By Kinsley Wilson
She starts out her morning with dual credit math. Next period she’s on her way to ceramics, then to anatomy and physics, and she ends her school day at Delta with dual credit English. Where does she go from 5th period to the end of the day? Lilly Swingley is on her way to the place where dead bodies lay.
Lilly leaves from school and attends an unpaid internship at Meeks Mortuary in Muncie. Her internship includes embalming people, which is taking the fluids out of one’s body after they have passed, processing cremations, and guiding people through funeral services.
Swingley is planning to study at Mid-America College of Funeral Services in Jeffersonville, Ind., where she is going to do online college for two years while she maintains her internship at Meeks Mortuary.
Swingley is not the only senior with a unique major at Delta High School. Rebekah Thorpe and Malia Burkett are others included in this group.
She started her interest in medicine from watching Grey’s Anatomy. She wanted to become a doctor but felt like spending 8-12 years in college was not something she wanted to do or something that would fit into her lifestyle, so she found mortuary science.
“I like working in a mortuary because I don’t have to deal with accidentally killing someone, haha can’t kill them twice,” Swingley says.
Considering the aspects of the job some people would say that mortuary science is an odd major, but science teacher Mr. Adam Lennon believes it is a perfect fit for Swingley.
”I definitely get the vibe from her, it’s definitely up her alley,” Lennon says. “She’s a kind of dark artsy kind of girl, it takes a certain type of individual.”
Thorpe is another student with an unusual major. She is majoring in neuroscience, which is the study of the brain, neurons, and how your body works.
Thorpe got interested in neuroscience after she experienced six concussions herself. She got one concussion during 6th grade, three from diving in her sophomore and junior year, and also had two others from freshman and sophomore year.
“I want to learn more about (the brain) to know for myself and to help people because I’ve seen how terrible it can affect people,” Thorpe says.
She wants to go to school for six years and is going to be studying at Brigham Young University in Utah this coming fall.
Though Utah is a long way away from friends and family, she will feel at home since she will be attending school with her cousin, and some of her family is close by.
Thorpe has taken several science courses that have piqued her interest but the most convincing thing to her to pursue neuroscience was when she was recovering from her concussions.
“ I went to Midwest Concussion Clinic in January and February 2022 for rehab after my most recent concussion and my physical therapist helped me get through stuff, but he also would explain what was happening to me and the science behind it. It was so interesting to me,” Thorpe says.
Last but not least Malia Burkett, who is planning to attend Ivy Tech for sonography.
“(Sonographers) figure out the gender of the baby and they can see how it’s developing,” she said. “I can tell them the size of the baby like saying it’s the size of a pineapple!”
Burkett says that Tiktok helped her choose where she wanted to go into in life. She saw that sonography had to deal with babies and was interested in it, not to mention the money behind it.
Burkett says that Delta helped her in getting into college by pushing her to try her hardest and keeping her on top of grades.
