I had a lifelong interest in EMS, I started when I was 14 years old, and on my 16th birthday I walked into my local fire station and I signed up to volunteer. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but i could obviously tell like, "Oh wow this is like a very male dominated setting." All I knew was, like, I want to be on an ambulance I want to be going lights and sirens, that sounds incredible, that sounds so cool. 

And I was just primarily only interested in the medical part, and I really just never gave thought to the fire side. When I got to UVA and I joined Air Force ROTC, that was something else that I also thought I was not capable of doing. 

I didn't know that I could meet those standards and when I did it kind of caused me to go back and reflect on, "Well what's something else that I never thought I could do?" 

Joining the fire station down here, I walked in and ironically, the captain of the crew was female and was super inspiring for me and just made a really huge impact on my path there. 

During my psych clinical, it was actually my last rotation on the floor, there was a pretty emotional and intense situation on the unit that just impacted a lot of the nurses and a lot of the nursing students, and I think after that my psych clinical instructor approached me and was like, "Ali, I don't know what it is about you but I think that you should really, you know, investigate a little bit more into this psych interest that you might have, I think you would be a really good psych nurse." 

I realized that psych nursing is basically my favorite part of all types of nursing because so much of it is therapeutic communication. 

So, I'll commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in May into the U.S. Air Force. Later on in life I'd like to specialize specifically in first responders or in veterans that suffer from some sort of trauma disorder, basically care for the people who have laid down their lives to be just dedicated to service for others. I want to provide service to them.