Maria Roque, third-year dental student at Marquette University’s School of Dentistry, had her first experience with dentistry when she was about 11 years old.
“I had a lot of need for dental work, and our pediatric doctor recommended a pediatric dentist. We went to his office, and he very graciously took my sisters and I as patients,” Roque said.
“My experience with this dentist was a great one and it kind of made me want to become a dentist when I was little.”
Despite this desire from her youth, Roque pursued a business degree at the undergraduate level, but this desire to practice dentistry remained within her and with her while pursuing a career in business.
“I always had this little seed of curiosity that was still growing, questioning ‘what if I would have gone that path?’."
Roque recognized that her desire to work directly with a client or a patient was not being fulfilled in her corporate job.
"I was kind of sitting behind a computer every day,” Roque said. “So, there was just a moment where I was like ‘I need to give it a try, I have nothing to lose, I just need to give it a try, so I did. I decided to let go of my job so I could go back to school and get ready for applying to dental school.”
Roque left her corporate job and decided to go to school and get her pre-requirements to apply to dental school. She applied to a couple schools with Marquette, her alma mater, as her priority, and was accepted to Marquette’s dental school. Roque admits leaving everything to pursue dentistry was hard to do.
“It was very risky because I had a good job, I already had a college degree, so it was not an easy decision to go back to school because I would be considered nontraditional since I didn’t do the whole science degree and then right away go into dentistry, so there was that factor of taking more time and more money to do it, but I’m very happy I did, I really enjoy it.”
Dental school has come with challenges for Roque, but she feels that, at the same time, it’s very rewarding.
“There’s a lot of growth that you also have as a person learning how to navigate working with different people as you get different personalities in the chair that you have to treat.”
Roque expresses how there’s a lot of independence with navigating dental school.
“There’s no real book to help you kind of get through it you just have to get through it every day, and just keep moving forward," Roque said.
Roque does express that there is a fun side, even an artistic side to dentistry.
"I get to do things that I enjoy doing, like working with my hands, restoring teeth, so there’s an artistic side to it where you have to shape the tooth. You work with your hands, so it’s very tangible.”
According to Roque, dental school tends to be rigorous, with the first and second year consisting of a heavy workload.
“We would have almost 3 tests every week and a couple quizzes every week, and, especially for me not coming from a science background, my first semester was a steep learning curve because it’s very different when you have a full load of science classes versus business classes, it’s a different type of demand, and different ways of studying.”
The challenge of balancing classwork and lab work arose in the second year of dental school, where students are expected to do almost the same amount of classwork along with lab work in the stimulatory labs where they start learning on mannequins.
“It was long nights just staying in labs trying to get the work needed for the next day’s labs, and, then on top of that, coming home late to study for whatever quizzes and exams we had to take.”
Currently in her third year, Roque expresses that students are mostly 100% in-clinic practicing on live patients, but they don’t necessarily have a guidebook to follow for this.
“The vast majority of patients we have at school are Hispanic and they don’t speak English, and there’s very few students who actually speak Spanish, so I’ve been able to help classmates and students from other classes to be able to communicate with their patients. Just seeing the patients feeling alivianados – alleviated - because they’re able to get their point across because I can help translate is rewarding.”
-Maria Roque
“What I’ve learned is that we have to work closely with the class above us to learn the differences from simulation lab and clinic," Roque said. "And also working with the faculty in clinic for how to treatment plan for patients.”
Unlike his sister, Javier Roque, bilingual member services representative for National Funeral Directors Association, hasn’t pursued school beyond a bachelor’s degree. Seeing the demands and stresses that his sister encounters as a dental student, he provides his support in his own way.
“I try to treat her by covering any need for food to show my support for her. Covering that need for her on heavy days of staying up late to study where food is one less thing for her to worry about, one less thing on her plate.”
Now, in her third year, Roque gets to work with patients, which is the one thing she had lacked in her corporate job.
“It’s very rewarding because you get people that come in with pain and then you also help educate them. There’s a lot of people regardless of age who don’t know how to brush their teeth correctly, and I didn’t realize the effect that just teaching them how to brush their teeth could have in preventing problems for the people in the future, so it’s very rewarding from that perspective.”
According to the 2020 Census, Milwaukee’s Hispanic Population rose from 17.32% in the 2010 Census to 19% in 2020, and Roque is seeing herself being able to provide dental care to patients from this community that she considers herself a part of.
“There’s been a lot of people from my community, Hispanic people that come into the clinics at school, and I get kids who are very young and have a lot of cavities and I feel a responsibility to stop it where it is and prevent future ones, so I reenforce the importance of oral hygiene,” Roque said. “ I also talk to the parents and enforce the knowledge of the impact of the kids not brushing their teeth every day and flossing, so we have this role to educate people too.”
Roque not only provides dental care for patients, she has been able to aid her peers by providing translation between the patient and her classmates that the patient has been assigned to for care.
“The vast majority of patients we have at school are Hispanic and they don’t speak English, and there’s very few students who actually speak Spanish, so I’ve been able to help classmates and students from other classes to be able to communicate with their patients. Just seeing the patients feeling alivianados – alleviated - because they’re able to get their point across because I can help translate is rewarding.”
Roque enjoys communicating with her patients in the language that is comfortable for them, with Spanish feeling comfortable for her too.
“Just talking to my patients in their native language feels comfortable for me because it’s also my first language and I’m able to explain the dental terms in Spanish and in ways that they can understand, so I get to use my Spanish almost every day.”
Being able to aid her patients is something Roque loves and recognizes the responsibility she holds when they place their trust in her.
“I do enjoy the process of being able to help a person who’s depending on you to alleviate a pain or prevent a problem from getting worse. They trust you so much that they’re willing to sit in the chair and allow you to work on something as important as their teeth, so, for me, I really enjoy the fact that I am making it a responsibility for me to do the best that I can to treat someone and to help them.”
Roque, born and raised in Milwaukee's south side, hopes to work within communities like the ones she grew up in once she finishes dental school.
“I want to make it a priority to educate people on the importance of their oral health, that it’s something that, as parents especially, they need to reinforce with their kids, even when they just have 3 teeth in their mouth, oral health is important to start working on. The habits that they build at home will keep moving and will be transgenerational.”
Roque is honest about the challenges that come with pursuing dental school but encourages girls and other Hispanic individuals to pursue this if they are feeling a desire towards dentistry. “You don't want to live with regrets, and you want to say that at least you gave it a try, so just take a risk and do the best that you can with anything you want to pursue in life, and it's possible.”
“We need to focus a lot on our strengths and not be afraid of us being the minorities and that even while having less resources we can still move forward, and we could be the change we have to be for future generations so that they don't feel the way we feel being the minorities.”
- Maria Roque
Being only 1 out of 4 Hispanic students in her cohort of 104 dental students, Roque recognizes that Hispanics might find themselves facing greater challenges when pursuing dentistry.
She recognizes that she has classmates that come from past generations of dentists or doctors and that have grown up with personal tutors and resources that, oftentimes, Hispanics might not have the privilege of having. “It’s hard to feel like you could relate to someone at school, but there's also another side to the coin and that is that we’re unique.”
Roque realizes the benefits that come with being a Bilingual Hispanic in dentistry.
“We have a lot of skills that most people don't have and one of them is a language, another one is being able to leverage a lot of the interpersonal skills that our culture gives us, like the ability to empathize with people, the ability to be very sensitive to people.”
Roque highlights the importance of looking at the strengths a Hispanic individual has.
“We need to focus a lot on our strengths and not be afraid of us being the minorities and that, even while having less resources, we can still move forward, and we could be the change we have to be for future generations so that they don't feel the way we feel being the minorities,” Roque said.
Roque calls for Hispanics to embrace their uniqueness being a minority in dentistry.
“Just look at the positive side and embrace being one of few people, be proud of yourselves and be leaders in that sense and be proud that you are doing this with less resources than most people do.”
About the Author
Giselle Martin Gomez
Giselle is an editor for Milwaukee Women Today, and a junior at Mount Mary University majoring in Spanish and Writing for New Media. She is passionate about creating social change and breaking barriers with both of her languages in the writing world.
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