Many seniors at FHC fill their time with rigorous courses like AP Biology and AP Chemistry, and although it was an option, senior Hayden Lutz chose a different academic path through the Kent Career Technical Center, or KCTC.
“I really wanted to do KCTC because it’s a great way to expose yourself to what you want to do, if you know what [career you want],” Hayden said. “I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to do something in the healthcare field, and so KCTC was a way that I could double-check right before college if that’s really what I wanted to do.”
Hayden has known she has wanted to go into healthcare for a long time. At first, she wanted to be a vet, before being faced with the reality of a dying pet. Since then, she has chosen healthcare as her future profession. At KCTC, she is able to do the Nurse Tech program, and is the only student from FHC in the program. She is put into experiences she can’t get from biology or chemistry classes and gets real-life expertise working with mannequins, other classmates, and so much more.
“I’m definitely [getting] hands-on experience with patients,” Hayden said. “We practice on each other in the lab. We practice on mannequins, which is what they call them, and we practice on other people in different classes. [I get] that hands-on experience that I literally cannot get anywhere else, and [with] all of the equipment there.”
Hayden also gets unique experiences through KCTC in other ways. Just recently, Hayden found out she got a unique internship that is only offered to the students of KCTC. Not only does it give her an early chance at an internship in a real hospital and work experience, but a prestigious role as well.
“We have internships with Corewell Health and Trinity [Health],” Hayden said. “Last week, I had an interview with Corewell, and I’m waiting to hear back from them, and that’s for a student worker position that’s only obtained through KCTC. So no one from any other school can get it. It’s only from KCTC, and it’s only those couple of 100 students that get to participate in it.”
Although there are lots of benefits to KCTC, and of course, Hayden loves it, not everything is perfect with the program. Hayden would like to attend schools like the University of Michigan or Purdue University in her future, but schools such as these do not see KCTC as prestigious as it is. They value AP classes and validate them much more. So even though KCTC gives her once-in-a-lifetime chances and hands-on experience, it has its tolls and consequences.
“All of the colleges out of state that I’ve applied to, they don’t even know what KCTC is, and so an AP credit would look much better than a KCTC program,” Hayden said. “In the end, I [still] decided that [KCTC] is definitely something that I want to do.”
With the prestigious program comes lots of work as well. On top of her other classes, she is responsible for a test a week and much more work beyond that. The time between is quick, but she does her best to truly put the work in. She has noticed that even if it doesn’t make it the easiest, it still benefits her and makes sure she is adequately prepared.
“We have a test every single week, and sometimes I’m not really prepared for that,” Hayden said. “I don’t really have a ton of buffer time in between them, but that’s actually a good thing, because it’s preparing me for how it’s going to be in the real world. I’m not going to get time in between each patient, or time in between each person that I’m visiting. I just need to be really ready for that and ready for anything that comes up.”
Other than the unique experiences, Hayden chose to do KCTC because of her passion for nursing. She has an aspiration to help others. With nursing, her personality and care for others are able to be portrayed and used to the best of her abilities. She wants to help with babies, and even though there will be hard times in the profession, she is ready to be there to help when they can’t help themselves.
“Working with people is just so easy for me,” Hayden said. “I always want to help people, and specifically for the specific field that I want to go into, I’m helping people at their most vulnerable state in life, which is when they’re babies. They literally cannot help themselves, and so they need support, and I am someone [who] can help them go through that. I want to help their families too, and I want to help the people surrounding them in the environment and all of that.”
