Senior dreams of future in medicine

Whether he is giving someone a diagnosis or casting a broken bone, in his dream job as an emergency room doctor, Chris Jones would be working with his hands.

That’s part of what attracted Jones, a co-valedictorian at Greenwood Christian Academy, to science, he said.

Jones loved his chemistry class so much that he subscribed to the magazine “Popular Science” so he could learn more. What was printed didn’t matter; if the subject was science, he devoured it, he said.

“It was always weird stuff, but it didn’t matter. It was cool,” he said.

This Saturday he will graduate as one of three valedictorians at Greenwood Christian Academy. Next up, he plans to study biochemistry at the University of Indianapolis and then hopes to go on to become an emergency room doctor.

Being at the top of the class wasn’t a goal for Jones until he saw his class placing about two years ago. After he saw that he was one of a few that had snagged first place, he thought he should work to keep the class ranking, he said.

“In the first two years, it was just to do well,” he said. “Later I thought I could do this.”

He naturally excelled at science classes, acing tests and labs.

English was where he struggled. A freshman English paper almost made him falter out of the top spot, he said. He worked hard on those assignments and got some help from his co-valedictorians, whom he also helped with math and science when needed.

“Everything else was high enough that it balanced it out,” he said.

Jones’ outlet in school was his tech theater classes and working backstage on the school’s plays and shows, he said. For 45 minutes a day, he gets to build or paint a set and doesn’t have to think about anything else, he said.

He was in charge of a backstage area during a middle school show and was on the crew that helped Mary Poppins fly across the stage.

Working with his hands is something Jones enjoys, which is one of the reasons he wanted to go into the medical field. But he also wants to help people, he said.

He wants to help people get through some of the worse moments of their lives, whether they are getting care after being in a car accident, treating strep throat or casting a broken arm, he said.

“It is helping them in their worst moment,” he said. “It’s to help people.”

He will study at the University of Indianapolis. He has a relative who went through the school’s science program and later went to dental school, and that helped him decide go there, he said.

“If they got him to dental school, they can get me into med school,” Jones said.

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Name: Chris Jones

School: Valedictorian at Greenwood Christian Academy

GPA: 4.0

Extracurricular activities: Golf, tech theater.

Parents: William and Michelle Jones

College: University of Indianapolis

Major: Biochemistry

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