{"id":14397,"date":"2023-05-16T13:46:44","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T17:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/?p=14397"},"modified":"2023-05-16T13:46:45","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T17:46:45","slug":"all-the-right-moves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/all-the-right-moves\/","title":{"rendered":"All the right moves<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Father
(L-R) UMES senior Brandon Wagner poses with his father and UMES 2004 graduate, Stephen Wagner, at the elder Wagner\u2019s dental practice in Pocomoke City, Md.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As Brandon Wagner<\/strong> made his decision on where he would attend college it came down to a few factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many of his classmates had already made their choices, Wagner looked at all of his options before concluding that there was no place like home, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was born and raised in Princess Anne and I\u2019ve lived here my whole life,\u201d Wagner, a Washington High School graduate, said. \u201cI wanted to stay close to home and be proud of where I came from, so that was a big part of my decision to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagner\u2019s pick of UMES mirrors that of his father, Stephen, also a Princess Anne-area native, who graduated from the school just 19 years earlier when Brandon was a toddler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that wasn\u2019t the only similarity that the Wagners shared, they both chose biology\/pre-dentistry majors. Brandon is planning to continue his graduate studies at the University of Maryland Dental School which\u2014wait for it\u2014his father also attended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like always following in someone\u2019s footsteps,\u201d Brandon said. \u201cI like doing things my own way and say that I did it myself, but it\u2019s setting up how my dad did it. He came here, he went to University of Maryland Dental School, and that\u2019s where I\u2019m going. It just lined up perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the coincidence isn\u2019t lost on Brandon, also a member of the Richard A. Henson Honors Program like his father, it wasn\u2019t something he planned to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that choosing dentistry was initially his \u201clast choice\u201d as he shadowed a number of medical professionals, ultimately not finding interest in those specific disciplines. Once he relented and shadowed his dad, he knew that it was meant for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter one day, it was the most interesting thing I\u2019ve done,\u201d Brandon Wagner said. \u201cSo, I kind of fell in love with it and that\u2019s where I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Stephen Wagner<\/strong>, having his son follow in the very same footsteps is something he hoped for, but it wasn\u2019t something that he forced on Brandon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t plan it that way, but I don\u2019t think you could script something like this any better than that,\u201d he said. \u201cI was happy when he decided to go to UMES. I told him at the end of the day, your degree is your degree, and I went to UMES and I was very happy with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI met some of the greatest friends I ever had. People and professors who had a major impact on my life. I think he would agree that he made the right move.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the elder Wagner, the chance to return back where he received his degree is an exciting moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo know that I\u2019m going to be there at graduation on May 19 and to just step foot back on campus and to watch him step on the same stage that I graduated on, that\u2019s a pretty cool feeling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he begins his next step in his journey, Brandon Wagner said his experience at UMES was one where he was able to make the most of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the school gets a negative reputation sometimes for being a smaller school, but I think you can get just as good of an education (here) as you can compared to anywhere else if you put in the work and apply yourself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Brandon Wagner made his decision on where he would attend college it came down to a few factors. While many of his classmates had already made their choices, Wagner looked at all of his options before concluding that there was no place like home, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. \u201cI was born and…Read more All the right moves<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1559,"featured_media":14402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-14397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14397"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=14397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}