Savannah Brewer, Patient Advocate and Scholarship Winner

Try, Try Again

A rising senior at the University of Texas at Tyler, Savannah Brewer is set for success. When she isn’t working hard to advocate for minority patients as a nurse extern for Christus Hospital, she’s careful to evenly balance her time between her studies and her own wellbeing— a task much aided by the full-tuition scholarship she’s earned with the help of Scholarships.com. Just a few short years ago, though, Brewer’s future was not at all certain.

It was the very beginning of her freshman year of high school when Brewer was first hospitalized. Her symptoms were mysterious, without any clear connection between them to indicate a cause; she was terrified. But her doctors didn’t take her seriously. Brewer was sent home without treatment. The care team’s conclusion? Teenage angst.

“A lot of doctors yelled at my parents,” Brewer said, recalling her providers’ frustration with her insistence that something was really wrong. “But eventually, after months of being in and out of the hospital, a nurse advocated for me.”

For the first time, a medical provider believed Brewer that her experience was not psychosomatic, not anxiety, not depression. The nurse connected the dots the rest of Brewer’s providers had written off: all the symptoms, however different they appeared, were connected. She had postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), an underdiagnosed heart condition that disproportionately impacts women.

“That nurse changed the way I saw healthcare,” she said. “Since that nurse advocated for me, I’ve been able to do the right interventions to help combat my condition… so it was definitely a goal of mine to start patient advocacy in whatever work I did.”

Brewer made the official decision to pursue a nursing career during her senior year of high school. She knew a medical education would be costly, and she worried that, having waited so long, she’d missed out on all the scholarship opportunities to fund it. That’s when she found Scholarships.com.

“I was very fixated on being debt-free, and luckily, I’ve been able to attain that with the help of Scholarships.com."

“I like how it just lined out the due date, what you needed to do, and the link to the application right there,” said Brewer, “because a lot of websites are chaotic with that. The organization was really nice.”

Thanks to Scholarships.com, Brewer was able to balance her academics, a job shadowing experience with a cardiologist, and her scholarship applications all at the same time. Her school days consisted of seven class periods; she applied to a different scholarship during each one, every day from September to November, undeterred by every rejection.

In April, Brewer’s first big win came through: a renewable $10,000 scholarship to help pay for her education through the Taco Bell foundation, which she discovered on Scholarships.com. She also won some local scholarships, and while they weren’t huge, they piled up. By the time Brewer graduated from high school, she’d made a significant dent in her college tuition; she would still need to take out student loans to cover the rest, but it was a relief to minimize them.

Then, just one week before beginning college, Brewer’s phone rang while she was working a shift at a local fast-food restaurant. It was the Texas Leadership Scholarship Committee, who had denied Brewer a full-tuition grant earlier that year.

“I went to the back of my store and I just sobbed,” she said, “because they told me that all of my tuition would be paid for. I couldn’t stop sobbing.”

The timing was uncanny. A spot had opened up in the Texas Leadership Scholars program just days before Brewer would begin college, ready to take out student loans to pay for it. Because she made the effort to apply even though the scholarship was highly selective, she remained on the program’s radar after they hit their maximum capacity; her perseverance in the face of rejection led to a full-tuition scholarship at the last possible moment.

“It felt like the world was lifted off my shoulders,” said Brewer, now thriving at UT Tyler as she approaches her final year of undergrad. “I was very fixated on being debt-free, and luckily, I’ve been able to attain that with the help of Scholarships.com.”

With the award money she’s earned, Brewer does not need to work a full-time job while in college. Instead, she’s picked up part-time work to gain experience in nursing and a bit of extra money to save.

“I went to the back of my store and I just sobbed,” she said, “because they told me that all of my tuition would be paid for. I couldn’t stop sobbing.”

“Balancing all that is still a lot, but I don’t have to have this job to stay afloat,” she said. She works because she enjoys getting to advocate for her patients like her own nurse did for her; her scholarship money has allowed her to do so without the pressure of student debt stressing her out on the side. She manages her time outside of work and school effectively, too.

“I’ve had a lot more time to go to campus events or just spend time with friends and family. In high school, I did not slow down,” Brewer said, “and in college I learned that it is okay to slow down. It is okay to have a good connection with friends and family and to take care of yourself without working an excessive amount of hours every week.”

Now, with a healthy school-work-life balance and her dream career nearing on the horizon, Brewer is thankful for the opportunities she discovered with Scholarships.com. Though her success is well-earned, she remains amazed by her own achievement.

“The fact that so many organizations believe in me blows my mind,” she said, advising other students not to allow impostor syndrome to stop them from following their dreams.

“Keep going,” said Brewer. “It pays off. Literally.”

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