Carly Gubin ’12: If at First You Don’t Succeed, A Lesson in Perseverance

Carly Gubin ’12 played tennis at Hutchison and learned the importance of being part of a team. As a dentist, she relies on a team when caring for patients.
Starting college at Ohio State University, Carly Gubin ’12 was undecided. She had always been interested in fashion and during high school had visited New York, completed internships at boutiques, and even learned how to sew. She assumed that’s what she would study.

While she was still thinking about her options, Ohio State invited representatives from different schools to come and talk to undecided students and share opportunities available to them. “One Monday, the dental school came to talk to us,” Gubin remembered. “I called my parents and said, ‘I’m switching my major.’ This was a month or two into school. They said, ‘Whoa, whoa, before you switch your major, come home, shadow a dentist, make sure you like it.’ ”

“Life is not a straight line, and detours are part of the journey.”

But Gubin’s mind was made up. 

“I always liked math and science, but I didn’t take any AP classes at Hutchison. I knew that science would be a bit challenging for me, and I would have to work a little harder,” she explained. “I took all the science classes, I joined the dental club, and I worked at the dental school just to get exposure.” One summer, she interned with a general dentist, an oral surgeon, an orthodontist, and a periodontist.

Gubin had reasons for gravitating toward dentistry. She didn’t love the fashion courses she took during her first semester, and as she heard more about the fashion industry, it sounded too unstable to her. She wanted a job that would be more secure. She also knew she didn’t want a desk job. As a dentist, she would be moving around, using her hands, talking to people, and helping them. She liked that dentists offer patients confidence and improved health. Lastly, what she learned about cosmetic dentistry appealed to her fashion sensibility.
 
“There’s so much more to dentistry than just fillings and cleanings. They were explaining how doing a full rehab of someone’s smile gives them confidence. That reminded me that what I wanted to do in fashion was make people confident and give them self-esteem to live their lives. They talked about the cosmetic aspect of dentistry, how dentistry is in high demand, and that you can always get a job. That made me certain that I wanted to switch to dentistry.”

She remembers how surprised her father, Dr. Steve Gubin of the Stern Clinic, was at the time. “I thought he was going to have a stroke. I had told my whole family, ‘I’m not going to be in the medical field, I don’t like blood, I don’t like the hospital.’ I had never even talked about dentistry before. I think he literally thought that something was wrong with me.”

Building a Strong Foundation

After graduating from Ohio State on a pre-med track, Gubin took the Dental Admission Test (DAT). Unfortunately, it was around the same time that her mother passed away. She applied to different dental schools, but an advisor told her that her DAT scores weren’t competitive. She wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get any admissions offers.

Undeterred, she decided to move to New York, where she had always wanted to live, to figure out her next steps. She got an internship with a dentist that she said was much more than just shadowing and gave her great exposure to the practice of dentistry. While she was thinking about applying to dental school again, she had a great idea—she would apply to dental hygiene school. It was a last-minute decision, and there was only one hygiene school still accepting applications. She had one week to apply.

“My only choice was New York University,” she said. “I ended up getting in, and I knew I had to make all A’s. I had to study my butt off to make sure my DAT score was great. I went to hygiene school for two years at NYU, and I ended up becoming involved in the dental school, where I shadowed a lot of dental students.”

After two years of hygiene school, she took the DAT again, and her scores were much more competitive. She applied to NYU Dental School and was accepted.

In retrospect, Gubin said she’s glad she wasn’t admitted to dental school the first time because attending hygiene school for two years gave her a strong foundation and put her ahead of many of her dental school classmates.

“The first couple of courses in hygiene school are the same in dental school,” she explained. “You’re learning the numbers of the teeth, you’re learning anatomy, you’re learning all the dental terms. When all my friends in dental school took their first course, I was helping them out because they didn’t know any of the dental terms, didn’t know the anatomy, didn’t know the tools.”

Dental school is very fast-paced as well, she explained. A course in hygiene school might be a semester long, while in dental school it’s only a month long. While her classmates were studying for those classes, she was getting ahead in the next classes.

Hygiene school gave her experience with patients too. “You start clinical in the third year at dental school, and all my friends were scared to touch patients. They didn’t know how to interact with patients. In hygiene school, you have your own patients in your second year, and you’re doing cleanings. I had already seen many patients, so I just dove right in. Clinical was easy for me. I loved it.”

Lessons from Tennis and Hutchison

Gubin played tennis while at Hutchison and is still great friends with her teammates, sisters Maggie Leavell ’12 and Neely Leavell ’12. The team won the state championship one year. 

“With sports, you’re not always going to win, so you have to be resilient and work harder the next time to accomplish your goals,” she explained. “Tennis helped me with that, because if I won every single match or if everything was perfect, then I wouldn’t have learned anything. Some days practice goes badly, or the match doesn’t go well. The next time you try to do better.”

Gubin clearly took this lesson to heart with her push to get into dental school.

She also learned a lot about teamwork. Even though they were a small team, she remembered that everyone had a certain role, and they worked together.

“If you needed to step up, you did, and that’s how life is. Just because you have a certain role doesn’t mean that you can’t help others with their role. That’s such a great life lesson.” 

She credits coach Phil Chamberlain with giving her support and wanting her to succeed both on the court and in the classroom. She also met frequently with Gretchen Gintz, upper school learning specialist, to learn about planning and time management. “I used those tools to plan and to get organized, and that’s how I got through dental school, honestly. Even today, I still use a planner.” 

Gubin now lives in Austin, Texas, and works for a private practice under the mentorship of another dentist who has been in practice for more than 20 years. 

“Hutchison taught me that if you want something and you work hard, you can achieve anything,” Gubin said. A lot of times in high school, you feel like, ‘Oh, there’s no way I can be a doctor. There’s no way I can be a dentist. I don’t have the grades, or I’m not in the top AP courses.’ But at the end of the day, if you try hard, work hard, you can do anything you want.

“Life is not a straight line, and detours are a part of the journey,” she added. “Because I didn’t get into dental school the first time, I got into hygiene school, and because of hygiene school, I am where I am today. If I had to do it all over again, I would go to hygiene school again before dental school. Everything happens for a reason, and if you don’t get something right away, don’t give up.”
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