Welcome to my e-portfolio. Here you will find a story of a girl who decided to turn her life and career into 360 degrees by moving to another country with a lot of ambitions and desires, but zero percent of English language in her head and background. It wasn’t a smooth and an easy path for me, on the contrary it’s was a big challenge that helped me to build up my personality.
My name is Nastassia Liaushun. I was born and raised in Belarus, beautiful country situated right in the heart of the Eastern Europe. I have been always fascinated with dentistry since I was a little girl. However, my first dental experience was far away from being pleasant and it left bad memories in my young unprotected soul. Since then I was trying to avoid dentists as much as I could and I changed my mind to become one.
However time passed and all my fears went away. New dreams replaced old dreams. My life was going smoothly and everything was  predictable. I finished high school, went to University and was planning to connect my life with teaching French language and literature. However, as we all know “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans”.
In 2011 I moved to USA and my whole life changed. I could never believe I would live and study in this country. America had always seemed to be so far from Europe, so different, unusual and enigmatic. It was like another planet, another world that is hard to explore and understand, and that you can only try to get a little piece of it by watching movies, reading books or listening to the music. Moreover, I was studying French as a foreign language all my life and it even was my major at school and at University. When I moved to New York, I had to start my life from the scratch, I had to learn new language, to get used to new culture and people. Few years back I would not believe If someone told me I would be a dental hygiene student. And now look at me, I am graduating in less than a month! I am so proud that I got accepted into the dental hygiene program in New York City College of Technology in 2017.
Throughout these two years in dental hygiene school I have gained invaluable and priceless experience and skills. Every single day taught me something special and useful. I met wonderful people, I was guided by professional faculty members, I had an opportunity to work with different patient population.
I have learned that dental hygiene is not just a teeth cleaning profession and a dental hygienist is not just a “cleaning lady”.
Dental hygiene is a true profession that helps to educate, to direct and to guide every single patient toward achievement of an optimal oral health.
The role of a dental hygienist in a patient education and care is incredibly important. A dental hygienist is one of the first people who have an opportunity to notice any changes in the patient’s oral health and to suspect that something is wrong with that patient. Dental hygiene professionals who are knowledgeable and well educated can better understand their patients’ needs and fears, they can find the right words and give proper advice, they can create the right strategies of treatment, and they are able to guide their patients towards better products and services.
 I am excited to enter a new chapter of my professional life and to become a registered dental hygienist. I will try my best to become a true professional who is always proud of her job and who keeps working on her self-development throughout all her life. My goal is to show to people that dental hygiene and dentistry in general are not terrifying and should not be associated with unpleasant experience. I want to become a dental hygienist whose patients will be happy to come back to the office every single time.
