Mentor for a Day, Lessons for Life! 🦷

‘How can learning from other’s career journeys help us shape our own?’ That was the driving question for this careers project. To answer this question, we were told to pick people to shadow for a day, preferably someone who had a job that we wanted to go into. Personally, I felt that it had similar vibes to a ‘Take your kid to work day’. The career that I chose to focus on for this project, as well as shadow was, as I said before, orthodontics. The person that I chose to shadow was Dr. GaEun Lee, the head orthodontist at Evergreen Orthodontics. In class, when we first started to discuss choosing people to shadow for a day, the first person I thought of was Dr. Lee. Probably because she is my personal orthodontist, and a close family friend. I chose to shadow Dr. Lee, because I wanted to see if becoming an orthodontist was the right fit for me. 

Before we went off to shadow our mentors, our teacher wanted us to do some research on the careers we were going to go work with for a day. Of course the information was to be displayed in the form of a smart brevity note. Honestly, I think that doing this research and creating this note really helped me prepare for my job shadowing, and it was really useful when I had to create meaningful questions for my interview. My smart brevity note can be found here.

When the day finally came for my shadow day I was nervous and excited, but also prepared. My shadowing day started at 10:30, where I met up with Dr.Lee and she gave me a tour of the office. Through out the day, I was able to join in on consultations and observe patient’s being digitally scanned for their retainer models. I was also able to see previous x-rays and photos of patients’ teeth, and meet them during check ups to see their progress myself. I was also able to interview Dr. Lee, which I will talk more about. After this experience, I was able to complete the final assignment for this project, which was to turn this mentor shadowing day experience in to a podcast. I included the interview I was able to get, as well as my experience, and my answer to the driving question.

After everything that I have done in this project, from researching this career, to getting to experience a day of it, I think that I can confidently say that I am ready to answer the driving question. In our previous careers project, I was hesitant about going into orthodontics, and I was debating on choosing a different career. But after getting a look into a day in an orthodontists’ life, I am sure that this is the career path I want to go into. I think that learning from Dr. Lee’s career journey influenced my own by helping me determine my future career path. Listening to her educational journey and the advice she gave me reassured me that the years of school is worth it. I would like to thank Evergreen Orthodontics, and Doctor GaEun Lee for giving me the opportunity to experience a day in the office. I would also like to thank my audience for taking the time to read this blog post, and hope to see you at my next update!