When Haily Barnes’ great-grandmother was receiving hospice care, she was moved by watching those who provided her care in those last days.
“The way that those nurses took care of her, the kindness that they showed her—they treated her like a person—more than a room number or a patient,” recalls Barnes, who was about seven years old at the time. “They really took care of her and us. I just remember sitting in her hospital room and just thinking, ‘I have to do this.’”
When Barnes started looking into nursing programs, she knew she wanted to study in a place compatible with her Christian faith. Then she discovered Anderson University.
“Honestly, I was looking for a school that was theologically on point, and in the south as well,” Barnes said. “I really just wanted that solid Christian worldview going into nursing, and I knew the Anderson could provide that for me. And they really have.”
Coming to Anderson would also mean crossing the U.S. for Barnes, who is from Bakersfield, located in California’s Central Valley.
The thought of coming to South Carolina was filled with unknowns for Barnes and her family, but phone conversations with Robin Roberts, assistant registrar for transfer credit and undergraduate academic advising support, along with the School of Nursing at Anderson University were reassuring as she was getting ready to start her freshman year.
To be sure, there were a lot of moving parts, not the least of which were the many personal belongings she wouldn’t be able to carry onto a plane to come east. She and her parents kept in touch with Roberts, as well as Anderson University Director of Postal Operations Scott Taylor to help sort things out in preparation for coming to AU.
Taylor remembers when he first met Barnes and her parents, arriving in a rental car at the campus post office’s loading dock.
Taylor greeted Barnes, saying, “You’re my favorite freshman.”
Quizzically, she asked “Why is that?”
In a humorous tone, Taylor responded, “Because you’re the first one to pick up all your packages.”
Not long into the first semester, Barnes emailed Taylor asking if he had a position for her at the post office. Taylor responded that he did. Looking back, he feels Barnes has been a good hire, and nearly four years later continues to cheerfully pass on care packages and other items from home to students, among her other postal duties.
“What’s so neat about her is just her heart—number one, because of her love for Jesus, which makes her have a good work ethic, just the way she treats people,” Taylor said. “She deals with my cash drawer… and I don’t have to worry if she’s making change or whatever she’s doing. She’s pleasant to the students and faculty and staff, and, just the way she treats people, just how friendly and outgoing her personality is.”
About Taylor, Barnes said, “He’s so kind and so supportive. I’ll be working and say to him, ‘I have a test coming up. He’ll tell me, ‘School is more important than your job.’ It’s great to have people who are understanding that are around you, who’ll go the extra mile.”
Barnes also feels that Roberts went that extra mile to help her settle in, even measuring a dorm room for her.
Four years later, as Barnes prepares to graduate this December, she can’t imagine ever going anyplace else. She’s made a lot of great memories at Anderson. She loves to do photography of all kinds, but especially loves portrait photography. No doubt she will return home with thousands of photos to remember her Anderson friends by.
“I love hanging out with the people. Sometimes my friends and I will have movie nights, and that’s something super sweet and just simple,” she said, adding that Roberts gave her a place to stay for a night or more after Hurricane Helene and also a recent ice storm.
And she can’t say enough about her professors.
“Every single professor that I’ve had has been so incredibly supportive, which I think differs from other nursing programs… Our professors are more like, ‘yeah, it’s gonna be hard, but we’ve all been there and we want you to succeed,’ so they give us all the tools to succeed,” Barnes said. “They genuinely care about each and every student. It’s not like they’re just teaching a class. They’re teaching students that they care about providing real life situations and real information that we can use.”
Barnes appreciates real-world hospital nursing experiences in partnership with AnMed and Prisma. She has worked at clinicals for Hope Missions, helping homeless individuals with simple things like foot care, helping them seek medical attention if needed and being a listening ear. She also was impacted by a service learning project hosted by Family Promise of Anderson—a homeless simulation, where she literally spent the night outdoors in a makeshift cardboard shelter, sacrificing personal comforts to get a feel for the everyday realities of people living on the streets. A fun experience for Barnes has been working with the Rainbow Gang in their day program, doing life with those who have various disabilities.
Her career plans after graduation are to return home to California to pursue a nursing career there.
“I’m currently applying for nurse residencies back at home,” Barnes said, wanting to be close to her family. “Hopefully I’ll be working somewhere in pediatrics, if I’m not, that’s totally okay. I love anything and everything nursing, I just would like adore a pediatrics job. We’ll see what happens. I’m still, still working on it, praying about it.”