Page 4 - Behind The Smile - Winter 2016

Logan Monighan - Blending Art and Science
If you were in the Clinic this summer, you might have seen Logan, a young woman, among the many faces around your dental chair. Logan would not have looked out of place. The only person who might have been surprised to see her there would have been her younger self as Logan rst came to the Clinic as a patient. Now she is on the other side of the chair, shad- owing Dr. Long and applying for admission to dental school. While there is something tting about her return to the Clinic, there was nothing inevitable about it. Her personal experience and talents have, however, equipped her for a career in dentistry.
Logan was born in Seoul, South Korea and was adopted and grew up in Robesonia, near Reading, PA. She then embarked on a se- ries of cleft lip and palate repairs
Now she is on the other side of the chair, shadowing Dr. Long and applying for admission to dental school.
through her childhood and ado- lescence. While particular times, such as a bone graft in 4th grade and the often badly phrased questions about her appearance from other children, demanded a
great deal of her either physically or emotionally, she also gratefully recalls the support of Clinic sta and the emotional strength of her parents. The latter taught her
to see a question about her at nose or the shape of her mouth not as an act of teasing but as “a teaching moment”; an approach that Logan has tried to adopt throughout her life.
As a child Logan had no interest in math or science. What gave her most joy was anything artistic. In preschool she mem- orably refused to draw with
fat crayons, asking for colored pencils because they were more appropriate to her talent. Over the years she took up sketching,
Page 4 ___________________________ Lancaster Cleft Palate Clinic ••• Behind the Smile eMagazine ••• Winter 2016