After working a 12-hour night shift, Jazmine Jenkins headed to Memorial Health in Savannah, Georgia, to complete her round of clinical rotation for the day. From 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., she would prepare patients for various imaging procedures and attend to their needs.
All the while, the phrase, “Give me 18 months, and I’ll give you a lifetime,” from her faculty mentor, Rochelle Lee, Ed.D., in the radiologic sciences program at Georgia Southern University, helped her push through the exhaustion.
Her endurance paid off this spring as she crossed the commencement stage to earn her bachelor’s in radiologic sciences with a concentration in nuclear medicine.
“Dr. Rochelle Lee helped me a lot,” Jenkins said. “I would definitely say that my love for nuclear medicine stemmed from her.”
Jenkins also credits Lee with investing in her and her classmates.
“Nuclear medicine is a very small program, so my class was only seven people,” Jenkins said. “Dr. Lee really took time out to get to know each and every one of us. She’s a really concerned, loving professor. She helped me a lot.”
Jenkins’ degree path wasn’t always clear. Instead, trial, error and determination guided her steps along the way.
She began her journey studying early childhood education at Albany Technical College in her hometown of Albany, Georgia, before transferring to Georgia Southern in 2020.
“A lot of the classes I took didn’t transfer to Georgia Southern when I started here in 2020,” she said. “It felt like starting over.”
Navigating a new university far from home was at times a struggle for Jenkins as a first-generation college student who had to learn how to balance studying, working long shifts and staying connected with her family several hours away.
“It was a bit difficult because your family may call while you’re studying and you just don’t know how to tell them you’re very busy because they never experienced that,” she said. “I had to tell them I needed to study and I cut out part of my social life. After a while, it became very exhausting.”
But Jenkins was intent on following her dreams of working in health care. Inspired by her mother’s pregnancies with her younger sisters, Jenkins enjoyed the atmosphere of doctors’ offices and wanted to become an ultrasound technologist.
Once at Georgia Southern, she began studying nursing, but it didn’t feel like the right fit. She then pivoted to exercise science, hoping that would better align with her interests.
She soon found something was still missing.
“I wanted to change from exercise science, but I was just so lost, so I stuck with it,” she said. “I knew I wanted to pursue ultrasound technology. That ultimately led me to radiologic sciences.”
When she didn’t get into the sonography program, her professors and advisors encouraged her to pursue other options.
“They gave me the option between nuclear medicine and radiation therapy, and that’s when I ended up choosing nuclear medicine,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about it at all, I just decided to give it a try.”
Jenkins admits she wasn’t excited about nuclear medicine at first.
“I was really stuck on becoming an ultrasound technologist,” she said. “But I had come far enough and just wanted to do something at that point, and that’s when I reached out to Dr. Lee.”
Navigating changes in coursework didn’t come without its share of challenges for Jenkins, who also commuted and worked a nearly full-time job while studying and participating in clinicals.
“‘How did I balance it?’ That’s a great question,” she said with a laugh. “For the most part, I just never thought about it. People did ask me, ‘How do you do it?’ And I could never tell them about it, you just have to do it.”
For Jenkins, the ultimate goal of having financial freedom and being a mentor for her younger sisters contributed to her resolve to finish her degree.
“I really wanted to move out of the state,” she said. “My mom encouraged me all through college to get through it and said, ‘You’ll be able to live the lifestyle that you want. That mindset helped me keep going.”
Even though the path wasn’t always clear, Jenkins can look back and appreciate the experiences.
“The core classes I took while planning to join the nursing and exercise science programs tied very closely,” she said. “Psychology taught me about how the mind works, and my pre-nursing, like human anatomy, helped a lot. Once I joined the radiologic sciences program, it felt like I hit the ground running, and all that knowledge helped me. I even took more classes than I should’ve because of the change of majors; however, each class I took, I don’t regret because it has made me a better radiologic student.”
Spiritually grounded, Jenkins also found peace and strength through her faith.
“When I came to Savannah, I found a church home,” she said. “That helped me be more positive, knowing that God had my back in every room I stepped into.”
As she prepares to enter the workforce for a career in nuclear medicine in Richmond, Virginia, this June, Jenkins isn’t done dreaming. She still feels pulled toward maternal and infant health and knows her journey will continue.
“In the medical field, you can’t know everything at one time,” she said. “It’s an ongoing journey of learning. You never stop learning.”