Posts by Liz Flaherty

I graduated from dental school a couple of weeks ago. This moment was what I had viewed for a long time as the precipice, the ultimate, the “everything I was working for” for 12 straight years. I say 12 years because even in high school I was a three-sport athlete involved in multiple clubs and activities and AP classes, and I was determined to never let my grades slip. My mom tells stories of me not leaving the dinner table most nights way beyond the time everyone else went to bed. She would try to stay up with me, but eventually her eyes would grow heavy, and she knew she had to be up early the next morning. She would give me a hug and say she was proud of me, and then quietly shut her bedroom door and allow me to keep working. College was no different other than that my mom was not there to witness the countless nights of studying, writing and completing assignments. I was on my own, but I was still just as determined to succeed in every metric. While some may say this sounds like admirable dedication and hard work, what I know to be true is that the underlying motivation for me was actually fear: fear of being a failure, fear of being a disappointment, fear of my life not being worth anything if I did not achieve.

As we continue in this season of gratitude and reflection on the meaning of Christ’s birth, I am especially grateful for the time I spent at the 2021 Emerging Leaders in Dentistry Conference. On Friday, October 29, 2021, I made my way with classmates Rachel Wians and Malory Peterson through the Minneapolis airport with the destination of Athens, Georgia in our sights. That weekend, we gathered with Christian dentists of all stages to reflect on what it means to be Christ’s image bearers in our field. Held in the spirit of passing wisdom on to future generations of Christian dentists, this conference has deeply impacted my vision and mission for living as a believer in the field of dentistry.