Exhibit: My Nephew

Benchmark: Teamwork and Communication

Skill: 103 Anitcipate the impact of your actions or words on others

 

    As you age, you become a role model figure for the younger people in your life. This is something that comes with a great amount of responsibility. Whether you are thirty or you are seventeen you play a role in shaping young minds. You are put into this position once you are older because you have experience more in life than those who are younger than you. Even though you may not always know it, the things you go through, your challenges and triumphs, shape your mind and your ideas. The responsibility as a young adult or adult is to guide the younger generation and help them not make the same mistakes you have made or help them succeed in difficult matters of life such as school, driving or having good personal values. I am a role model to my nephew, Liam who is two. 

   I also am a role model to first years in my dental class. I often give advice to younger students in my dental class on how to succeed in the class, how to receive good grades, and i also help them with their skills, of which I mastered last year. I also help them with their curriculum work. When i was a first year, the second years were very helpful and I was grateful for that and I looked up to them because of their knowledge of what I was currently learning then and also what chairside procedure, x-ray techniques, and cement procedures they had been learning. This was my main motivation to be a good role model for the first years because the second years for me, were very helpful and the first years deserve the same advice and help as I had. This is also part of the expectation of being a second year. 

  Kids are very impressionable. They also will repeat anything you say, this is why it is important to keep this in mind when around a child. I have learned this from becoming an aunt two years ago. Before my sister had Liam, I had not been very comfortable with babies and younger children. In order to make money before I had a real job at an establishment, I would babysit but the kids I watched were older. I always kept in mind that you must be responsible and be careful in what you do because kids will often repeat what you say because they learn from you. When my sister first had Liam, she had to stay at the hospital for a week so I stayed with her at the hospital in order to take care of my new nephew. At first taking care of him was hard to get used to because a newborn baby is very fragile and also very tiny and I only had been used to watching older children. Since he was born I have been an important figure in his life. He looks up to his "Abbey." This is why I am determined to teach him right from wrong so he becomes a successful, good person.

Being a role model often can be a difficult task but it is rewarding. In dentistry, when you are in that position in an office many people look up to you, whether it is a patient or colleagues. Patients look up to the dentist for advice on oral health and it is your job as a professional to give good, helpful advice to your patients in order to maintain or improve their health and their habits. Your coworkers will also look up to you because you are the proprietor of the practice and within the office there are hygienist, assistants and other employees who seek to reach your educational status. As a college student, it will be important for me to assist younger students with their work. It will be something I will be adamant about because I hope to have a dentist of whom i can look up to and work with.