Since graduating from College of The Albemarle’s (COA) Medical Lab Tech program in 2015, Jordan Rock has spent her days analyzing blood, tissue and other bodily fluids.
It’s not a job for everyone one Rock readily admits, but it’s the perfect job for her.
“I’ve always been a science nerd,” said Rock, a 2009 graduate of Manteo High School. “I love that I see all sorts of science and technology in action, but I’m helping people at the same time.”
Rock realized she wanted to work as a lab tech during high school. That’s when a senior class project had her researching careers she might want to pursue. Rock realized she liked biomedical engineering and arranged to job shadow an Medical Lab Tech at The Outer Banks Hospital. She spent a week watching the testing and saw the blood samples, as well as other bodily fluids.
“You see some icky things,” Rock admitted. “But once I got deeper into it, I loved the science and learning about how your blood reflects things in your overall health. Physicians use a variety of bodily fluids in diagnosing conditions. It was fascinating to me.”
“We’re providing the lab work,” Rock added, “to help the doctor to come to a diagnosis.”
After earning her Associate in Applied Science as a Medical Lab Tech, Rock has worked for LabCorp as a technical specialist. She landed the job only a few months after graduating from COA and has remained there, putting all the skills she learned in the classroom into action in the lab. During the past two years of working as a Medical Lab Tech, Rock said she has felt thoroughly prepared.
“I’ve been drawing on everything I’ve learned from the MLT program,” Rock said, adding that every day, she relies on the lab procedures she learned at COA.
Working as a lab technician is a job Rock dearly loves and she was just promoted to single nucleotide polymorphism specialist. It’s a mouthful of a title, and although the work can be complicated, it has Rock doing even more of what she loves.
Now, she’s doing DNA testing which means she could be helping process test results for those looking for answers about their ancestry, or variations in DNA, or assisting with criminal investigations to provide postmortem identifications.
It’s a job that allows Rock to delve a little deeper into a career she loves.
“The Medical Lab Tech program at COA set me on the ground running toward what I wanted to do,” Rock said. “It sent me out with a degree that got me hired immediately.”