BW’s Evans will pursue a career in nursing

Brit­tany Evans

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Brit­tany Evans is excited to take on a new environment.

The Big Wal­nut senior said while she loves Sun­bury, she is ready to leave.

“It will be weird though,” she added.

A mem­ber of the track team, Brit­tany said the girls are “really, really close” with some even con­tin­u­ing in track once they embark on the path to higher education.

But Brit­tany is not one of those. She will be attend­ing Cedarville Uni­ver­sity in Spring­field. While con­sid­er­ing phar­macy at one point as a poten­tial career, Brit­tany spent the win­ter months shad­ow­ing pro­fes­sion­als to deter­mine for cer­tain which career path she wanted to pursue.

“I real­ized I wanted a clin­i­cal set­ting,” she said, adding there are not as many oppor­tu­ni­ties in phar­macy for that, so she is now look­ing at nurs­ing and plans to pur­sue her BSN, along with becom­ing a nurse prac­ti­tioner. Brit­tany will be in school for the next six years to fol­low this career choice.

She has a sis­ter, 15, with Down syn­drome and dia­betes and a younger brother, 11.

“So I like tak­ing care of peo­ple,” she said, adding she would like to work in a hos­pi­tal, mov­ing around to dif­fer­ent areas to expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent aspects of nursing.

Brit­tany always wanted to attend Cedarville. She applied to other schools but only felt com­pletely sat­is­fied with Cedarville.

“It has a great Chris­t­ian atmos­phere,” she said.

Along with major­ing in nurs­ing, she hopes to dou­ble minor in Bible and bio-ethics.

This year, Brit­tany is tak­ing anatomy, advanced place­ment psy­chol­ogy, physics, dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, advanced place­ment envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence and alge­bra III.

Look­ing back, Brit­tany said the sci­ences were the only classes that she con­sis­tently received A’s in. Over the years, she par­tic­i­pated in sci­ence fairs and the Sci­ence Olympiad, and in the 7th grade, she was nom­i­nated to attend a forum for women in sci­ence at Ohio State University.

“Biol­ogy, chem­istry, all the teach­ers have made it fun,” Brit­tany said, adding they all had a “great influ­ence” on her career decision.

“I have known Brit­tney for three years and had her as one of my stu­dents for two of those,” Nadine Adams, Big Wal­nut sci­ence teacher, said. “Brit­tney is one of the most mature and respon­si­ble stu­dents that I have had the plea­sure of get­ting to know. She is able to work many hours, have a very active role as the old­est sib­ling in her fam­ily and is extremely ded­i­cated to chal­leng­ing her­self in her aca­d­e­mic jour­ney. She is truly a gen­uinely good per­son who is very well respected by her peers and her teachers.”

Christina McDo­nough, a social stud­ies teacher at Big Wal­nut, has Brit­tany in her AP psy­chol­ogy class this year plus works with her as a mem­ber of the fresh­men tran­si­tion pro­gram Eagles’ First Flight.

“Brit­tany is first and fore­most a com­pas­sion­ate, car­ing, kind indi­vid­ual,” she said. “She always has a smile on her face and is always truly con­cerned about those around her. She is a strong stu­dent with an excel­lent work ethic. She is dili­gent and focused on her stud­ies. As a men­tor, she was both reli­able and respon­si­ble. Not all high school stu­dents are mature enough to take a lead­er­ship role amongst their peers, but Brit­tany cer­tainly was. The fresh­men in her group looked up to her and she was a strong leader and pos­i­tive role model for them. Brit­tany is an excel­lent ambas­sador for Big Wal­nut High School and will truly be missed next year.”

In school, Brit­tany is active in National Honor Soci­ety in addi­tion to both the his­tory and Ger­man honor soci­eties. She is also involved in Sci­ence Olympiad, First Flight, the fel­low­ship of Chris­t­ian ath­letes, Big Broth­ers Big Sis­ters and is involved with the Buddy Walk for Down syn­drome in Colum­bus each year.

She is the recip­i­ent of the HOBY award, attended Buck­eye Girls State and received a stu­dent achieve­ment award from the cham­ber of commerce.

In addi­tion, Brit­tany helps with the Coun­cil for Older Adults’ Sum­mer Fest each year. She began help­ing with the event sev­eral years ago by clean­ing tables.

“Now I get to drive golf carts and do more impor­tant tasks,” she said.

After she attains her BSN, Brit­tany said she will see where school takes her.

“I am open to new expe­ri­ences,” she said.

In the mean­time, Brit­tany is in her fourth year of track run­ning both one– and two-mile races.

“Track really helped me a lot,” she said, as she will run her first half marathon on April 22. “Track will keep me healthy for life.”

With her senior year wind­ing down in the next cou­ple months, she will run her last few races and have both prom and grad­u­a­tion to look for­ward to.

“I think every girl looks for­ward to prom,” she said.

This sum­mer, Brit­tany will life­guard for a sec­ond year at the New Albany pool where she will prob­a­bly put in 40-hour work weeks. Col­lege will begin the week before her 18th birthday.

“So I get to be a big kid before I’m actu­ally a big kid,” she said with a laugh.

Brit­tany offers the fol­low­ing advice to others.

“Just smile,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been try­ing to tell myself with lots of stress­ful sit­u­a­tions. Smile and make the best of it.”

She laughed.

“Just ask any­one and they’ll say, ‘Bri always tells me to smile.’”

She added she never took the advice her­self until her braces came off dur­ing her sopho­more year.

Brit­tany is the daugh­ter of Laura Evans of Sunbury.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Mar 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.