Nursing Scholarship Awarded

Congratulations to Deepa Rekha one of three recipients of the $2,000 scholarship award sponsored by chooseNursing.com and NurseWeek Magazine. Deepa will graduate in May 2006.

As children, we don’t stop and think about how much our parents influence us. But as we grow older, we not only realize how much they inspire us, but we want to prove that, we too, can be the best we can be.

Deepa Rekha would listen to her mother’s stories about the patients she treated as a nurse and how rewarding nursing was. Deepa specifically remembers her mother telling her that she wanted to touch her patients’ lives by comforting them and wanting to make the pain go away.

Deepa didn’t always want to be a nurse, but after graduating from CSUS with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business Administration and unable to find a meaningful job, she now says, “I understand. My mother impacted me more than I realized.”

“My parents are my biggest inspiration because they came from a different country and worked hard. Seeing how hard they worked inspired me to work twice as hard,” she says.

Currently, Rekha is in her second semester at Modesto Junior College and will receive her ADN Degree in May 2006. She says she will eventually earn her MSN Degree and her long range goal is to become a Nurse Practitioner.

Hailing from the Fiji Islands, she immigrated to the United States without her parents when she was 16 years old. She says her relatives took good care of her, but the culture was challenging. She didn’t have any friends and even though she spoke English (it was mandatory in the first grade), she says her accent was so strong she was hard to understand. Today Deepa is proud to be a United States citizen. There are a number of people who influenced Deepa over the years and she says she will never forget her instructors.

“My clinical instructor, Sandy Brunn is an inspiration,” says Rekha. “She was there for me when I needed her most. When I gave my first injection, I needed her by my side and she was right there. I have never met anyone with so much patience and faith in her students. All of our instructors are doing an awesome job in passing the information forward,” says Rekha.

“I worked with someone who couldn’t stand erect and had a difficult time breathing,” says Deepa, “and I realized that we should never take anything for granted. There are so many people who are less fortunate.” Deepa says there is a huge population of Asian Indians that speak Hindi (her language) and she wants to reach them.

She is so grateful to Kaiser Permanente for the scholarship and says she will use her award for books, a uniform and a new pair of shoes.

Congratulations, Deepa!

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