The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are responsible for sparking my interest in dentistry.

I was
determined to win the Green Power Ranger action figure inside my pediatric dentist's coinoperated toy machine. After one fateful cleaning, I approached the machine, inserted my "good
behavior" quarter, and turned the crank. I heard a small capsule roll into the prize shoot and by
luck, the Green Ranger was mine! I went to bed that night concocting different schemes for
scoring the other Power Rangers as well and figured the only foolproof method was to become a
dentist myself. That selfish ambition misplaced itself, as did my Power Ranger, unfortunately, but
the career goal held fast. Despite the fears and doubts of an impatient college student, the
memory and influence of three distinct smiles have strengthened and preserved this goal.
Sweat rolled down my back as I waited outside the Temple of Literature in steamy Vietnam, the
summer after high school graduation. It was the last day of our mission trip to Hanoi and our
guides were treating us to a tour of their country's oldest university. I was mindlessly peoplewatching as over-heated tourists signaled taxis along the roadside, when I spotted an American
holding a cleft-lipped, Vietnamese baby girl. The child looked my way, I smiled and waved at her,
and then she popped her head off her soon-to-be adoptive father's shoulder and cheerfully
grinned at me. The poverty and trash I saw during those two weeks were pushing me towards
full-time missions abroad and away from dentistry, but that girl`s wider-than-normal smile tugged
at my heartstrings, unraveling a stifled and wavering passion within me. I returned to the States
with an expanded worldview and a new drive towards global dentistry.
The most impactful shadowing experience I had--aside from when a convict's wisdom tooth
almost flew into my eye--was while observing Mrs. Kelly's extractions and denture delivery. She
came into the office where I shadowed, scheduled to get full, upper and lower dentures, but Dr.
Swett first needed to extract nine of this woman's remaining teeth. Her mouth was a wreck--she
had been using superglue to secure a loose incisor to the adjacent tooth for months. Honestly,
my first response was one of disgust and judgment--I thought, "How could an American be so
uninformed about good dental care that they let their mouth get to this condition?" Then I took a
step back and peeked at the woman's medical history. She lived in a very poor area of central
Virginia, hadn't attended college, and was using government aid to finance this full-smile
restoration. The hand she'd been dealt was drastically different than mine, and I had no right to
judge her. I saw that she was scared, so I grabbed hold of her hand and let her squeeze as hard
as she wanted while Dr. Swett performed the nine extractions. Following the denture delivery,
nervous excitement rose inside me as the assistant handed the patient a small mirror. Tears of
joy streamed down Mrs. Kelly's face as she looked at her beautiful new smile for the first time,
and a renewed flood of self-esteem almost visibly welled up inside her. She turned to me and,
releasing my hand, thanked me for all of my help. I learned the value of a humble mindset and of
a warm hand to hold and treasure this memory dearly.
In December 2012, I found myself in St. Louis with 16,000 other college students at a global
missions conference, asking myself why I wasn't already serving abroad, when the need is so
high. By my fourth year of college, I had grown to resent America for its consumerism. I wanted
to ditch my expensive university life and go back to Vietnam to help in whatever capacity I could.
Dentistry was still in the back of my mind, but my heart was already in the slums of Hanoi. I felt
torn about how to respond as we packed 32,000 care packages to send to ailing people in
Swaziland. But as I watched a prepared video about the caregivers who would deliver these
packages, I caught myself examining the teeth of an elderly Swazi woman. I felt warm tears
rolling down my face as I stared at her smile, charming and comforting even without teeth. The
quiet power behind this smile reminded me of the unique difference I could make if I followed
through on becoming a dentist. Sure, I want to go back to Vietnam right away, to feed the poor, to
fix their homes and pray with them-but isn't the good that can be done at the hands of a welltrained dentist worth the wait?