From Storyteller to Caregiver: One Alumna’s Journey to Her True Calling

Mallory Presho-Dunne is living proof that changing one’s career field just requires a little soul searching and a lot of hard work. Graduating from PLU’s Entry Level Master of Science in Nursing (ELMSN) program in 2020, she works as a nurse at Seattle Children’s Hospital, a job she says she was made for. But it wasn’t nursing that called to Presho-Dunne when she got her Bachelor of Arts from University of Oregon. In fact, it wasn’t even the sciences.

“I loved science, but I lacked the confidence to really do it well at that point,” the Seattle resident says. “I come from a whole family of English majors and teachers and writers, and that came naturally to me.” She graduated with a journalism degree and became a storyteller instead.

But she found the work unsatisfying and a little bit insecure. “It was during a huge shift in the industry when newspapers were going away, and I was feeling uneasy about the job market.” Not sure what to do, Presho- Dunne sought the help of a career coach.

“She helped me identify that I really loved working with kids,” Presho-Dunne says. “I taught swimming lessons when I was in high school and really enjoyed that.” That realization gave her the impetus to start volunteering at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “I found it fascinating and pursued every role the hospital had — except nursing,” she says. “I looked at occupational therapy, physical therapy, physicians assistants, nutritionists — I didn’t really want to do nursing at first.”

Still, she wanted to work with children. “I finally realized that the nurses are the ones who get to work with the kids, and spend time with them, helping them,” Presho-Dunne says. From that point, she set her sights on doing the prerequisites in the North Seattle College Consortium, in preparation for the GRE and then got accepted into PLU’s ELMSN program.

“I knew I was in the right place immediately because it was so much easier to study,” Presho-Dunne says. “I was fascinated with what we were learning. I enjoyed my bachelor’s program, but it was like pulling teeth to get me to do a lot of it.”

At PLU, things were different; she was excited to take the courses. With professors like Erla Champ-Gibson, Tracy Holt, and many others in the program, “…it felt like quite a testament to being where I needed to be,” she says. At PLU, Presho-Dunne said she also found a program that conformed to her needs. “For the first month of nursing school, I was driving back and forth between Seattle and Tacoma because I was taking finals in Seattle for my prerequisites, while also starting my lectures at PLU,” she says. “Most other schools wouldn’t have been so flexible and would have demanded I finish the prerequisites first, and then start the Master’s program. PLU worked with me on that, and it was really helpful.” As the pieces of her new calling began to fall into place, Champ-Gibson advocated for Presho-Dunne to fill the one practicum slot available to PLU nurses at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Her love of working with children and her PLU education helped her come full circle.

Graduating in 2020 right in the middle of Covid, Presho- Dunne found a couple of part-time nursing positions, including a job as a school nurse at Bear Creek School in Redmond, which she loved so much that she still works there one day a week. Most of the hospitals, including Seattle Children’s, imposed a hiring freeze because they weren’t seeing as many patients. When hiring picked back up at Seattle Children’s Hospital, she knew it was her chance. It was where she’d always wanted to be — and, as she put it, where she had “stuck it out” through the toughest stretches of the Covid pandemic.

Now, in her role in an organ transplant unit as well as in the hospital’s research clinic, Presho-Dunne says she sees the truly low lows of kids, like waiting up to two years for something life-giving, like a heart transplant. “But when you finally see them get a heart donation, it brings you to tears. I have chills talking about it. It makes the highs that much higher,” she says. For this one-time journalist, now professional nurse, the hard work was worth it.