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ALYSSA NEELLEY

1) What is your role in Pre-Dental Society? What are your duties?
Historian

2) Tell us about yourself 
In addition to PDS, I am also the Marketing Coordinator of the UCSC chapter for VIDA, a non-profit abroad program in which volunteers provide Central American citizens with free healthcare via mobile dental clinics. When I am not taking care of club affairs, studying, or working, you can often find me hiking, climbing trees, playing piano, and doing arts and crafts.

3) Why Dentistry?
"Growing up, I had a lot of dental work done because I was losing teeth too slowly to implement braces, but desperately needed them to fix my cross bite. As a result, several of my teeth were extracted and one of my impacted canines required a surgical exposure via a chain and bracket in order to pull the tooth down. It was a long and painful journey but I came out of it with perfect teeth and newfound confidence. But it was not all about aesthetics - with a cross bite, my molars would have slowly worn down as I ate and I would have significantly degraded my enamel. My dental work was timely and expensive but vital to my oral health and safety. Realizing the importance of maintaining and protecting teeth sparked my interest in dentistry, and I became determined to spread awareness of oral health. Namely I am interested in global health, and educating impoverished communities of proper oral hygiene. So far, I have done just this in Guatemala and have plans of continuing preventative action in Nicaragua this summer, and hopefully in more countries in years to come."

4) Your favorite motto or advice to other Pre-Dents?
My advice to my fellow pre-dents is to not be afraid to put yourselves out there. Take chances and step outside of your box - you will get so much more out of your pre-dental endeavors and out of life in general if you do!"