Galesburg Junior Senior High School offers many courses for students to select from as they plan out their high school class schedule. Students can take advantage of classes that will help support their future careers, educational goals, and dreams.
As GHS Senior, Avery Wolfe, was selecting courses for her final year in high school, she knew that she wanted to continue the work she started when she began job-shadowing her dentist, Dr. Sanberg, the summer before her senior year.
She enrolled in BUS235, a business internship course offered at GJSHS. The class allowed her to obtain an internship with Dr. Petoskey. This proved beneficial to Avery, “This has been really nice because even with school starting, I didn’t have to stop shadowing.” Avery spends Monday through Thursday at the dental office and on Friday she completes a weekly summary in class and submits that to Mrs. Ravel, the instructor of the class.
Avery’s interest in dentistry began during her freshman year, but once she was able to do an internship she was able to take a deeper look into the dental field. This piqued her interest to pursue dentistry once she graduates from high school.
This past December, Avery applied for the pre-dental scholars program at Marquette University. The pre-dental program is an accelerated program that allows students to complete a bachelor’s degree and a dental degree in seven years rather than the eight years normally required. Marquette enrolls a maximum of 10 students each year in the program. As long as the students fulfill all the requirements to remain in the program they are guaranteed full acceptance to the School of Dentistry by the end of their junior year. Avery applied in December and had two interviews in March. She was selected from a pool of 130 applicants to begin the dental program next fall.
Avery sees the need for dentists in rural areas and upon completion of dental school, she hopes to return to the area to help fulfill that need.
In Avery’s case, the BUS235 class helped to solidify her decision to go into dentistry, but she encourages students to take the class for other reasons as well, “I would encourage students to take the class. Even if you are not sure what you want to do, it is a good idea to take the class. It helped solidify my decision, but it can be a good way to know maybe what you don’t want to do. It was also nice to get out into the community and meet people.”
Congratulations Avery, we can’t wait to see you continue on your path!