It’s very interesting to hear why people choose the career path that they do. That is why I chose to do an interview with fellow classmate, Shevaun Sparks (Radiologic Sciences, Class of 2018). Her story isn’t a common story that you hear often. Most of the time you hear about people going into the field because of family or for the financial stability and then you sort of hear about medical backgrounds of some people. But, this story is about a small town waitress.

Sparks comes to SVC from a small town in New York where she works as a waitress to help pay for college. At first she was looking at becoming a veterinarian or into working in the healthcare field because she has always wanted to help people or animals. She hadn’t thought about the Radiology program until she talked to a family friend and was told that it was a great career to get into and about all of the positive things that could come out of it. She told Sparks that she has a job that she can honestly say she loves. A fire was sparked in Sparks to pursue the Radiology program and found that the nearest one to her was the program through Adirondack Community College.

While doing research, she found out that the program was cancelled. She started to look around and found Hudson Valley Community College and SVC, and preferred the latter. She found preference for SVC since it is a private college in a small town. She likes when the class sizes are smaller, since she finds that it is easier to learn and ask questions. I asked if she had anyone that influenced her decision and she replied by saying that she made her choice based on waiting for five years and doing research on the college that she wanted to attend. Sparks had no other prior experience in the health field other than getting hurt with a fractured shoulder and sprained ankles from playing volleyball. She had x-rays taken and the interaction with the technologists helped with the decision also.

She went through the entire “what career is right for me” process and radiology is the only one that stuck and the only one she could see herself doing and actually be happy doing. Sparks says that she did an internship at an animal hospital, but because she is such an animal lover it was hard for her to bear to see animals sick. She says that she is better at handling people rather than animals because people can tell you exactly what is going on so you can narrow the cause of pain down to at least two things that could be wrong with them.

I asked Sparks where she sees herself in five years as a health professional and she said she hopes that after she gets the opportunity to work at a hospital that she will continue her education and branch out to other areas. She wants to go into Sonography or start schooling to become a radiologist. For those of you that don’t know what a radiologic technologist is, they are a health professional that takes the x-ray and a radiologist is the physician of radiology that looks at the images and talks to the patient’s physician to determine the diagnosis of the problem.

This is Shevaun Sparks story that is still being written. If you have a story and would like to tell it, please visit our Facebook page and/or our Twitter account. You can also comment your story below. We would like to hear all of your stories of the healthcare field, and beyond.