With so many exciting career choices, it took undergraduate school at Mizzou and a study abroad excursion in Australia for 2008 Suggs Scholar Brittany Daniel to narrow down her interest in health care to dentistry. She has applied to several dental schools and, if all goes as planned, she will start dental school in August 2016.
When she graduated from Trinity Catholic High School, Daniel had her sights set on pre-medicine and pediatrics. With that goal in mind, she applied for and was awarded the University of Missouri Columbia Donald M. Suggs Scholarship. This is a four-year, $57,000 scholarship named after the St. Louis American publisher and president of the St. Louis American Foundation, that also includes a study abroad experience.
Being a Suggs Scholar allowed Daniel to expand her educational opportunities.
“It gave me the opportunity to go to Mizzou pretty much for free, and it also gave me the opportunity to study abroad in Australia in the summer of 2011,” Daniel said. She took courses in Australian culture and animal science, visited a rain forest and “spent time in rural areas and also in big cities and on a few islands as well,” she said.
Somewhere along the way, Daniels interest changed from pediatrics to audiology. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications science and disorders. She then enrolled in graduate school for audiology at Washington University.
“And then I realized I really was more interested in the medical aspects, and audiology is not really rehabilitative,” Daniel said. “I wanted to kind of balance my love of medicine, and I would be somewhat autonomous and there would be an artistic aspect to it. And dentistry kind of encompasses everything that I wanted.”
It’s ironic, since the namesake of her Mizzou scholarship earned a living for decades as an oral surgeon and dentist – though, for Suggs, it was a trade to raise his family and build wealth, not his dream career.
After one semester in graduate school, Daniel switched to prerequisite courses for dental school through the post baccalaureate premedical program at Washington University. She completed courses in chemistry, biology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, anatomy and general science. She also took a few courses at University Missouri St. Louis.
Daniel spends a great deal of her time learning about dentistry outside of classroom settings – by working, volunteering or shadowing dentists at several dental clinics around St. Louis, including BJK People’s Health Center, at private practices and at BJC.
She has volunteered in the Veterans Administration hospital system and at East Central Missouri Area Health Education Center, which she described as “a health-center kind of program that prepares students in middle school or high school for the path to becoming a health care provider – which I was a part of in high school.”
She also works in a neuroscience lab for the medical school at Washington University and at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital.
It may seem like she is trying everything at the same time, but Daniel said her persistence and work ethic will make her successful in achieving her goal.
“I want to work in an urban area, serving medically underserved communities at a Federally Qualified Health Center or at any kind of nonprofit geared towards helping people in diverse communities who are medically underserved,” Daniel said.
Even if you think you know what you want to be when you grow up, Daniel is proof-positive that it is perfectly all right to change your mind along the way.
“Explore all of your options and choose what you think encompasses what you love to do,” she said, “and work hard to eventually get paid to do what you love to do.”
