Soo Young Lee on Overcoming Barriers and Living with Purpose
Soo and his wife, Jessie
Soo is a sports-fanatic husband with aspirations of future fatherhood. He has overcome significant personal and professional obstacles to become a patient-centred, highly-skilled denturist. In this post, he talks about how he chose a widely overlooked career path and how his faith spurred him on to be a man who lives with purpose.
“Maybe this is why I could become a denturist, to help people in poorer countries, but also in Canada. There are lots of people who are missing help getting new teeth or a smile.”
I do love sports a lot. I watch a lot of sports … basketball, baseball, soccer, unfortunately, I’m not a hockey fan. I guess I’m not Canadian enough yet. I tried, but never liked it.
So, when I came to Canada in 2004 from South Korea, I was with my parents and a younger sister. I was 18 years old. Obviously, English was a big barrier to start with so I studied ESL. Just like any other Asian family, like, you want to be a doctor, pharmacist or you want to be an engineer. I also put myself in that category.
I was trying to figure out what I should do for my career. There were a number of things in my head. I had good manual dexterity and I do focus on details … like, “oh, you changed your hair, or your nails, or you got new shoes.” And one day my dad came to me and asked if I had heard of a denturist. And in South Korea, we don’t have denturists; it's a dentist or a dental technician so I never knew what a denturist was. So I looked it up, but there wasn’t much information. Not many people know what denturists do. I found it interesting, but didn’t think I would be in the dental field at that time.
But I got into George Brown. I struggled in the first semester with the terminology because it was all new to me. But I was successful and I enjoyed the courses and the interactions with the patients. And I thought this might be my career.
After my first year, I went to Haiti for my mission trip. As a religious guy, I thought, “What would be my purpose as a denturist?” And when I went to see kids from Haiti, obviously it's a poor country and oral hygiene is really bad there, you could easily see the kids are missing multiple teeth. I thought, maybe this is why I could become a denturist, to help people in poorer countries, but also in Canada. There are lots of people who are missing help getting new teeth or a smile. If you don’t know why, you don’t study hard and then you don’t really achieve anything. You don’t put yourself into it. This got me to focus more and become a better denturist.
The majority of students who got into denturism have a father or uncle, or are related to a dental family. But I had no one, no connection at all. So it was not easy to start as a denturist right after graduation. But fortunately, I could start as a dental technician. It worked better for me to start with lab work first and then learn how the denture department and other dental field work flows are, such as crowns and bridges. It got me to have a broader idea about the dental field.
After second year, I could start to spend more time in the clinic and seeing patients. Every patient and case helped me improve my skills. However, after about five years working with dentures, I just thought, “Maybe I’m not really developing or pushing myself, I’m just stuck where I am.” If you go on the Internet, you see all those people who are really excellent at it and still study and push themselves more. It motivated me to start looking into it more and study more and research more how I can improve and be a better denturist, not only being successful and business-wise, but how I can make a better denture for the patient.
I want to hear my patients say, “It’s the best denture I ever had.”
So I studied more and tried new techniques from North America, Japan, Germany, all those really specialized clinician and technicians have their own skills. It did help me a lot to be better. And I think the learning process will never stop.
“Love is not what I want to give, but is actually what the other person needs.”
I have my wife Jessie. We married in 2019. We went to the same Church. We don’t have any kids yet, but we are still enjoying our time. I think becoming a great husband is really not easy. When my pastor said, “Love is an Act of Will,” at my wedding, I did not realize what that meant; however, I am starting to see that now. Love is not what I want to give, but is actually what the other person needs. When I was just myself, I could make my own decisions. Now, every decision is more difficult because it can’t just satisfy me, but also her. In our three years of marriage, we are trying to build a happy, healthy and strong relationship. I have to say that as I think about having my own family, my respect for my parents has grown. Jessie and I are thinking about having a baby soon, but I’m not sure when it’s going to happen. I guess time will tell.
I do focus and try to have a positive attitude about how to become a better person, husband and denturist and that will keep me going. That’s about it. That’s who I am.