If working 12-hour shifts in a long-term care facility during a pandemic showed Raevyn Goodson ’23 one thing, it’s that stress is all relative.
“You just have to try not to be stressed in the moment,” says Raevyn. “[Your patients] are way more stressed than you are.”
During high school in her small hometown of Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 8,477), Raevyn became an emergency trauma technician and then completed clinical work to become a certified nurse assistant (CNA).
“When I got to see the real thing as far as what CNAs do, it was so different from what we see in the books and learn about in videos. I kind of fell in love,” she says.
That love brought her 3,000 miles from home to Ithaca College, where she could pursue IC’s pre-health professions major. To meet the rigor of the program, she realized she had to boost her study skills and found friends who helped. Raevyn was just settling into her new home when the COVID-19 pandemic sent her back to Alaska for remote classes. She used the sudden change to put her education to work, obtaining a position at a long-term care facility.
