My career goal is to be a K-12 district art teacher. I'm working on my career, I have a A.S. degree in Art and a B.S. degree in Art Ed. I believe the road will be slow for me and challenging, but I take it one step at a time. I worked as a teachers aide with Pre-K students for 2 yrs, and now I'm a substitute teacher and substitute aide at various school districts. I slowly get the districts attention on how reliable and hardworking I am and then I applied for a full time district job as a district aide. I was so close of the district hiring me since they were training me.Then this coronavirus pandemic happened and now the district hiring process is delayed to next school year.

My Epilepsy has certainly altered what I’d planned for my career. I have a Bachelors and Masters in Social Work. However, I am unable to successfully pass the licensure exam because of my inability remember anything! I struggled with time constraints. I also had my doctor write accommodations. Still unemployed! The interview process is the worst part because I have brain fog after so many questions! I never get past the interview!

I’m a Sunday school teacher and I realized epilepsy will help me in youth ministry. So I’m going to college for that. I was going to be a kindergarten teacher.

Many times I worked a lot of jobs that I was laid off from or had episodes that changed my plans on career paths. I went to college to start and got my degrees in criminal justice and corrections and after passing all the testing and waiting for placement I worked as a welder in and out of the auto industry and my sezuires got so bad and out of control I had to quit everything and wait till they got them under control by that time my window had passed to join the criminal justice system and going back to any other of my jobs or plans I had was out of the question as I was put on disability.

I got my diagnosis in fall of 2017, had to delay my graduation to spring of 2018, passed the exam and became officially a nurse in october 2018 and got ill again on october 29th of 2018.... will be starting work again next monday after a second diagnosis which is that psychogenic seizures are added to my epileptic seizures ! After a lot of work and ups and downs... I am so proud to be able to say that it is possible... I am proud to say that I will be a working functionnal nurse with 2 types of seizures, a neurologic type and a psychiatric type and it won't ever stop me from being me even when my body or my brain get overwhelmed... don't ever think it is impossible. You can still dream with ir without epilepsy 💜 and your wirk doesn't define you, you do.