Two students at the Delaware Area Career Center who recently secured full-ride scholarships are preparing for different careers, crediting the skills they gained in the bio-science lab as a big advantage.
Josephine Carcamo, a senior at Olentangy Orange High School, and Abigail Jones, a senior at Westerville North High School, said Tuesday that they have their post-graduation plans lined up and are excited about their futures.
Carcamo said she’ll be studying chemical engineering at The Ohio State University this fall and will be taking part in Naval ROTC. After she graduates from college, she said she’ll be joining the Navy as an officer. Carcamo said bio-science instructor Gina Lantz helped her figure out what she wanted to study in college based on what she enjoyed doing in the bio-science lab.
“I began off wanting to do micro-biology,” Carcamo said. “In this lab, I really learned to love it, but then I really also began to like chemistry, so Mrs. Lantz recommended to add engineering and working hands-on. That really helped me determine that I wanted to do chemical engineering.”
She said her father was in the United States Air Force, and ROTC was something she’d considered for a long time. Carcamo added she visited the U.S. Naval Academy, which helped her make up her mind. She said in college, she’ll be a regular college student but will also do naval ROTC at the same time.
“I’m excited to be taking classes about my major and what I’m interested in,” Carcamo said. “I’m excited to not have to take English a lot anymore. I’m excited about all the opportunities and responsibilities that will open up, especially in ROTC.”
Carcamo said she’ll be taking several labs in college, and her experience in the bio-science program at the DACC will give her a head start.
“(In college) I do have a lot of labs in engineering and chemistry, so bio-science has helped me prepare general lab skills and how to work on my own,” Carcamo said. “I’ll need less prompting. I can rely on myself without having to rely on teachers to talk me through it.”
Jones said she’ll be studying at Otterbein University in the fall, thanks to an academic scholarship and a scholarship from Columbus City Schools. She is planning on becoming a pediatric oncology nurse.
“I would like to go into clinical research studying kids who have cancer, and hopefully one day, finding a cure or treatment for it,” Jones said. “This is the final step of deciding what I want to do with the rest of my life. This is the make or break point. That’s the most exciting part.”
Jones said the bio-science lab taught her valuable lessons about nursing.
“Mrs. Lantz is good about teaching you that you can fall down and make mistakes, and then she teaches you how to get out of them,” Jones said. “In nursing, sometimes you are going to make a mistake … it’s okay to realize those mistakes and learn how to fix them. It’s really about taking that mistake and building upon it and teaching yourself not to do it again and learning from it.”
Jones said she doesn’t like tests and was so thankful that the career center was less focused on scores and more focused on knowledge and skill.
“As a freshman, I never thought I was going to get anywhere, and now, I’m going to nursing school on a full ride,” Jones said. “It makes you feel like this big burden has been lifted off your chest. It feels very nice to know in the end that I’m a smart person. Test scores don’t matter. Your character will shine through in the end.”
