Marina Roytman

Student

“A child might come into the office and really not look so good. But then, after two years, their whole face changes for the better. That’s an amazing process.”

We’ve all laughed about braces, those impediments to free speech and smiles, that are such a cross to bear for the children and, increasingly, the adults, who must put up with them. But Marina Roytman sees only the positive results of this dental ‘tweaking’ every day. “People inevitably feel better about themselves when their teeth are in good shape,” she says. “I’ve been working for an orthodontist for over a year, and I’ve decided that’s the career I want for myself.” But before she dons a white smock of her own, there is medical school to survive – and a whole lot of chemistry.

“I love the chemistry classes at SMC, and I think that Dr. Arnold and Dr. Klein are the best chemistry teachers around,” she says. And in order to keep the experiments and formulas she must learn on the front burner, so to speak, Marina has enlisted in SMC’s Chemistry Club. “The club has been very interesting and helpful to me. We study together to prepare for the MCAT exams for medical school. But beyond that, we take trips like the one we took to Mono Lake. That was a great one because we saw all the chemical interactions of the lake in a natural setting that really brought the importance of chemistry home to us.” And while preparing for a life working to better the smiles of children, Marina reports there was something else she and her club members were hoping to bring ‘home’ as well.

“We’re entering into a competition against UCLA to see who gets the overall best results on the MCAT tests,” she says. “We want to beat them. And if we win, that’ll really be something great to bring back to SMC.”

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