Support Jenna's Journey to Fire School

Hey everyone! My name is Jenna and for those of you that know me closely, you know my story. For those of you that don’t, I'm going to give you the "condensed" version. My hope is that you will get to know me a bit and understand who I am, where I come from, and why I am, who I am.

When I was 4 years old, my dad (Marc) suffered from a heart attack and passed away. A year later, the doctors told us my mom (Jodie) has cancer. Over the next 13 years, my mom fought and fought. Right before I turned 19 (in 2020), she passed.

Life has been a constant up and down for my entire 22 years, but the last 4 years have definitely been the hardest. Those that know me closely know that I was lost and I fell into drinking and partying pretty hard. I had no idea who I was, who I wanted to be, or if I even wanted to stick around to find out.

Eventually, I leaned into the people that loved me and really started to listen. They told me I was in complete control of my life and my path. I have really thought about what they said in the last few months and realized how right they all are.

To the people who got me here, I will forever be thankful. I couldn't have done it without you.

With that being said, late last year I grew really tired of the way I was living my life. The bars, the benders, the wasting all of my time and money there, and working just to survive. I decided I needed to make some huge changes and take some control.

I grew close with some friends that had been telling me all about how they went to fire school and how much they loved it. Everything they were saying was flickering this lightbulb in my head (that I for the longest time, didn't think could be relit) I couldn't stop thinking about it. After about two months, I decided it was something I was really interested in for multiple reasons.

Since the beginning of this year, I have put myself on entirely different path following this goal. My mindset has changed, I have focused on going out less and getting my life together more. I've managed to re-teach myself self discipline and really grasped that idea of being in complete control of my future. (Pretty cool feeling!)

Currently, I work a restaurant job and the majority of my money is spent on my bills that total up to about $3000 a month. With my lifestyle changes, I was able to put a lot more money towards paying my bills on time. But unfortunately, I have very little wiggle room as of right now. I am about to go through an apartment transfer which is going to save me around $600 a month while I am in school, but it is also going to cost me around $3500 to move days before fire school is supposed to begin. After all is said and done, school will cost me around $3000. I was hesitant to even apply because I knew it would be impossible to come up with that kind of money in such a short amount of time even with my busy work schedule.

(I will not sit here and lie and say that I have completely refrained from enjoying time out with friends since the beginning of this year. But again, those that know me closely know just how much less it has been. I am still 22, and I give myself grace when it’s deserved and just let myself live my life. Just in a very different/more restricted way now.)

To sum it up, this is something that is really important to me and has already/will continue to change my life for the better. I want nothing more than to make myself, my family and friends, and my parents proud.

Uneasily, I am reaching out asking for help because I know I financially can’t make it happen by myself. If ya know me, if ya love me, I'm humbly sucking it up and finally asking for a hand with this new chapter of my life. Literally anything helps ❤️

Thank you for coming to my ted talk,

Love you all.