Hello

My name is Collier Rhodes, and I am currently enrolled at the university of Alabama majoring in biological sciences following a pre-dental course track. I hope that by the end of my undergraduate I will have taken all the courses and extracurriculars required to be a competitive candidate to enroll in a professional dental school for my graduate program. By the end of my education, I intend to pursue a career in the dental field but cannot say yet what specific medicine I intend to practice. I currently possess a presidential scholarship at the University of Alabama, which grants me full tuition because of my high-school ACT exam score of 30. My first job was in high school, where I worked at the Grand Hotel in my hometown of Fairhope, Alabama. The Grand Hotel was a golf resort and spa with a variety of facilities such as stores and restaurants. I worked in a family restaurant within the hotel called “Bayside Grill” where I worked as a busser, host, and food runner. This job taught me the basics of customer service and longer working hours, working 7-hour shifts more than four times a week. I worked for my junior and senior years of high school, as well as summer of my freshman year in college. Also during that summer, I worked at Strickland Orthodontics, my childhood orthodontist, for a summer job for the purpose of gaining real in-field experience with my dream. At Strickland, I worked as sterilization technician, sterilizing equipment and shadowing the doctors present. While working at this job, I accumulated close to 100 hours of in-person work and shadowing experience. During all of my time at the university of Alabama, I have also been volunteering twice weekly at a Christian volunteering organization called Campus Life, overseen by Tuscaloosa Youth For Christ, where I work in a leadership role managing and running club activities for students from nearly every high school in Tuscaloosa. Aside from volunteering, I have special interests in wrestling, lifting weights, and deer hunting with my father on our family’s land. Aside from these activities, my main hobbies in my free time when I am not studying include building models, reading and collecting graphic novels, and quality time alone.