Class of 2019 Graduate Speaks to Hillside Students About Life as a Medic in the Army Reserves

Nicole Loayza, a former Hillside student, recently returned to her old stomping grounds to speak with current students about her life’s path since graduating.

Loayza’s visit was part of a regular series of talks that Fox Lane High School job coach Marianna Agunzo coordinates at the school in an effort to bring in people from different professions to speak with students and talk to them about all kinds of jobs.

“It gives students the chance to learn about a profession they might not get a chance to experience,” Agunzo said. “We hope it helps them figure out what they might like to pursue. Sometimes they find out they like something they didn’t expect to.”

Loayza’s journey really started in high school, when she attended BOCES.

“I’ve always been interested in the medical field,” she said. “I went to BOCES to get my medical assistant’s license.”

After high school, she went to Westchester Community College for two years, but she felt lost. It was then that she decided to join the Army Reserves.

“In the army, I got my Emergency Medical Technician’s license,” Loayza told an attentive audience. “Right now, I’m a medical assistant at Optum, just waiting to see if I get called again.”

A reservist for three years, Loayza goes to drills every month and uses skills from the army every day at work, including things like suturing, splinting, dressing burns and administering IVs.

Students had a lot of questions for her.

What’s the difference between active and reserves?

Did you have to learn how to work in panic situations?

What’s one of the craziest experiences you’ve had?

Did you have to do torture trainings?

Loayza touched on all of it, telling the students that, coming from a military family, she has always wanted to be in the army. She went to basic training in Oklahoma.

“People think basic training is physically hard, but it’s more mentally hard,” she said. “You have zero contact with the outside world except for on Sundays. They’re going to break you to make you a soldier.”

She noted that the hardest thing she did during basic training was getting over her fear of heights.

After basic, she was stationed overseas for a while, an experience she talks about with fondness.

“It was pretty awesome,” she said.

She was the only female medic there and told students about the tiny room she lived in inside a shipping container. She wrote letters to her family, something which the students thought was really cool, since it was “like the old days.”

Students also laughed at the irony of what her favorite and least favorite parts of deployment were.

“My least favorite part was being away from my family,” she said. “My favorite part was being overseas.”

She loved being able to visit new places, but there were also experiences that were much less fun. Still, Loayza plans to reenlist when her time is up in two years, and she was quick to tell students about the incredible benefits of being in the military.

“After 90 days of active duty, you can get a VA loan to buy a house,” she said. “You get so many benefits. They even pay for your education.”