Student spotlight: Meet Jade Theisen

Education is one of the four pillars of UNMC’s mission and our students are the lifeblood of that aspect of campus life.

In UNMC Today’s Student Spotlight, we get to know some of these students, who will become tomorrow’s health care professionals. Today we meet:

Jade Theisen

• Name: Jade Theisen
• Hometown: Atkinson, Neb.
• Program/Year: Fourth-year pharmacy student

List three songs on your playlist.

• “Tapes & Money,” Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
• “Please Turn,” Little Dragon
• “Strange Mercy,” St. Vincent

What sparked your interest in pharmacy?
I kind of took the long way around. I graduated high school with hopes of becoming a geneticist, but I fell in love with economics and community planning/development. However, development firms and local/state economic development departments aren’t looking to hire new grads in the depth of a recession, so I went back to the drawing board. I wanted to use my business development skills in combination with my strengths in anatomy and chemistry, and pharmacy was the perfect way to do just that. UNMC has the best pharmacy program around, so here I am!

Your favorite study snack is:

Sea salt & vinegar kettle-cooked chips . . . or bacon. Always bacon.

Your favorite app is:
Samsung Milk Music

Three things people may not know about you:

• My favorites are 19th-century British, French and Russian literature and science fiction movies. Current settings have never held my interest. I’ve always loved my books set 200 years in the past and my movies set 200 years in the future.
• People often say I look like Sandra Oh (Cristina Yang) from “Grey’s Anatomy.” I think it’s just the combination of curly hair and snarky comments, but it’s such a compliment! She was so great on that show. Also, being Cristina Yang was easily the most comfortable Halloween costume I’ve ever had.
• I create all of the art in my home. I’ve done some pretty large pieces already (36″ x 48″ canvases in my living room and bedroom), with a few more projects in the queue. It might seem elitist, but I like the idea of seeing something every day that no one has ever seen before.