Profile: Aryn Wallace

When Aryn Wallace saw her best friend’s water break a month before she was due she panicked.

Aryn was enjoying a normal night in with her best friend Tracy watching movies when her water broke. When the water broke they both were freaking out because this was Tracy’s first pregnancy and neither knew if this was normal. They immediately called the doctor who told them to bring her in immediately and that everything was probably fine. The weather outside was stormy and the roads were chaotic.

“When I saw Tracy’s water break it was scary and exciting,” Wallace said. “I didn’t know what to do and everything was more stressful because of the weather!”

It was this instance of not having the medical know how, which is one out of two instances, which would lead Aryn to quitting her managerial position to pursue a nursing career. The second being far more traumatic.

A little over a year ago, Aryn received a call from her mother to come home because there was an accident with her brother. She got home and found out the ambulance had just left with her brother. Her brother had just attempted suicide. Luckily, he had been drinking so his blood thinned out which ultimately saved his life.

“When I got home my mother was bawling, it was just so unexpected” Aryn recalls. “When I was visiting him in the hospital and watched the nurses helping him get better, I realized that I wanted to know how to help people get through difficult situations. I never wanted to feel unprepared again”

It through these two events Aryn quit her job at Starbucks were she was making $37, 000 dollars a year to take out a $37, 000 dollar student loan to go back to school.

At Starbucks she was incredibly successful having made it to assistant management in only 2 years. Through this job she was able to afford a new car, clothes that she wanted and trips she wanted to go on; the sky was the limit. She had been incredibly independent, working since age sixteen, and with this decision she would have to give all that up and go in the opposite direction: debt.

“Leaving my job was scary because I didn’t know if I could even do nursing school because my grades were never great in the other schools I attended,” Aryn said. “I never reapplied myself, but I knew that because I wanted to do it, I would do it well.”

It is now almost May and Aryn is almost a nursing school graduate. She has done exceedingly well in all of her classes and has even found time to come back to Starbucks as a barista.

As she reflects on the past events and the past year she says, “I am so thankful that all of those things happened in my life. I truly believe that nursing is my calling. I have never been happier.”