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A.M. Personal Statement
Temple Class of 2010

“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” This is just one of Mother Teresa’s great quotes concerning the spread of love and peace. Although a smile is beautiful whether it ranks A1 or A4 on the vita shade guide, my ultimate goal is to make people want to smile. That generally means keeping a strong and vibrant smile well into their older years. In essence, that is what a good dentist does. He attempts to preserve good teeth, and salvage damaged ones such that their patients’ smiles last strong and long.
My desire to pursue dentistry makes good sense to me. I love working with my hands, and I enjoy working with people. During my time as a student intern at my school’s dental clinic, my desire to pursue the field of dental health was further confirmed. I was fortunate in that the head dentist, Dr. Silvia Erickson took me under her wing and showed me what being a dentist really means. In addition to letting me shadow her while doing procedures and explaining to me step by step what she was doing, she displayed to me one of the characteristics that I believe is most essential to being a great dentist. Dr. Erickson speaks to her patients in such a kind and generous manner, and really displays a genuine care for them. She has such a friendly way about her, which makes all of her patients like and trust her. It is not only her patients that she treats well; she treats the entire staff at the clinic with the same level of care. Her friendly demeanor makes everyone happy to work with her. Having had the opportunity to learn from Dr. Erickson and see the satisfaction that she derives from her work makes me very eager to pursue a career in dentistry. I look forward to the job satisfaction and gratification from my job.
Besides my experience at the clinic, during my entire four years at UCSB, I have worked as a supervisor at one of the on campus dining commons. While it may not be the most glamorous job, it has been a great way for a hungry college student to get by. Though I stay there primarily for the food, I found it to be a great opportunity to take on a little more responsibility besides just my school work. This job helped me to develop the necessary interpersonal skills to deal with stubborn student workers in a fair and professional manner, ensuring that everything gets done to the manager’s expectations. Dentists always have assistants working with them, and they have to maintain a friendly professional relationship, while making sure that everything gets completed with the highest levels of professionalism. This is especially true since they are working with people in a health professions setting. Although the relationship between being a dentist and having a supervisory role in a dining commons is rather remote, I feel that my experiences at the dining commons would help me as a health professional as well.
Additionally, I recently became a mentor with the Santa Barbara’s Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse mentor program. The goal of this mentor program is to help children who come from broken homes, victims of the devastating effects of alcohol and drug abuse. I have been privileged to get to visit a really cool fourth grade elementary school student at Isla Vista Elementary School once a week and help him with homework, and get to play games with him, and just really get to become good friends. I love how something as simple as helping a kid read, or playing some ball together, or even just sitting and talking, can really make a difference in a kid’s life. I know it makes a difference in mine. Although these experiences may fall outside of the scope of pursuing dentistry, I feel that they do loop back to the whole scheme of spreading love to others, which I believe to be key in any type of health care profession.