CAREER MOVES
“Comfort is the enemy of progress.””
You can change your mind.
At 18 years old, I thought I wanted to be a public relations specialist. I didn’t really know what that meant at the tender young age of 18. Some adult had told me I’d be good at it because “I’m friendly and like to talk to people.” So I thought that I would get my degree in that and spend my days taking people out to lunch and planning parties. I really didn’t do too much research into what getting a degree in public relations actually meant. During my junior year in college, when I finally started taking public relations classes, I realized that a lot of public relations had to do with writing. ‘Journalism with spin’ they told me. I didn’t really want to be writing all the time, I wanted to spend time with people. But it felt like it was too late to change my major at the start of my junior year.
Around this time, some of my friends started talking about graduate school. Which I had honestly never thought about. I had planned on simply graduating with my bachelors, marrying my college boyfriend and starting a married life. Whatever that meant.
In my mind, I knew that public relations wasn’t actually what I wanted to do, but the idea of grad school scared me. What if I wasn’t smart enough for grad school? There were all these tests I’d have to take in order to apply like the GRE or the GMAT and that just seemed like too much.
I love my little patients!
So instead of doing grad school after graduation, I moved abroad and volunteered at an orphanage in Ecuador for a year. While volunteering there, I realized I am drawn to work that tangibly impacts the quality of people’s lives. These musings grew into a new dream: becoming a dentist. Through experiencing the healthcare system in Ecuador, I began to see that dentistry, specifically, was a way I could help people lead healthy, thriving lives – from the start.
That year in the orphanage, I spent every day with children. My responsibilities ranged from working with the special needs children in the therapy pool, to feeding, bathing, running errands and changing diapers. One day I took a child, Jose, to the dentist. Jose was three years old and had only recently arrived at the orphanage. Jose already had several cavities and was in pain. Jose and I braved the Ecuadorian bus system to get to the dentist’s office with me holding him tightly. At the dentist, I held his tiny hands in place while the dentist extracted his problem tooth. It occurred to me at that moment what an impact dental health can have on people, and how important it is to have a foundation of dental care starting at a young age.
Playing the Tooth Fairy at a Give Kids a Smile Event
Through these experiences, I realized that I wanted to be in healthcare, but struggled with the idea of going back to school. After all, I would need almost an entirely different degree in order to be able to even apply for dental school. I wondered at the age of 23, if I was too old to go back to school, knowing that it would take at least 2 years to finish my pre-requisite courses and then 4 years of dental school.
Looking back now, 23 seems so young. It was a career move that altered the course of my life and took a lot of risk… but it paid off. Not only did I get into dental school, but I also taught myself that I am capable of achieving difficult tasks. In our lives, we will experience failures, which is whole other blog post for me, but I have learned that I can overcome failures and even perceptions I held about myself to have a career that’s satisfying.
The future ahead looks great. But then again, where I am right now feels pretty spectacular too.