Valencia College Stories

Medicine Man

Starting college in his 30s, David Greene discovered the life-changing power of education

— by Linda Shrieves

When David Greene was a kid, he was obsessed with cloning dinosaurs and bringing them back to life. That small boy dreamed of a career in gene editing.

Those dreams may have been derailed by difficult circumstances in his home life, but today, Greene – one of the finalists to be Valencia College’s Distinguished Graduate in 2024 – is chasing his dreams of a career in medicine.

Greene’s path to college zigged and zagged, but from the time he graduated from Winter Park High School in 2007, one thing has been a constant in his life: Taking care of people. After high school, Greene began working in a hospice, while earning a certified nursing assistant certification.

While working in the hospice field, Greene decided to attend Orlando Technical College to earn his licensed practical nursing certification. At first, he took the easiest classes he could – because, he says, “I was really afraid I would fail.”

He graduated with his LPN in 2009 – but doubts continued to plague him.
“I waited six months to take my boards,” recalls Greene. “I was terrified, but I passed on the first try.”

After earning his LPN certification, Greene moved on to another job, this time working in a group home for developmentally disabled adults. He stayed in that job for five years, before the group home was sold to another company.  At that point, Greene applied for a job at the hospice where he worked right out of high school – and they hired him on the spot.

Looking back, he realizes that his self-confidence was very low. “I was afraid to try new things. I was afraid, so I gravitated to the familiar,” he says.

But patients and administrators lavished praise on Greene. He won two in-house awards from his employer and was named “Clinician of the Year,” a national award from the company. He won yet another award in 2019, but still, he downplayed the accolades – at least to himself.

“At the time I was getting all these awards, I had no idea if it meant anything, or that it would look good on a resume,” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh, my patients like me.’ “

Yet working in the hospice field also taught Greene a lot about family dynamics – and he began to realize that his own family had been dysfunctional, beset by alcoholism.

“Hospice made me realize what a normal family is like. I thought what I went through was normal,” he says, reflecting on a chaotic home life. “Then at hospice, I saw how other families dealt with grief, and how other families treated each other, and I thought, ‘aha.’ ”

He also liked the hospice field because he really got to develop close relationships with his patients. “Hospice was nice because I got to work with patients in a much more personal way. A lot of patients said that I was a part of their family.”

Working with dying patients might have bothered many people, but Greene sought to bring solace to the patients and their families.

“I would deal with patients at 70, 80, 90 years old,” he says. “Generally, they had lived a long and healthy life. Being able to go in and help them understand what was going to happen next, it helped relieve their anxiety.”

 

Taking a big step

In 2020, more than a decade after graduating from high school, Greene decided to enroll at Valencia College, while working full-time. His goal at the time was to earn a nursing degree. Unsure how he would do in college, he signed up for only two classes: Algebra 1 and a New Student Experience class for students interested in healthcare professions.

“I had done abysmally in algebra in high school, and I thought, ‘I need to do well; I need to learn how to learn.’” Along the way, Greene discovered that he suffered from a mindset that plagues many college students – that if they fail a class, they can’t ever master that material.

“For a long time, I thought if I failed math, I’ll never be able to overcome that,” he says. “If I failed a class, I thought, ‘I‘m not good enough to go any further.’”

But with guidance from a Valencia College professor, he realized that he could reflect on his failures and, with hard work, overcome them.

Armed with that knowledge, he began taking tougher and tougher classes: biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry, statistics and even trigonometry and calculus. As he advanced through the classes, Greene realized that his plans and his goals had gradually changed. Instead of nursing, he began thinking about majoring in engineering or pre-med.

“I searched within myself and decided I really can’t give up the patient interactions, which is what I love to do every single day in health care,” he says. For guidance, he turned to one of his favorite Valencia College professors, Richard Sansone, who taught him Portuguese. “Sansone said, ‘Of course you should go into medicine. You’re a people person!’ ”

And today, after graduating from Valencia College in May 2024, David Greene is headed to UCF to major in biomedical science. From there, he plans to apply to medical school.

 

Advice for others nervous about college

For those students who delayed going to college – or those just graduating from high school but uncertain and scared about college – the 35-year-old Greene offers some advice.

“At Valencia, there are so many advantages,” he says. “It’s a soft introduction, but the experience is softer and easier for students who are young and afraid and scared, and don’t know how to speak up and assert for themselves. Having these small classes where they can collaborate with peers and professors, I would recommend it to anyone.”

Those relationships and small classes, he says, can help you find yourself.

“I’ve learned that anyone can accomplish anything if they really want to, but how much easier it is to accomplish those things when you are in a smaller community like this at Valencia,” Greene says. “Better relationships, better letters of recommendation. I’m grateful for those one-on-one relationships with professors and even fellow students. Those relationships are phenomenal and change you as a person. That’s what college has done for me – it’s changed me as a person.”