 sitting on that bench leaving Purdue Just finished up with drawing from the semester tears ran down my face. I was at Purdue University. It was my fall semester of my sophomore year And I was feeling a sore in my mouth I had for quite a while and just kind of like a canker sore They got me in the next day and they performed the biopsy sent it out to a pathology lab I went in the whole office was on a room. They were pretty serious about it. And that's when he told me We got your results back from the biopsy told me It came back positive for cancer Take a medical withdrawal from school. I don't know how I'm gonna break the news to my mom Once I saw my mom try that's when it hit me. It's gonna be a long road ahead of me And I read about Tyler Trent and they went to Purdue University I even have the Tyler Trent book where I've marked with sticking out certain things that happened to him They were very relevant to what I went through. It was fascinating to to keep reading and seeing how much Tyler and I were Were connected through our journey and I was able to connect so much with him that At the end of the journey, you know, I wanted to be able to tell my story and advocate for these types of cancers. I Had to go through speech therapy physical therapy Now speech therapy was a big one. I learned how to talk eat drink life after admission kind of sounds like easy Nothing to really worry about But there's still a lot involved. I wasn't supposed to start for you until August. Well With me I contacted Purdue. I was like, hey, this is what happened. I want to enroll full-time I let my doctors know I was enrolling full-time like Eric. It's probably not the best idea. You know, you should really take it easy Well, I didn't really listen. I enrolled full-time. I've pretty And since then, you know, I've been shadowing Dr. Murray at over-dinner Dr. Murray's my mentor any type of break here. I pretty I would go and help out there It's like I think you have a passion for dentistry You know with everything in my story, there's a chance I might go into oral surgery I would love to help individuals with any type of oral cancer any type of disease in the mouth that gets unnoticed Receiving this type of Trent award means so much because I've always had a word to put myself to college I'm a first-generation college student and it helps me focus more strictly on school and reaching the end goal of becoming a dentist