7th Grade, 4th Place Florence Nightingale

Shortly after receiving Tiffanie's essay, I was visiting the crypt at St. Pauls Cathedral in London, where there is a beautiful memorial to Florence Nightingale. As I pondered the memorial, I thought back to Tiffanie's well-research and written and essay, and I hoped Tiffanie would one day get to visit her idol's home country. Follow your dreams Tiffanie, and see where they take you. Be true to yourself and don't ever, ever let anyone tell you that you "can't". Kylie

Tiffanie
Snowcrest Jr. High
Grade 7

“Lady With The Lamp”

If I could meet anyone in the world, from any country, during any time period, it would be Florence Nightingale. I would like to meet this women because she was caring enough to care for injured solders, even though she didn’t have to. She was also a pioneer for the nursing profession.

Florence was born into a rich family on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. Her parents named her after the town she was born in. Her parents were William Nightingale and Frances Nightingale. Florence believed that God had called her to become a nurse. Her mother and her sister were very frustrated with Florence’s decision to become a nurse. Florence had rebelled against what was expected of a women, which was to become a wife and a mother.

Florence had to stand up for herself in order to educate herself. This must have been hard for her, because her family was not happy with her. I look up to Florence because she had to have courage to stand up for what she believed in and thought was important. I admire that she had that strength to take charge of her own decisions!

I would want Florence to feel comfortable so I would insist that we meet at one of the hospitals that she worked or learned at. One of the places she actually managed to work at some private nursing was a German school and hospital, called Kaiserworth. Florence had gotten permission from her parents to spend some time at Keiserworth, a training school and hospital for nurses and female teachers. I think she would feel comfortable here because she had spent a couple of months at Keiserworth, so Florence would already be familiar with the place we were to meet.

The first question I would want to ask Florence is how she found the courage to help all the people she did. Like I said before, Florence was a women and it was not likely that you would find many women nurses. Florence became nicked named “The Lady With a Lamp”, She did this by caring for all of her patients enough to go out in the middle of the night to check each and every one of them. Most all of the other doctors didn’t care enough to do that. By the beginning of the 20th century They established that she had reduce the death rate from 42% all the way down to 2%.

“Florence was it hard hearing all of the criticism from every body that you weren’t good enough, that you were just a women.” I would say. I bet that Florence would answer saying something like, “Tiffanie That’s just it, I am just a women, a women that is much more than everybody thinks.”

I would like Florence Nightingale to know how her life, or how one of her decisions changed history. Learning about Florence Nightingale’s life has influenced me to stand up for what I believe in and everything that is important to my life. All of he life se was put down by almost every body. Women were supposed to stay home and become mothers, wife’s and raise families. Those are all important for women to do but women are much more than that.

In school we are learning about uncommon jobs, like for a women to become a mechanic or a man being a hairstylist. I believe anything is possible and anything you believe can be possible, or in other words nothing is impossible! All of these things I have learned from Florence Nightingale and I hope her life inspires you as much as mine!