The technique of choice
Posted: November 14, 2014
With one hand on a table outside of a hospital cafeteria, Patrycja Wierzbicki lifted her small frame off the ground and held a jaw-dropping pose only an exceptional athlete could execute. Her body was weightless, parallel to the ground. Perfection from her smiling face to her pointed toes, she made a complex maneuver seem effortless.
“People often think you have to be really strong,” she says. “It’s actually all in the technique.”
Since age 3, Polish-born Wierzbicki’s world revolved around gymnastics. Her father was a world champion in tumbling and her mother coached gymnasts who went on to become world champions. A natural athlete, Wierzbicki was leader of the Polish national trampoline and power tumbling team. She competed throughout Europe and became the youngest Polish national champion in tumbling at age 17. One week before competing in the world championships, an accident left her with a wrist injury and unable to compete.
“After my injury, I visited some friends in the United States,” says Wierzbicki. “The experience totally changed my life.”
Making the tough choice to pursue a U.S. education rather than continue with gymnastics in Poland, she was faced with another major decision: Would she come to the United States immediately and pay for her education on her own, or would she wait a year or two and come to school on a gymnastics scholarship? She decided not to wait.
Starting out at a community college with a student visa, she transferred to Loyola University in Chicago. She tumbled her way into chemistry, although it didn’t come as naturally to her as gymnastics. Fortunately, the hard work and tenacity she put into gymnastics every day for years taught her to face different challenges, and eventually, she was accepted to a PhD program in nanochemistry. As life would have it, though, she became severely allergic to some chemicals during the third year of her program.
To stay on the nanochemistry career path meant the only option of computational chemistry and avoiding chemicals altogether.
“Since I was a kid, I loved to work with my hands and my body,” Wierzbicki says. “So I decided to pursue a different career path.”
That choice landed her in Kirksville as a member of the first class at MOSDOH. Now in her second year of dental school, she’s happiest when working with her hands in the simulation lab.
“When I came to my interview at MOSDOH, I fell in love with the professors and the dean,” says Wierzbicki. “I liked the vision of the School and public health dentistry—helping people who wouldn’t have a chance to get care if public health wasn’t an option.”
Hoping to continue MOSDOH’s vision in her own practice someday, she knows all too well life’s choices never come easy. Always keeping her eyes on the prize, she is confident in the decisions that brought her here and transformed her from a Polish athlete to a U.S. dental student.