GRACIEMT: Senior Gracie Bergin plans on pursuing a career as a paramedic after taking EMS classes at the Career and Technical Campus

Her mind was set.

Then-freshman Gracie Bergin knew exactly what her plan was — to be a police officer. From the time she was little, she wanted to help people, she just didn’t know her desire to be an officer would change within a month. She decided being an officer wasn’t the right course for her after spending a unit covering law in her Blue Eagle Academy class.

This was a startling change for her. She had planned out an entire career that she didn’t even like. She began to panic.

But after learning about EMS — Emergency Medical Services — her mind was set, again. 

“I just fell in love with it. I loved it so much,” Bergin said. “I grew up with my mom in nursing school and all that. So she would study on the couch, and I would just sit there and watch it. So I feel like I’ve always wanted to do it, I just didn’t know.”

Bergin was in kindergarten when her mom, Jocelyn, started nursing school and worked as an intern. The daily hospital stories Jocelyn would come home with sparked Gracie’s interest.

Heart outlines and biological systems study guides would be spread across the floor while Jocelyn would prepare for her next test. She would talk aloud while Gracie observed, even making games to study the content.

Gracie knew the chambers of the heart in kindergarten. Her teacher laughed with her mom about it at parent-teacher conferences. The next year, her mom bought her a book about the human body. 

Jocelyn noticed a shift in passion after a paramedic had visited Gracie’s Blue Eagle Academy class, she now comes home every day with updates.

“The day that she came home, when she told me she was gonna switch to that field, I just saw in her eyes that she definitely had not only interest, but I knew that this was something that she’s actually going to stick with,” Jocelyn said.

Now as a senior, Gracie is in her fourth year studying at the Career and Technical Campus where she spends half of her school day exploring her interest through EMS classes.

Instead of scribbling down algebra notes, Gracie spent her junior year going through scenarios of addressing a patient’s needs. Spanning from learning the motions of handling an emergency to transporting a patient to the ambulance.

Ben Markway, Gracie’s teacher, was thrown into his role as EMS teacher with no teaching experience her freshman year. He’s been a mentor to his students, learning along with them.

“He’s given me a lot of advice about what to expect, especially as a woman,” Gracie said. “What to expect from the guys and you’re gonna have times where you don’t want to do it and where you don’t want to go to work and you’re gonna hate it, but, he’s like, if you’re passionate about it, you’ll stick with it.”

Markway describes Gracie as a perfectionist who strives to constantly do her best work, even taking over as a math tutor for her classmates from time-to-time after their work for the day is finished.

“She’s an extremely hard worker, and very specific and exact about what she does and how she’s presented,” Markway said. “She’s very meticulous and very, very sharp.”

This year, she has the opportunity to work at Advent Health where she’ll shadow an Emergency Room nurse and see the action up close such as triaging patients and stabilizing them.

Similarly, Gracie has shadowed at MedAct where she rode in a fire truck for a day along with a paramedic and firefighter. She was able to talk to patients and responded to ten emergency calls during the 12-hour shift.

Through her EMS classes, Gracie has discovered a new plan for her future — following behind her mom, this time set in stone, as a paramedic.