“I was so excited. I thought UMHB looked like a really great school,” she said. “But then I started getting really scared when I saw the cost.”
She visited anyway, and she fell in love with the campus. “Everyone was so nice to me. It was just amazing. I remember thinking, ‘I really love this school,’” she said. “So, I started praying for it to work out.”
She turned in the application and waited. Just days later, she heard back from UMHB that she would receive enough scholarship money to pay her first year of college. God had provided! Brittany was elated!
“I was honestly blown away!” recalled Brittany, who is now a senior nursing major preparing to graduate in May. “I just started crying.”
Brittany did so well in her classes that year, she was selected to receive additional financial aid and merit-based scholarships, including the largest and most prestigious nursing scholarship available to students.
“It has been such a huge blessing to have that kind of financial support,” she said. “It is so amazing to me that people give money so that people like me can be here.”
Brittany said she had always been strong in her faith, but seeing God provide for her and her brothers just strengthened her relationship with Him.
“Anything that’s been a roadblock in life, He’s just pulled me through,” she said. “I knew there was no way I could make going to college work on my own. So, I just began praying, ‘Lord, you know where you need me to be. If UMHB is where I’m supposed to be, I know you’ll make it happen.’”
Her four years at UMHB have been amazing, she said.
“I’ve had the best professors, who have literally sat and prayed with me and poured words of encouragement over me. If I wasn’t in class one day, they would send me a text message or email and ask if everything was OK. Not many students at other schools can say that! The support of those professors has been a huge part of what makes UMHB so amazing.”
She says she has made the best friends and connections and has grown in her faith. While keeping a near-perfect 3.9 grade point average, she has also been involved in numerous activities, including the Easter Pageant and First Year Collective. This year, she is a part of the Nursing Student Association and Alpha Chi, a national college honor scholarship society. She is also co-president of Student Foundation with Gilda Tchao and serves on the school of nursing program evaluation committee.
Having worked part-time as a nurse tech at Baylor Scott & White in Temple the last couple of years, Brittany says she was able to get hands-on experience in many different specialties at the hospital, including the COVID-19 units.
She has some big plans after she graduates, including hopefully using her nursing skills on medical mission trips around the world, serving as a nurse aboard a floating hospital ship with MercyShips, and working in either a neonatal or pediatric intensive care unit.
“At one point, I had thought about being a surgeon, but I realized I really love the patient care aspect of nursing,” she said. “I like being physically, mentally, and emotionally present with the patients and helping them through whatever they’re going through and caring for them as a whole person.”
