LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – As we get older, you may realize you wanted to do a lot more with your life that you didn’t get a chance to.
If you always thought it was too late to follow your dreams, think again. That’s the message we got from one Las Vegas Valley mom who graduated from UNLV and now has her eyes on medical school.
FOX5 met Krista Whitley, 45, at her home where she showed us all her text books.
Whitley told us she started with the basics for her science degree, getting text books such as “Organic Chemistry 1 and 2 for Dummies.”
This was a degree the mom of two and retired entrepreneur never saw coming.
“One night at the dinner table my teenage son says to me, ‘So are you going to serve us dinner for the rest of your life?’ and I immediately, in a way that only a teenage boy can call you out, felt I needed to do more with my life,” Whitley said.
That night, she applied to CSN where she was accepted right away.
After receiving her associates degree at CSN, Whitley applied to UNLV.
“Things that seemed to be scary when I was 18 or 19, like calculus, in my 40s just felt like they were opportunities for me to stretch my brain in different ways,” Whitley said.
Whitley took as many credits as she could and took everything from math classes to organic chemistry, she even squeezed in summer courses.
“I hated solving for ‘x’ the only ‘x’ I wanted to talk about was my ex-boyfriend or my friend’s ex. I was not interested in solving for ‘x,’” Whitley said as she joked about her math classes.
However, Whitley quickly learned education was not how she remembered it to be.
“I was carrying all my books and binders because I thought that’s what all the students did. No one does that. They really bring their laptops,” Whitley said.
Whitley said home and assignments were a family affair. As she juggled being a mom to two high school students, they all discussed their classes at the dinner table.
“I found that our entire family became very focused around homework. Homework very much became a family skill,” Whitley said.
During Whitley’s time at UNLV, she also did research in the emergency department at UMC which motivated her to pursue medical school. But first, Whitley must get through her online masters course from NYU.
However, she does acknowledge she will be in her 50’s by the time she is done with medical school.
“The time is going to pass either way. If those years are going to pass, and I’m going to be in my mid 50s, I want to focus doing what I love,” Whitley said.
Whitley said she hopes to attend medical school in Las Vegas and eventually become a doctor here to help bridge the gap when it comes to the doctor shortage.
When asked if she has any regrets of not doing this 20 years ago, she said, “I would have been a terrible student in 1998. I would have been in it for the parties. No way I would have been a science student.”
Have a story idea or tip? You can reach reporter Victoria Saha at [email protected]
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