By Jackie Houchin

#Bloganuary is a month of blog prompts that WordPress uses to get us bloggers off to a good start in the new year.    3. What colleges did you attend?

Colleges? Plural?  Seriously?

Well, I did attend the “College of Medical and Dental Assistants” right out of high school.  I did the book learning and worked the month-long internship.  I was then placed in the dental practice of one Dr. Herman Mintzer, who was also a professor of dentistry at UCLA who taught there one day per week.

(A funny story: At 18 my name was still “maiden” – Jackie Love.  The admin at the Dental Assistants college thought it would be funny to put me in the office of one Dr. Darling.  Can you imagine it???  I might answer the phone daily with, “Dr. Darling’s office, Miss Love speaking.”  NO WAY!)

But the real reason I interned and later worked for Dr. Mintzer for several years, was two-fold. First, I was working a night job at a department store in Hollywood, and I needed to be able to be done with the dental job at a certian time. (Dr. Darling worked some evenings.)  And secondly, I believe that God is sovereign, and placed me with Dr. Mintzer. I was able to learn and get experience at many more dental procedures with him and the other four dentists who worked there. I also became his x-ray technician.

What did I glean from those years of working with a prominant doctor (in which my last name never came into the picture)?  I begin a life (continuing today) of occassional nightmares about loosing all my teeth and so taking much better care of them, and also judging all dentists by this employer. I was well treated and respected by a powerful and educated man and given opportunities to assist him in surgeries.

I also got free dentistry for those years.

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