During his time at °ÅÀÖÊÓƵ College, Joshua Wethli ’06 majored in nursing with the hope of working in the field of healthcare. He was fond of close interaction with people, the breadth of opportunities, and of traveling abroad—all which would require essential skills from nursing. Now, after 10 years, Wethli is a nurse practitioner working at Aspire Urgent Care and Family Practice and simultaneously teaching as adjunct faculty at °ÅÀÖÊÓƵ College. Wethli said he likes both the feel of a small office and the relationships he can develop between his co-workers and patients. “There’s a lot of diversity in the roles I can pursue—hospitalist, outpatient, teaching and specialist practices—and I meet people I would never have a chance to meet,” said Wethli. “I have the opportunity to hear people’s stories and walk with them during a small piece of that story.” Yet, the field of nursing is not an easy and smooth path to walk. Besides hardships in terms of work shifts and a cumbersome workload, being a male nurse practitioner also means encountering social challenges regarding gender expectations. Wethli said, however, that he doesn’t take into account if people are concerned about his gender or his profession, because he feels like he knows what he is doing and knows when to ask for help. “I learned early on that I can’t control what other people think of me—if I’m too young, I’m the wrong gender, I went to the wrong school, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a nurse,” said Wethli. “But I see it as: I am the age I am. I am the gender I am. And I pursued the career the way I did because it made sense for me at the time.” Wethli remembers well what it was like when he was a student. Because of that, he decided to return to teach at °ÅÀÖÊÓƵ to pursue his love of teaching and sharing things with other people. “During 2013-2014, I taught nursing classes in a rural part of Nepal and I learned a lot from the students while I was there,” said Wethli. “People learn better when exposed to what they’re reading in books, like service learning, so nursing clinical can provide an opportunity to put a face to different diagnoses and solidify what they heard in a lecture hall.” In giving advice for prospective and current students, Wethli said that students can use different skills they learn in any major, and for him, nursing just happens to be the best one. “You don’t have to know what you want to do when you grow up,” said Wethli. “But it is helpful to know what skills you want to possess and what types of interactions you want to have with people. “ My Nguyen ‘17