Kami Ketchen
Kami is a 40 year old, single mother of two sons. She has raised her boys, Connor, 17, and Jaret, 12, as a single mother since 2005. They moved to Greenville in July 2005 from Champaign, IL. After Kami's divorce, she basically started over from scratch; new house, new school for the boys, daycare, a new job and basically an entire new life.
Kami accepted a customer service position at a local bank in August 2005. She figured this would be a temporary position until she could find something better or could be able to save enough money to go back to school. Little did she know that life would get in the way, and she would work there until August 2013. She had applied for several different jobs while working at the bank, but none of them panned out. After each disappointment, she told herself she would finally go back to school. As a single mother of two small boys, that is sometimes easier said than done. She needed to tough it out until they were old enough for her to be able to do that.
Finally, after working at the bank seven years and not being able to find a better paying job locally, she decided that she would finally pursue her dream of becoming an RN.
Kami enrolled in a biology course in January 2012. She slowly started taking a few pre-requisite classes each semester. She would normally take the classes online so she could work during the day and do her school work after she had put the boys to bed. She did this for a year and a half until she was able to apply to the RN program at Kaskaskia College. She was accepted and began classes August 19, 2013.
The nursing program was probably one of the toughest things that she had ever done. She was older than most of the other students, and she might not studied as much as she would have liked, but she promised herself she was not going to let school interfere with being involved with the boys and their school and outside activities. So it was definitely a juggling act between school, work, running a household and being a single mother, but she would not change any of it as it has made her the person that she is today.
She graduated with her Associate Degree in Nursing on May 15th, 2015. She also was a member of Alpha Delta Nu, which is the Nursing Honor Society for Associate Degree Nurses. She passed her State boards on the very first try and is currently working at Greenville Regional Hospital as an RN. She has expressed a special thank-you to our agency as she has indicated that without our tuition assistance, she would not be where she is today. She does plan on continuing on with her education in the near future, working on her BSN.
We wish her the very best of luck with her future educational endeavors and her nursing career.