Ajayi surpasses even her own expectations
By Deborah Lilly
Sometimes Donna Ajayi is surprised by where she is in life. She has come a long way from her childhood home in rural Mississippi. An MSN-MBA student, she never expected to earn a bachelor’s degree let alone go to graduate school. “I’ve never considered myself a studious person,” she says. But she makes up for it in hard work, and if she ever falters, she has a strong family to lean upon.
Ajayi was introduced to the health sciences through an Indianapolis magnet high school program. By 16, she was a CNA, working at a nursing home in the mornings and taking high school classes in the afternoon.
“I’ve never thought of being anything else but a nurse,” says Ajayi. “I really feel like it is my calling.”
Ajayi was the first person in her family to go to college. Her stepfather, Charles, always made sure she was on top of her schoolwork in high school. Six days after she graduated, she was on the Indiana University campus taking classes. After earning her bachelor’s degree, she did her clinicals in Gary, Ind. It was the last place Ajayi wanted to go at the time, but she says now, it was the best place for her to be.
“I saw things there that I don’t think I’ll ever see any place else,” she explains. “If I had stayed in Indianapolis, I wouldn’t have gotten the experience I did in Gary. After my time there, I felt like I could work any place.”
Ajayi was only committed to spend two years in Gary, but she stayed for six. Then she returned to Indianapolis.
Today she is working at Adept and earning her MSN-MBA from Anderson University. Adept provides services for individuals with developmental disabilities. She came to the organization nine years ago after working in cardiac care in an Indianapolis hospital.
“I struggled leaving the hospital because I felt like a nurse was supposed to be at the bedside,” she says. But another supervising nurse at the hospital pointed out that nursing has many facets, and cardiac nurses would always be needed if she wanted to come back.
Ajayi’s most exciting experience in the MSN-MBA program was her trip to Russia last spring for the Diversity in Health Care class. She went there to immerse herself in the culture, visiting a remote village and hospitals over the course of 19 days. She traveled to Russia with an AU group of undergraduate nursing students but had to navigate part of her trip on her own.
“That frightened me to death,” admits Ajayi, who was spending her first time outside of North America. “But people there were glad to see me, and it was fine.”
In fact, the Russians were so taken with Ajayi because of the color of her skin that she was often stopped for photographs. Paula Boley, the coordinator of the trip and director of the MSN-MBA program, worried that this extra attention would upset Ajayi, but it didn’t. By the time Ajayi returned home, she was interviewed by three Russian television stations, one newspaper, and one radio station.
What Ajayi valued most from the experience was what may have frustrated her the most: the language barrier. She now says she can better empathize with non-English-speaking patients who come into the hospital and cannot convey their pain and their fear.
Ajayi will graduate from the MSN-MBA program in May 2010. “It’s really gone by fast,” she says. She has struggled with her business classes but found them all valuable, and she has loved her nursing classes, which have continued to build upon her experience. She plans to work at Adept after graduation unless God has other plans for her life. “I love my job,” she says, “and I have a great team of nurses working for me.”
