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Michael Bundy certainly didn’t plan on spending his next 16 years after he graduated from Caesar Rodney High School in college. But for this former Rider – who just graduated first in his class from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine – one step has led to another.
From Delaware to Florida to Massachusetts, Bundy has followed a winding route through academia, but his next step, a residency to learn how to become an oral surgeon, is taking him farthest as he travels across the country to Los Angeles.
However, no matter where he’s lived, Dover’s always had a special place for him.
“It always feels more normal here than anywhere else,” he said.
Focusing on academics
Bundy’s journey began when he attended Florida A&M University in Tallahassee to study pharmacology after graduating high school in 1998. A couple of his cousins were pharmacists, so Bundy said when it came time to pick a major on his one and only college application that’s what he choose.
With the help of a scholarship, he spent the next six years earning the professional degree and ended up graduating first in his class. Bundy, who always had good grades in high school, although he also focused on athletics such as basketball and soccer, said with his academic scholarship studying became No. 1 priority.
“You do what you need to do to keep up and then you do a little more and it puts you over the top,” he said.
Although it’s sometimes difficult to balance academics with other activities, Bundy said there’s another reason he’s excelled academically.
He still remembers the encouragement of Jean Pepper, his first-grade teacher at W. Reily Brown Elementary. In fact, every Christmas Eve he still brings her his report card and said he gets nervous that he won’t have college grades posted by then.
And Bundy’s advice to other college students is similar to what he heard from teachers in high school, including an AP History teacher who wouldn’t let him quit the class when he wanted to. Bundy said it’s always rough starting off in something new and he’s wanted to stop, but by hanging in just a little longer it becomes possible.
Switching gears
The switch from pharmacy to dental came after Bundy first grew interested when he participated in a minority public health research program at Harvard University in the summer of 2001 and was placed in a dental office.
Michael Bundy certainly didn’t plan on spending his next 16 years after he graduated from Caesar Rodney High School in college. But for this former Rider – who just graduated first in his class from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine – one step has led to another.
From Delaware to Florida to Massachusetts, Bundy has followed a winding route through academia, but his next step, a residency to learn how to become an oral surgeon, is taking him farthest as he travels across the country to Los Angeles.
However, no matter where he’s lived, Dover’s always had a special place for him.
“It always feels more normal here than anywhere else,” he said.
Focusing on academics
Bundy’s journey began when he attended Florida A&M University in Tallahassee to study pharmacology after graduating high school in 1998. A couple of his cousins were pharmacists, so Bundy said when it came time to pick a major on his one and only college application that’s what he choose.
With the help of a scholarship, he spent the next six years earning the professional degree and ended up graduating first in his class. Bundy, who always had good grades in high school, although he also focused on athletics such as basketball and soccer, said with his academic scholarship studying became No. 1 priority.
“You do what you need to do to keep up and then you do a little more and it puts you over the top,” he said.
Although it’s sometimes difficult to balance academics with other activities, Bundy said there’s another reason he’s excelled academically.
He still remembers the encouragement of Jean Pepper, his first-grade teacher at W. Reily Brown Elementary. In fact, every Christmas Eve he still brings her his report card and said he gets nervous that he won’t have college grades posted by then.
And Bundy’s advice to other college students is similar to what he heard from teachers in high school, including an AP History teacher who wouldn’t let him quit the class when he wanted to. Bundy said it’s always rough starting off in something new and he’s wanted to stop, but by hanging in just a little longer it becomes possible.
Switching gears
The switch from pharmacy to dental came after Bundy first grew interested when he participated in a minority public health research program at Harvard University in the summer of 2001 and was placed in a dental office.
“I like the patient contact,” he said.
Bundy was studying with a friend who also was in pharmacy school when they both started saying that what they really wanted to do was become dentists. It was a joke between the two until they actually got a prep-test book and decided to go for it.
They made a pact that they would apply to all the same schools and make sure they attended the same, no matter whether it was a first choice or not. Amazingly, both were accepted into Harvard’s dental school, which only takes 35 students per year.
“It was kind of crazy that both of us got in,” he said.
So it was off to Boston for two years of medical school, followed by two more in the School of Dental Medicine.
Bundy said most dental students at Harvard specialize in some particular area and ironically he told anyone who asked he was open to everything but oral surgery.
The extra six years of school was daunting, but Bundy said he finally admitted he liked it. That was particularly true after he had an externship that took him to Mexico to help with cleft lip and palate surgeries. An externship is generally shorter than the more commonly known internship.
Bundy will begin on that specialty with a six-year residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center to specialize in oral and maxillo facial surgery as well as finishing medical school.
His mother Mary Bundy said she’s amazed at her son’s academic path.
“To get through that course of study would have been plenty, but to do so well,” she said shaking her head about his success.
