Virginia Michelich

Vice President for Educational Affairs

Memorable Student

I had a student several years ago in my biology class for majors. She had been a high school dropout and was at one time a part of that group of young people who wear the black clothes, black lipstick, and dye their hair black or red.

I got to know her when teaching lab, because you have more time to talk to students then. She told me about dropping out of high school. I realized that somehow her parents must have stuck by her during this time and eventually she came around and finished high school.

Then, she came to GPC and at some point decided to take biology because she needed a science, but later she told me that before the class she wasn't particularly interested in it and didn’t really see much use for it.

She loved the class. I remember her painstakingly dissecting the brain out of the fetal pig, which we never do because they are so small. After she graduated from GPC she went to UGA and majored in biology. She decided that she wanted to go to vet school and wasn’t accepted immediately so she applied to and was accepted in a biology graduate program. Just before the start of the term, she found that she was accepted to vet school, which is very hard to get in to.

I think she was certainly an example of a student who got her life on track because of her experiences at GPC.

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