The Lady with the Lamp

The first 200 words of this essay...

"The Lady with the Lamp"

For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to devote my life to helping other people. It wasn't until my sophomore year in high school when I started to explore the many things I could do with my life that would provide great benefits to the world around me. During a course in which I was taught the basics of nursing, I learned about one woman who was very inspirational to me, her name was Florence Nightingale. The struggles in which Florence Nightingale had been through led up to such great accomplishments which motivated me to reach my goal to become a nurse.

Unlike many women of the 1800's Florence Nightingale was very educated and had a strong will to work (Ford). Nightingale's family had planned for her to marry and start a family in which she would live to take care of, but she had other plans of putting off marriage and working as a nurse (Ford). During the 1800's nurses tended to acquire "the reputation of being coarse, ignorant women, given to promiscuity and drunkenness (O'Conner)," but Nightingale paid no attention to the stereotypes. By the