An Rx for a Bright Future

 The topic of college can scare or intimidate many high school students, but for senior Chloe Jo Fewins, the idea of college brings excitement. She has created a definite path going six years into her future. Beginning in the fall of 2016 Chloe Jo will be attending UMKC, working her way towards becoming a pharmacist.
Though Fewins is set on pharmacy school now, it hasn’t always been a part of the future that she had envisioned for herself. In the eighth grade Chloe Jo Fewins had her mind set on becoming a dentist and stuck with the plan for four years.
“My junior year I took a health careers class and realized how much I hated having to identify all of the body parts,” said Fewins. “I realized that I couldn’t be a dentist but I still wanted to be in the medical field because I love science and it pays well.”
After the decision to sway from dentistry, Chloe Jo referred back to her sophomore year when she had taken Chemistry I. As a typical high school student, Chloe Jo entered the new class with a mindset of wanting to learn something new, but was unaware of the influence that class would have on her. Fewins became very intrigued with the concept of chemistry. Throughout the year, Fewins, with the help of Morning Pruitt, let her excitement for chemistry flourish.
“The passion Chloe Jo had for chemistry was not evident in the beginning of the class,” said Pruitt. “It was definitely a change seen over time.”
In the beginning of Chloe Jo’s senior year, she hadn’t much of an idea of how her life was going to pan out. That was until her mother, Carrie Fewins, suggested that she become a pharmacist because of her love for Chemistry and her determination to work in a health career field.

“When she decided to pursue becoming a pharmacist, I thought she would be great at it as she loves math and science,” said Carrie. “I also thought it would be a rewarding career, both personally and financially.”

In the winter months of 2015, Chloe Jo went on a visit to UMKC and talked to the school’s pharmacy counselor. The trip consisted of the counselor talking about a new pharmaceutical program and finally Chloe Jo said, ‘why not?’ and applied.

The program is six years long, the first two years consisting of pre-req classes. Then, typically students have to reapply to be accepted into pharmacy school- which is four years. But, the new program allows students in the program to automatically be accepted into pharmacy school, guaranteeing the six years of education. The program is highly competitive, as there are only 40 seats in the program and about 250 applicants with a minimum of 30 on the ACT.

Chloe Jo was notified of her acceptance into the Early Assurance Pharmacy Program in February 2016.

“Once I found out I was accepted into the program I wasn’t about to go anywhere else,” said Chloe Jo.

The acceptance certainly sealed the deal of attending UMKC, but there were multiple other factors that helped influence Chloe Jo to consider UMKC in the first place. Coming from a small high school, Chloe Jo wants to be able to meet new people but also is excited to have smaller class sizes. Also, the location was a major key when Chloe Jo was looking at schools, being far away from home was never a part of her future plans.

“I like the location mainly because I could go home every weekend if I wanted to,” said Chloe Jo.

This summer Chloe Jo will be taking classes at JCCC to help prepare her for the start of next fall at UMKC.