December 22, 2017
Meet Raven Hefner in our Medical Laboratory Science program.
Meet Raven Hefner in the UAMS Department of Laboratory SciencesMedical Laboratory Science program. She is our featured Student Highlight #UAMSCHP
My name is Raven Hefner, and I am honored to be given the opportunity to share my story with the health care community! I was born in Jacksonville North Carolina at the Marine Base Camp Lejune, Oorah! Most of my life has been spent in Conway, Arkansas but I recently moved to Bryant for the shorter commute to Little Rock.
My mother has had the most substantial influence in my life. I would spend weekends and summers in the break room at the V.A. Hospital while she was hard at work in the Laboratory. What started out as pure boredom, developed into a deep curiosity for all things science after that first look under the microscope.
We would culture phones and door knobs; even our own phlegm! Disgusting right? It became an obsession. Throughout my teens I researched fields that involved math and science. I even became a Cosmetologist to express my artistic aspirations; but nothing fit quite as snug as medical laboratory sciences.
If I could take a Kodak moment 10 or 15 years from now, I would see me somewhere between a BSL4 Hot agent laboratory and investigating the epidemiology of an outbreak in a third world country.
Being a working wife and mother of two young boys while pursuing my Bachelor’s Degree has proven to be the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done. Upon graduation this December I will apply at both the V.A. and St. Vincent, where I recently accepted a Student Med. Tech. position while finishing my clinical rotations.
My family is my motivation, the stars are my limit and my never ending hunger for knowledge is my justification. As my fictional favorite Christopher McCandless once put it “Strong. You can do anything. You can go anywhere. Money, power is an illusion. It’s up here. You can be here.”
