Many students, freshmen through seniors, are not entirely sure of their plans after high school. Shayla Jelsema felt that she already knew the direction she wanted to go in life, but after completely switching her Technical Center choice into the first few months of the school year, she found a career that she is excited to pursue.

Jelsema previously wanted to teach art, and that was the initial path she had chosen through Ottawa County’s Career Line Tech Center: education. “I knew I wanted to be an art teacher since 5th grade,” said Jelsema. However, after the first week of the teachers academy, she realized it was much less hands-on than she had initially thought. Jelsema had worked with children before as a part-time assistant teacher at a local learning center, but she found herself disengaged with the class content at Tech.

After a few weeks of going back and forth and discussing options with her counselor, Jelsema decided to switch her path at the Tech Center. There were options she had considered before teaching. “My first Tech choices were cosmetology or welding to try something different than teaching,” Jelsema said. Since it was a bit later in the year, and classes filled up quickly, few choices were left. There were spots still open in the EMT course. Jelsema confessed she had never thought she’d be the type to want to deal with blood or sickness, but she had decided to take the class anyway: “Out of curiosity.”

Only a few days in, Jelsema had taken a genuine interest in the material. She started to come home and talk about something she learned while at Tech. It was actually during a clinic that she decided medicine was what she wanted to do. “I realized I wanted to do something more hands-on, and after helping a choking child and saving a life in my clinical, I realized the medical field is where I was meant to be,” Jelsema said.

There is a connection between education and medicine: altruism, which is the act of helping people. Jelsema recognized this connection while being interviewed: “I still have a passion for teaching others. I hope in the future I will be able to help teach others how to save lives after spending my youth traveling and missions nursing.”

When she got accepted into her dream school, Taylor University, she surprised herself by declaring a nursing major. Jelsema is now planning on working with an EMT group this summer in Michigan before going off to Taylor University in Indiana, where she will major in nursing with hopes of becoming a CNRA.