What did I learn at UCF, and how did I overcome the challenges of starting over?

Going back to school full-time meant starting over almost completely, and where I was in life, that wasn't a small thing to walk into. It meant part-time work, a tighter budget, and fitting prerequisites, volunteering, and shadowing hours into whatever time was left, and support from family wasn't automatic either. Watching someone leave a decade-long career to rebuild in something entirely different is its own kind of adjustment, even for the people who care about you most.

Walking into rooms full of people years into their own path toward dentistry, the Pre-Dental Student Association, a mentor at the free clinic where I volunteer, and the team I now work alongside at Eastwood Dental, I expected to feel like an outsider. What actually happened surprised me. People were generous with their time, answered questions without making me feel behind, and treated me like I belonged before I'd fully convinced myself I did.

Volunteering with nonprofit dental organizations in Orlando has shaped me just as much as the classroom has. I've seen people come in carrying real pain, waiting on extractions and treatment they couldn't get anywhere else, and every time, it's reinforced something I believe strongly: oral health shouldn't be a privilege. It should be a necessity everyone has access to, and that belief is a big part of why I want to keep doing this work long after I finish school.

Anatomy and physiology ended up being where things really started to click. I got so interested in learning about head and neck anatomy that I bought myself a skull, a brain, and a neurovascular model to study on my own time, since that's the kind of student I am once something actually grabs my attention. Those classes also taught me to reason through what I'm looking at instead of just memorizing it, whether that's a problem in a study guide or something happening chairside.

Working as a dental assistant has brought all of it together in a different way. It's where the coursework, the shadowing, and the decision to start over stop being separate things and start being one path.