My brother Robert was born on Jan. 18, 2000, and at 10 years old, I cut my first umbilical cord. Ever since that moment, I’ve known that I am destined to deliver babies. I want to empower women to give birth on their own terms, and share in the experience with them.

In middle school I started thinking more about my future career and was introduced to the idea of nurse-midwifery. The more I learned about midwifery, the more I knew that it was the right path for me. I was fascinated with the idea of letting women deliver their babies into a loving, supportive environment, free of drugs and doctors hustling around anxiously (and often impatiently) waiting for babies to arrive.

Once I began to research the process required to become a nurse-midwife, I realized that it would take a lot of hard work and schooling. I knew early on that I wanted to go to UW-Madison to receive my Bachelor’s degree. However, one Sunday afternoon I logged onto the UW-Madison’s Web site and found that I had been rejected. Heartbroken, I remember thinking, “What am I going to do with my life?”

I knew I wanted to stay in Madison, so I grudgingly enrolled in classes at MATC (Madison Area Technical College). Skeptical of the education I would receive there, I wasn’t very happy walking into the building my first day. But after I got into the building, my entire viewpoint changed. I found myself in classes with amazing professors and smart, dedicated students.

MATC turned out to be the perfect place for me to receive my first two years of college education. I still wanted to be a midwife, and still wanted to go to UW-Madison, so I applied to the nursing program for the fall semester of 2009. The day I sent off my application, I think I had elephants, not butterflies in my stomach.

Today, I am a UW-Madison nursing student, and my dream is coming true. I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have been accepted. I have fallen in love with nursing even more through my fight to become one. I have tremendous respect for the profession, and the amazingly talented and intelligent people that call themselves nurses. Nursing school so far has been a little intimidating – often I wonder, “How will I ever learn enough in these next two years to become a good nurse?”

On our second day of orientation, the dean of nursing, Katharyn May, gave the new nursing students an inspiring speech. She reminded us the importance of being professionals, of making sure people take us seriously in the medical field, because nurses are an essential part of the health care team. I will never forget her speech, and how proud I felt to be a nursing student.

I don’t know how the next two years will be, but if they are anything like the last three weeks then they will be exciting, scary, busy, filled with early mornings, and unforgettable.

Amanda McPherson is a nursing major at UW-Madison.