An untimely move.

When I started nursing school, I didn't do so well. I had a hard time from several points of view. We had just moved into our own house, which was far from my place of study. I had to take two cars to get there. On the other hand, I had no way to finance my school expenses, I had no one to buy what I needed. On the other hand, I had to put up with verbal abuse from my father who did not support me in my decision to become a nurse.

My father never wanted to buy a house. After many years of living in a rented house, the owner of the house decided to ask us to vacate it because he wanted to give it to his son. I actually found out later that my father was paying very little rent and the owner needed to raise a lot of money, but it wasn’t legal to do it all of a sudden, so he was advised and told to vacate us.

That's when my father started looking for a house to buy. He got one a little out of the way at that time, that's when in the middle of the school year we moved one weekend.

I never left my house alone. Dad never allowed it, but now I had to go alone to my high school and I didn't even know how to take the cars to go there. I was very introverted at that time, I was not social, I was very ashamed of everything, because of my strict upbringing.

My father never liked us to share with anyone and I didn't learn very quickly to fraternize. I barely began to socialize in my second year of high school and just as I was beginning to learn how to converse in public, my third year was over and I had to go study elsewhere.

I spent long hours waiting for public transportation because I didn't even know about the stops and my father didn't even teach me that. It was VERY harsh to start my studies in these conditions.

This influenced me to such an extent that my grades went down, I almost didn't finish well with my subjects, to the point that when I took off in the second year my teachers couldn't believe that I was the same as the first year, because my grades were excellent and I was one of the best students.

I got financial support.

Then I had no financial support, but I was able to get a scholarship to be able to study. In my high school they gave me a scholarship in the second year and another one in the third year. So after I got financial freedom without my father's knowledge I started to have peace of mind to study and buy everything I needed to continue my career.

Along with what I got from the financial aid I was also able to help out at home with my household expenses. My father didn't even realize it because he didn't ask my mother. He thought that since my mother sold ice cream she financed everything.

No financial or moral support.

My father never supported me to study my career and then he tried every way he could to make me disappointed in my career. He had a taxi and I hated it when he told me he would drive me to school. I knew he would use the ride he to just go around trash talking people studying my career and how poorly they were viewed by everyone.

That never bothered me and it was a lie.  The more time passed the more I loved my career. In the second year we were taken to see patients in the hospital and talked about many things about their illnesses. I fell more and more in love with my career while I had to remain quiet as my father vented his frustration to me about not being able to force me to drop out of school to become a nurse. I thanked God when he didn't take me to school. It was a rare occasion, but when he did, it was very traumatic for me.

And so three years of my life passed between economic problems and tolerance to my father's insults.

Everything was solved by then.

In the third year I received my second scholarship to supplement my expenses and then I was able to continue helping my mother with household expenses and I to buy everything I needed for my graduation expenses.

It was here that I began to have a love for my profession. I loved the sacrifice it meant to not eat on time, to sleep little in a night shift or not at all if the patient warranted it. And then in my thoughts the idea of continuing to study was forged. Now I would do it as soon as I could stabilize myself and get the entrance to study at the university.

Other goals

But I had a hard time getting admission. Because I fell in love with one university in particular and that was the “University of the Andes” I went on vacation to visit the city where it is located, and I was impressed because it seemed to me that it was outside my country. It seemed strange to me that a city like that was in my country, with that climate, that people, that geography. It was simply delirious.

So my race to start studying medicine became a struggle that took me five years. When I got the entrance to the university I was so happy... but that will be yet another chapter.