Frank Baez
New York, NY — Frank Baez, who moved to New York from the Dominican Republic when he was a teenager, used to work at New York University’s Langone Tisch Hospital as a janitor. And from that same university, Frank continued his studies and just recently graduated with a nursing degree.
“I could barely speak English at the time when I started working at NYU,” Frank, who moved to the U.S. with his mother when he was 15-years old, told ABC News. “Now I reflect on it and I feel very proud of how much I accomplished.”
Frank started his first job at the University’s hospital where he cleaned patient rooms, bathrooms, and hallways to help support his family. Eventually, he became more interested in the medical field so he applied for a job as a patient transporter. He got accepted and began taking patients to and from their rooms for surgeries and tests.
Frank left the job when he decided to continue his bachelor’s degree at Hunter College, becoming the first person in his family to be able to graduate from college. Moreover, he always wanted to come back to NYU where he started.
“While working [at NYU] with the nurses, I realized I wanted to be one of them,” he said. “I learned how much they advocate for their patients and the passion they have for their job.”
With the encouragement of the nurses he previously worked with, Frank entered an accelerated program at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and he graduated with a nursing degree in just 15 months.
“Our program is extremely rigorous,” said Natalya Pasklinsky, director of simulation learning at the college of nursing. “Frank didn’t just kind of make the program, barely getting through. He flew through it with flying colors.”
Pasklinsky knew Frank ever since he started working at the hospital and she saw since then how thoughtful he is. She said, “The way he interacted with patients, to me showed a lot of compassion. In my mind, he’s a star. I think he’s going to be a fantastic nurse.”
Baez, who graduated with an outstanding 3.6 GPA, said he wanted to be a critical care nurse in an intensive care unit.
“I was never an A student. I just studied a lot and worked a lot. Of course there were times I doubted myself, but then I felt that I wanted to do something more for myself, that I deserved better, that I wanted to continue to move forward and grow and go on with my life. What I did was, I never gave up,” he said.