Rebekah Wormack

Name: Rebekah Wormack
Major: Medical Laboratory Technology

• Being an ACM Allied Health student isn’t easy but our instructors are here to help. In your experience, what are the “superpowers” that make a great instructor stand out?
  The instructors here are fantastic. They are so involved with the students and they are very considerate of how much the real world is going to affect what we can do actually do in class and like their understanding of some things take a little bit longer to get done, especially for students who like have kids or especially with the whole COVID thing when we had to have online classes, they understood the difficulties with that for everybody and they communicate that to us too, like they talked to us about how it’s difficult for them as well. Which really helps connect them to us. And they really just feel like you can go talk to them about anything, anytime you’re having a problem that even if you feel like “oh man I should have done that, and they are going to be upset with me” you know you can go and talk with them still and they will help you figure out a plan and to work through it and to get caught up and make sure you get everything done because in the end that’s all they care about, making sure we all graduate.
• Has there been a moment in class or an interaction with an instructor or staff member that stands out to you? Tell us about it.
  I just talk about Stacey all the time because she’s awesome. Like I initially was coming into this program I wasn’t coming into this program. I had been brought back home because I’m from here because of corona, the warehouse I was working in shut down so I came back here to live with my parents. And I was going to go back to school for phlebotomy, it’s a one-year program, get a quick degree, get into the job force, and you know just get back on my feet that way.  But Stacey is the advisor for both MLT and Phlebotomy and she looked back at my transcripts, like I didn’t ask her to do this, and she came to me and said you have all of these science credits, you have this experience in microbiology already, why don’t you do MLT? You have all the pre-requisites done pretty much already, you just have to do the clinical classes, and I was like okay Ill give it a try.  And I love it! Its absolutely where I need to be. I love being in the lab, I love all the hands-on parts and all the different things I get to learn to be a lab tech and I would have never known this program ever existed if Stacey would not have gone out of her way to look at it for me. I went here in 2009, then took a break to work, then came back a year and a half ago for phlebotomy and now in MLT and I graduate in May. 
• What’s been your superpower that’s made you a great Allied Health student?
  I think it’s just that I can hold on to information really well, even after like only hearing it for the first time, going through the second time really locks it in.  So, having these classes set up, as you do a general microbiology and then you do clinical microbiology, how what you learned before applies directly to what you’re going to be doing in the lab, that really helps lock in the important points for me.  I know not everybody is like me and have to put in a lot of studying to connect those dots but its always kind of connected for me so (fingers crossed0) here hoping that holds up! 
• What’s your favorite piece of technology at school or work?
  My favorite piece of tech is probably at work, they have a PCR that’s only about as big as a vending machine and so you just need one little swab of sample and it fits into a little cartridge and you just pop it into the machine and you scan it twice, and 45 minutes later you have a result. And it’s crazy because whenever I was in high school I was part of a science class that went up to the Science Center at FSU when that was being built. And they had a PCR and it was brand new at the time but it was like three different rooms and they had to be negative pressure clean rooms and they had all these steps and it does all that in one little vending machine with a little cartridge in 45 minutes and seeing that shift in like ten years just blows my mind. 

• What 3 things do you like (or love, we’ll always take love) about the courses in your major? 
  I love how I am able to apply it to myself.  So, I have found out in my classes because we stick each other and we test our own blood, and look at them under the microscope, and I already knew I have a hereditary lipocytes but now actually seeing it on a slide and looking at my blood cells how not round they are like I love just being able to recognizing these things now. Stacey calls it being an educated slide reader. Like I can look at it and its not just, yep that’s a slide, I can point out all the different components that’s on there, what it means, potential diagnosis that it could lead to and I can like I know all these things now and I love it. I will be at home and talking to my family and be like we did this this and this today and they are like yes and I’m like yeah but it is so cool. I love the hands on of it and the real-world application kind of part especially being in the lab and seeing all the samples run through and all the diagnosis that come up. I can use my knowledge now. It’s great. And I would have never discovered the lab if it wasn’t for these teachers and this school.   
• What experience (or class) at ACM surprised you the most?
  Having some of my credit from my high school AP classes from 2009 it surprised me that it applied towards the sciences that I didn’t have to retake. 
• What are your plans after graduation? 
  I do not have a job lined up just yet – but that’s because I am going out of town at the end of May – my boyfriend is in California, two of my sisters are living and working in California right now, so I’m going to go visit them right now for a couple of weeks.  I am looking at Meritus Hospital in Hagerstown. They talked to our class through a zoom meeting with us the other day and it sounds like a good fit for me.  It’s a bigger hospital but it’s not connected to a hospital system so it’s not like profit focused its more patient focused, but they still have all the gadgets so that’s what I am looking for.  They are looking for an evening or night shift which is absolutely me. These 7Am classes…that has been the hardest part of this program for me is the early morning classes, I’m just not a morning person. They have a higher signing bonuses of about $5,000 but some of the hospitals in PA are offering a $10,000 signing bonus, hopefully by the time I come back and apply, they will be up a little bit. Would like to do this a year or two and then become a traveling tech and get into that because it looks fantastic.