Samantha Tanner

My name is Samantha Tanner, I'm 17 years old and am from Calhoun County WV, but originally from Clay County WV. My family and I moved here a little over 2 years ago and we love the community and various opportunities that Calhoun County has to offer to everyone. While in high school I have been heavily involved in my school. From being in varsity cheerleading, cross country, and track & field, to being an FFA officer for my school's chapter for 2 years until I decided to retire in FFA to heavily focus on my grades though I still do all that I can to support my school's agriculture program. I have always admired the health care field for all of the admirable things they do daily, especially saving lives- that always captured my eyes and more importantly my heart. I've teetered between becoming a neurologist, a nurse, an in-home health aid, and an M.D. But, after my experience at the Calhoun-Gilmer Career Center in their nursing lab, I fell in love with the nursing profession. My instructor, Ms. Ronda Williams, an RN of many years and named one of the top nurses in the state of West Virginia, shown my class and me how important nurses truly are. With there being a national shortage of nurses that caught my attention and shown me that, that is where I knew I belonged. Now that I am pretty well a senior in high school I realized that I needed to start looking into colleges. Ever since I found my passion for track & field I knew that I didn't want it to stop after my senior year. I wanted more than a few years, I wanted four more so I did all that I could to try and stretch out my athletic years. I signed up for NCSA to try and be recruited. A few months went by and I never heard anything so I thought maybe that I wasn't good enough or maybe I wasn't doing something right, so I put in more work, made my times and distances better so that I could update everything on my profile to hopefully reach at least 1 college. 1 college was my goal. Another month or so went by and I still had no responses until just a month ago. I got an email from Shenandoah University in Virginia, then one turned to two, two turned to three, then they just kept coming in. I was utterly shocked yet so thankful. After reviewing all of my emails and doing hours upon hours of research I set my heart on going to Shenandoah University. Just recently I had a ZOOM meeting with a few of their coaches and current team members and after discussing my times and distances they invited me to begin my recruiting process in August and I couldn't be happier nor more thankful than I am to this day.