Since Cori Rogers graduated from Roxboro Community School (RCS) in 2013, she has gone on to a rewarding healthcare career that, she said, humbles her and reminds her daily how lucky she and many others are.
“I loved my time at RCS,” said Cori, “and even though a lot of things have changed since I graduated, I still think of those days often and I miss the fun times I had there.” Those memories include hanging out with friends in the parking lot, yearbook class, softball practice and games, and “having a great class to graduate with.” One memory that stands out is her senior night on the softball team. She said, “My teammates made me a banner to hang on the dugout and gave me yellow roses that were painted like softballs.”
She attended RCS from seventh through 12th grade and said she was “really sad” after her graduation because she had spent six years of her at the school and “it was hard not being able to go back and see your friends and classmates and . . . favorite teachers all the time.”
Cori now lives in Cary with her fiancé and works full time as an ultrasound technologist at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill. She said she is a diagnostic medical sonographer, which means she uses ultrasound equipment to take internal images of the body that help diagnose medical conditions.
“Some of the ultrasounds I perform include liver and kidney transplants,” she said, along with first trimester obstetrical images, ultrasound-guided muscle and soft tissue biopsies and neonatal brain scans.
Cori earned her degree in diagnostic medical sonography and an associate’s degree in medical sonography from Central Carolina Community College. Prior to that, she worked as a medical assistant after earning an associate’s degree from Cape Fear Community College and a medical assisting diploma from Central Carolina Community College.
Of her work, she said, “I became interested in ultrasound after having a scan done myself while working as a medical assistant. I knew I wanted to go further in my healthcare career but wasn’t sure at the time.” After having the ultrasound, she said, her interest in radiology grew and she had already earned most of the prerequisites needed to apply for the program. “Ultrasound is one of the less invasive imaging modalities with little to no risks,” she explained. “It’s also a field that is growing and in high demand.” She continued, “I love ultrasound. It’s truly amazing getting to see inside of people’s bodies and knowing that the images I take will help diagnose, treat and cure many people with diseases or life-threatening illnesses. The job is never boring and every patient’s body is different.”
The most rewarding part of Cori’s job is going back and seeing that the images she chose to take “were a part of a diagnosis or, most importantly, a cure.” She added, “It’s also unexplainably rewarding to capture that perfect, textbook ultrasound picture, or to actually find pathology that I spent years learning about in school. It’s not always fun knowing that a person has some sort of medical problem, but it is rewarding knowing that you have found the problem and they can now receive treatment for it.”
She said, “more often than not, I will have a patient that makes me stop and say, ‘that’s why I do this job,’ and it’s very humbling. I am reminded every day that so many of us are so lucky and so much better off than we realize.”
Cori credited RCS and her teachers and classmates with preparing her for life after high school. She said, “I will always be grateful for my time at RCS and the relationships I made during my time there.”
She said the school prepared her for college and a career because of the one-to-one technology that has always been a part of the curriculum. “Writing papers, emailing teachers, and turning assignments in online really prepared me for college and made it an easy transition,” she said. Knowing how to prepare a resume and communicate via email has “been a huge part” of her adulthood, she added. “I give credit to Miss [Megan] Wright and Mrs. [Wanda] Ball for first teaching me how to do that in a correct and professional way,” she said. Ball and Wright taught high school English when Cori was a student at RCS.
Aside from the school and the people she met while at RCS, Cori said her friends and family had always been her “biggest influence. They support me and give me advice and are always there to help me in any way they can. They keep me grounded and encourage me to step out of my comfort zone to better myself.”
More recently, she said, “my fiancé Clayton has been influential as we have transitioned into adulthood together. He has always encouraged and pushed me to work my hardest, especially throughout my ultrasound program and all of my college experiences.”