 from North Central Technical College, Kaylee McCauley. Good evening, everyone. I am really excited to be here tonight. It is seriously such a privilege for me to be on the stage and listen to some powerful, powerful stories. My name is Kaylee McCauley. I'm 19 years old and I'm a nursing student at North Central Technical College. I just graduated high school last spring so it's not difficult for me to remember the busyness of applying for colleges. I was scrambling to fill out more or less the same college essay prompts and I was looking into nursing programs for every school I applied for. Just like everyone else, I thought that deciding where I wanted to go to college was exciting but also very stressful. I had attended NTC for my nursing assistant course in high school and I actually passed my state exam when I was 17 years old and so I've been working as a CNA ever since. Thank you. Throughout the course, I received clear expectations, study help from instructors and consistent assistance from advisors at NTC checking in on me and making sure everything was going well. I knew from the start that NTC was where I needed to be even while applying all over. Nonetheless, I kept my options open like people suggested to me and I applied to UW Oshkosh, Eau Claire, Green Bay, Stevens Point and Milwaukee and I was accepted into all of those schools but I still wanted to go to NTC and so speed ahead to the end of my senior year and if you guys can remember senior year at all, half of it spent studying and then the other half has been answering the question where do you want to go to school and what do you want to do with your life? And so I would get some pretty surprised looks when I respond to people and I'd say I want to go to NTC for nursing and a lot of people would say to me, well, why not Marquette? And I thought you'd choose Madison and this whole list of universities that they thought would be suited for me and so I really started to doubt my certainty in going to NTC and I started to think that maybe there was some validity when people were telling me that I might miss out on the college experience and dorm life and don't get me wrong. These comments came from well-meaning people who wanted the best for me but oh, I just started to resent that phrase, the college experience. I was under the impression that if you were taking college level courses, that is living the college experience and you know, if dorms were a part of somebody else's experience, that's great but it didn't have to be mine to be a possibility for me to have an authentic and valuable education at NTC. I noticed that when I was applying for all these different schools that the general application theme is what's special about me? Why should I be chosen? And what can I bring to a campus? And it more or less starts to feel like this never-ending competition and explanation of you know, am I academically capable enough and am I socially suitable enough to be at these schools? But NTC was the first school where I felt like they were bringing something to me and it wasn't just about what I could bring to the campus. There's the remarkably affordable tuition and scholarships are offered every single semester. Personally, I've been really fortunate to receive a scholarship every single semester I've been at NTC. Additionally, I could live at home and I could also work my job as a CNA and I could stay involved in the WASA community which was and still is very important to me. And you know, I figured if I am a student that's ambitious and driven, the location really isn't as significant. I'm going to be that whatever school I go to. And I wanted to become a nurse and I had to pick the school that was gonna give me the best chance at becoming a nurse and equipping me with the tools necessary to do that. And so in my experience, picking a trade school isn't inhibiting my college experience. It's just the start of my college experience. And so at first, when people would ask me what my plans were for my education, I would tell them that I'm going to NTC for nursing and then I quickly tack on how I want to go to grad school out of state and I want to be a nurse practitioner and I want to be in doctors without borders and don't get me wrong. I still have all those plans but now when people ask me where I go to school and what I want to do, I don't feel that pressure to reassure everybody that I have all these plans. I'm at NTC and I feel that my goals have only become bigger and my plans and confidence and making sure those goals become a reality has only become stronger. And so my name is Kaylee McCauley and I'm attending North Central Technical College for nursing and for now, that's enough.