 Hi, how's that? Are there any nurses here? Nurses to be? Oh, there are, okay, okay. I think I recognize some people. Okay, so my name's Jennifer. I graduated from Fairfield in 2001. And I think I do need to say that Dr. Farrell and I have been friends since we were 12 years old. And we tend to giggle like school children when we're together, so I'm just not gonna look her way. So when I came to Fairfield, and definitely early on, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I was really envious of my peers who had a much clearer path than I did. I just didn't know what I wanted to do. And I think like a lot of my colleagues here have mentioned, they just sort of did what they loved and just sort of immersed themselves in what they enjoyed and let the path kind of be created from that. And that's pretty much what I did. I majored in international studies and Spanish. I love Spanish, I always did. I thought it was really interesting. You could talk to other people in front of other people and they wouldn't know what you were talking about. I'm trying to instill that in my children, but it's a work in progress. So while I was here, I was heavily involved in the Head Start program over in Bridgeport. I really have to say that it changed my thinking and my path and my way of life in many ways. Seeing so much poverty, so close to affluence, really boggled my mind. It was my first exposure, I think, to that much diversity. Let's see, I also studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain. I loved it, I think it was a great immersion. I met up with Dr. Farrell in Spain, we had some good times. But I would have to say, I would agree, being immersed in living with the family really forces you to be uncomfortable and I think sometimes being uncomfortable really helps you get that foot forward and really change it in many ways. And of course, the university, the classes were in Spanish, so that was, of course, incredibly helpful with improving in language. I also did a mission trip with the chapel, not the chapel, the campus ministry, thank you. I did a trip to Tijuana, Mexico and I didn't consider myself the group translator, but any time we were together and we needed to have a conversation with people, they just sort of pushed me in the front and they were like, yeah, yeah, Jen, you go talk to them. So again, I was kind of uncomfortable, but it all worked out, it was fine. And I also have to credit Fairfield as a Jesuit university, the whole idea of giving back and working with your community. I don't know if I knew that I was embracing it at the time I was here, but I really was and I have ever since. So when I left Fairfield, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do. And so I was looking in New York City to start working and I saw a job for a foster care agency. And I thought, okay, I used to work with kids. I could probably do that. And it really, it changed my life forever. When they hired me, they said, oh, I see you speak Spanish. You're our bilingual case worker now. And I thought, oh my God, what am I doing? And I'll never forget on my first day, here I am like from Connecticut, they said, okay, here are the trains you need to take to Brooklyn and you're gonna go to the low income housing. You know, when you need to go do some translating and intervention and interviewing with the Spanish speaking family, call us if you need any help. And I was just horrified. But I rose to the occasion like I think we all do. Made my way there. I think it was like three hours late. I kept getting on the express. I kept seeing my stop and I kept going by and I'm like, why isn't it stopping? I don't understand. It was pitch black, I'm sure. Anyways, it all worked out just fine. And I'd have to say that my colleagues at the foster agency that I worked at, they were incredibly supportive. If you need help, let me know. I'm so glad to help you. You can do this, you got this. At no point did I really feel like I was put on the spot or I was asked to do anything that really I couldn't do. I really needed to feel confident and comfortable just doing it. So that was a big turning point, I think. So while I was working there, I went to grad school to get my master's in social work. I loved what I was doing and I wanted to be better at it. So I did that for a few years while I was working and got my master's. And when I got my master's, I went to work for a children's law firm called Lawyers for Children. And there we represented children in foster care, adoption, visitation, and custody cases. And if you were a social worker in New York City, that's where you wanted to be. So I was like, I felt very honored to be there. As you can imagine, the need for the Spanish language continued there. I did a lot more interviewing, people that were there for custody cases. I did a lot of interviewing of parents of infants who of course could not be interviewed. I did a lot of home visits, a lot of home assessments, interviewing a lot of foster parents, pre-adoptive parents, and even older young people who were coming from another country to see what it is that they wanted for their plan. So you can imagine the need for Spanish continued. And so while I was there, I sort of started thinking about career changing, not that I was unhappy, but I was starting a family and I knew that that was gonna be hard for me to continue with a family living out in Connecticut. So I started taking some classes in nursing. So I would leave work in the city and I would come back to Bridgeport and I would go to school until midnight and just do the same thing over and over again while I was pregnant. So when that all started with this conversation with some great coworkers, well, what would you do if you had to do it all over? And my father had recently passed away. I spent a lot of time in the hospitals in Boston and I thought, these people really did a lot and they really helped me, my family, myself. I really respected their work and I would love to do that. And my coworkers said, well, why don't you? I said, it's too late, I already have my masters, like this is just, it's just not gonna happen. But then when I sat down and really looked at it, I realized it was a reality. So that's what I did. I went back to school full-time at Yukon in Stanford and then I graduated from nursing school. And then I thought, okay, well, what am I gonna do now? So there were a few stops along the way but I ended up in family birthing. I worked at Bridgeport Hospital, I now work at St. Vincent's. And as you can imagine, being in an urban center, there's a great need for other languages, especially Spanish. So I currently am one of two Spanish speaking staff on the floor. And in addition to the patients that I have, I do a lot of translation for doctors. I do a lot of translation in the NICU because there's a credible amount of teaching, new parents. And I kind of help translate for other patients. Now, in the hospitals, they do have a lot of resources for other languages and most common is a Mardi. I don't know if anyone's familiar with that. It's essentially like a FaceTime sort of live person on a computer that you interact with. So you hear them, you see them and you talk to them. And that's what the nurses typically use as their resource for other languages. It is a great resource but nothing can replace the person-to-person contact. With that being said, as a social worker, if you're doing an interview, you want to interview your client. You don't want to turn to another person and have a three-way conversation. So back to nursing. So it is a resource but it can't replace the one-on-one interaction. So when I had the pleasure of visiting Dr. Farrell's class, I gave a couple of examples of recent interactions I've had with some patients. So one was I was getting ready to leave for the day and a patient came in in precipitous labor, meaning she was having her baby immediately. She came to the desk, was speaking in Spanish, was hysterical, incredibly uncomfortable, and my co-workers said, I don't understand, who are you, what's going on? And I just happened to be walking by and they said, get the Marty, get the Marty. Well, the Marty was broken. And they said, can you come here for a minute? So what's your name? She was not known to the hospital. She hadn't been coming to our clinic, she just walked in. So they had absolutely no knowledge of her. Important things, what's your name? Have you done this before? Do you want something for pain and do you have allergies? I mean, these are like the basic things that we need to know. So I was able to get those from her and I stayed with her through her delivery. Now, certainly she would have been able to deliver her baby not speaking any language. The nurses could have imitated, I'm sure they could have figured it out and it would have been fine, but it wouldn't have been ideal and it wouldn't have been the best situation it could have been. So I felt very proud and helpful that I could help her manage her delivery. Another example is I had a patient who I just had a Caesarean section. She was a very young teenager who only spoke Spanish and had a lot of other difficult issues associated with the birth. And when I came to meet with her, she was lying in bed, she hadn't stood up, she had lots of lines. She was uncomfortable. She couldn't speak to anybody and she had a newborn baby in a bassinet laying right next to her. And it was so moving to be able to communicate with her. She was so vulnerable and I think we all understand that feeling of being uncomfortable. And I couldn't imagine being in her situation and I was so happy that I could help her through it. Not only instruct her but support her and educate her not only to take care of herself but to take care of her baby. So those are just a couple of examples. So just to get back to what I was saying, I followed my heart, I did what I loved, I love what I do and if you follow what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, so. Thank you.