The family business
Krystian and Kinsley were born in Elk Grove, California. The family, which also includes older sister, Jheryssa, and younger brother, Kieyan, lived throughout the state before moving to Bakersfield in 2016. Krystian graduated from Clovis North High School in Fresno in 2016 and Kinsley graduated from Frontier High School in 2018.
Krystian was the first to enroll at CSUB, following a year at UC Riverside, and his brother joined him at CSUB a year later. Krystian is finishing his education with a job as an intensive care unit nurse at Adventist Health already lined up. Kinsley will attend a few more courses on campus in the next year to prepare him to take the Medical College Admission Test and hopes to attend med school next year.
Health care is a family affair for the Florentinos: their father, an Air Force veteran, is a nurse anesthetist, and their mother attended nursing school before deciding to stay home with the children. Jheryssa is an ICU nurse at Memorial Hospital and Kieyan will be transferring to CSUB from Bakersfield College in the fall with hopes of entering the nursing program.
“Growing up, our parents definitely encouraged us to go into a profession that would give us a stable life after college, and having both of them within the medical field, they really encouraged us to go into nursing because they had a lot of experience with it,” Krystian said of their parents. “Now that we are older, we've definitely seen the value of health care and the importance of being able to provide care to the community.”
For Krystian, that meant becoming a nurse. His first year of nursing school was when COVID first hit, but that didn’t deter him. If getting into CSUB’s competitive nursing program takes a lot of hard work, actually going through it was even more difficult.
“Being in the program during a pandemic, of course, made nursing school even more challenging,” Krystian said. “But it's been such a rewarding experience. I have been able to work alongside frontline health care workers during this historic time. So being able to end my college experience at this time is very humbling.”
The nursing program keeps its students plenty busy with classes and clinicals, but Krystian wanted to get more involved. He’s the club president for the Community Preventative Health Collaborative, the mentorship chair for the California Nursing Students Association, the class president of the 2022 nursing class and a tutor in the nursing program.
His high engagement with extracurricular programs, along with a steadily high GPA, earned Krystian the title of Outstanding Undergraduate of Nursing. Krystian said the honor came as a surprise.
“I never thought I would be someone to win an award as such,” he said. “Receiving that honor award was very exciting and represented the work ethic and resilience I’ve displayed over the last three years of my program. I am forever grateful and humbled to have won the Outstanding Undergraduate of Nursing Award.”
Kinsley will take a different route into the medical field than his older siblings, hoping to become a doctor with his own private practice. The dream, he said, would be to have his family work there with him.
“I like to think of myself as a people pleaser,” Kinsley said. “I like to do things for others, but I also like to be my own boss. So I just thought, staying in health care, being my own boss and helping others, being a physician is ideal.”
Outside of classes, Kinsley has been involved in Dr. Lucas Hall’s lab, serving as the project manager for his kitfox research project. Kinsley said he appreciates the opportunity that CSUB gave him to get to know his professors, which he doesn’t think would have been his experience at a larger school. He was initially nervous about coming to CSUB, unsure if he’d like being at home for college.
“I realized how much like a family the community is here,” Kinsley said. “It's such a small college that you see people every day, and everyone, even the professors, are so close to you and it feels like you're a part of a family.”
While he completes additional classes ahead of his MCAT, Kinsley will also spend time in the next year at Kern Medical helping with the Emergency Medicine Research Assistance Program and conducting research on sports medicine with the University of Southern California’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.
“Topics are essentially free game in that I can decide what is researched,” Kinsley said. “I was thinking along the lines of ACL tears with deciding the benefits of plasma injections compared to full ACL reconstruction. I will be able to publish research under USC sports medicine in orthopedic surgery with me as an author.”
Brotherly love
Though the brothers never had class together, on campus they still found time to check in with each other – or, as brothers often do, annoy each other.
“Especially this semester, because he is the tutor, so he has an office,” Kinsley said. “So I always come into his office to steals snacks or just mess with him when I'm bored.”
The two have always been close and enjoy going to the gym and playing volleyball together when they have free time. Though they live together and go to school together, the separate lives they’ve created for themselves keeps them from getting tired of each other.
“Sometimes it gets kind of competitive, like who has the best grades,” Krystian said. “But of course, that's with any sibling relationship.”
“It's always a joke, because we know who's the smarter one,” Kinsley said.
“Me,” they both answered.
With their time at CSUB ending, the Florentino brothers are feeling some mixed emotions. While Kinsley feels like graduation hasn’t fully hit him since he will still be taking a few classes here, Krystian is keenly aware of this milestone.
“It’s a very bittersweet moment to know that I’m closing this chapter but entering a new chapter of my life where I’m able to work in the medical field,” he said. “It’s very humbling and exciting to know that my future is just an arm’s reach away after graduation.”
Whatever support Krystian and Kinsley need as they start their lives after CSUB, they know they will receive it not only from each other but from the whole Florentino clan. Krystian explained that as a Filipino family, they are very close, and their mom is especially family oriented.
“She's really appreciated the fact that we have each other to guide each other throughout school and just be each other's support system,” he said. “She’s very proud and excited to see two sons graduating at the same time.”
Their mom agreed, explaining that seeing her children thrive and succeed in chasing their dreams has meant so much to her.
“It was my own dream during my younger years to graduate and work in a health care environment,” Jen said. “That dream of my own did not happen, but God’s plan is always the best plan, because this dream is happening and living through my loving children. I am just so grateful and blessed at this point in my life.”
Original source can be found here.
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