Page 17 - University of Martland Nursing Forum - Winter 2017

About 100 students from Baltimore’s Edmondson-Westside High School attended the Nov. 9 launch of UMSON’s GEAR UP program; the day’s events included presentations and breakout sessions regarding the transition from high school to college, followed by lunch, which Fahie (in blue shirt, above) helped serve, and bubble blowing (opposite) in the School of Nursing courtyard. Fahie also mingled with students while they ate (right).
start thinking about careers in the health professions, but the focus is on their high school careers. Fahie began working with these students last spring at the end of their eighth-grade year and continued working with them through a camp over the summer. Now in ninth grade, the students will remain involved in GEAR UP programming until they graduate.
Fahie has a bias. She loves nursing and wants others to follow the same path she did, but she’s realistic. “My preference
is for everybody to become a nurse,” she says. “Not everyone wants to be a nurse, and sometimes stereotypes that they see on television or in print media is what they think nurses do.”
She tries to combat that by talking about the advantages of nursing, including the high demand for nurses that allows them to choose where and when they want to work and the
wide range of career options available. “Some say, ‘I can’t
do blood and guts,’” Fahie
says, and so she makes an effort to show them that “nursing is bigger than the emergency room, shock trauma and surgery.”
Fahie is cognizant that there
are many more challenges for
today’s students than there were for her. Children who live in her old neighborhood are more likely to come from single-parent households and to experience higher levels of crime, she says.
“They’re very different than when
I came up,” she says. “They have life- and-death issues almost daily. I never had to contend with anything like that.”
Given these challenges, GEAR UP offers these students support and mentoring from successful professionals like Fahie
to help them plan their own paths to rewarding careers. In turn, it offers Fahie an opportunity to provide important perspective on how they can influence their own lives.
“It’s important to help them see they can succeed in spite of their environment and there are resources available,” Fahie says. “I made it. It worked for me. It
can work for you. A little hard work and perseverance, it can happen for you like it happened for me.”
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SCHOOL OF NURSING 15
THIS PHOTO AND ABOVE: CHRISTOPHER MYERS