fire side.&nbsp;
When I got to UVA and I joined Air Force ROTC,&nbsp;&nbsp;

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that was something else that I also thought I was&nbsp;
not capable of doing. I didn't know that I could&nbsp;&nbsp;

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meet those standards and when I did it kind&nbsp;
of caused me to go back and reflect on,&nbsp;&nbsp;

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"Well what's something else that I never thought&nbsp;
I could do?" Joining the fire station down here,&nbsp;&nbsp;

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I walked in and ironically, the captain of the&nbsp;
crew was female and was super inspiring for me and&nbsp;&nbsp;

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just made a really huge impact on my path there.&nbsp;
During my psych clinical, it was actually &nbsp;

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my last rotation on the floor, there was a pretty&nbsp;
emotional and intense situation on the unit that&nbsp;&nbsp;

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just impacted a lot of the nurses and a lot of&nbsp;
the nursing students, and I think after that my&nbsp;&nbsp;

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psych clinical instructor approached me and was&nbsp;
like, "Ali, I don't know what it is about you&nbsp;&nbsp;

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but I think that you should really, you know,&nbsp;
investigate a little bit more into this psych&nbsp;&nbsp;

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interest that you might have, I think you&nbsp;
would be a really good psych nurse." I realized&nbsp;&nbsp;

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that psych nursing is basically my favorite part&nbsp;
of all types of nursing because so much of it is&nbsp;&nbsp;

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therapeutic communication. So, I'll commission&nbsp;
as a 2nd Lieutenant in May into the U.S. Air&nbsp;&nbsp;

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Force. Later on in life I'd like to specialize&nbsp;
specifically in first responders or in veterans&nbsp;&nbsp;

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that suffer from some sort of trauma disorder,&nbsp;
basically care for the people who have laid&nbsp;&nbsp;

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down their lives to be just dedicated to service&nbsp;
for others. I want to provide service to them.