East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT) is a career prep program in the metro valley of Phoenix, Ariz. With over 500 students enrolled in their program, EVIT gets high school students ready to take a step forward in their career. Mahima Gauchan, who is a junior here at Hamilton High School, is a student at both Hamilton High and EVIT.

EVIT has over 50 programs to choose from. These courses range from all areas of interest. Gauchan, who takes the dental assistant program, has her own experience at EVIT, which is different from students who have taken other career programs. As a half and half student, she has three classes at Hamilton and the rest at EVIT. She leaves Hamilton at around 11 a.m. and gets on a bus to get to the EVIT campus each school day. 

The commute from Hamilton’s campus to the EVIT campus is around 30 minutes, since there are a couple of stops. Once she gets to the EVIT center, she puts her phone away, starts her warmups the teacher has for her and then does whatever the teacher has planned for her class for that day. 

Gauchan chose her dental assistant program, because she wishes to pursue a career in the dental field. If she had to choose another program that she would have liked to do instead of dental assistant, she would have chosen medical assistant, because it still has to do with the health field. 

When asked if she likes having half her classes at Hamilton and the rest of her classes at EVIT, she said “It’s nice, but I hate how I come home really late”. She ends her EVIT day at around 2:35 p.m., yet because she comes back to Hamilton on the same bus she leaves for EVIT on, she reaches Hamilton at 3:30 p.m. each day, due to all the stops.

A downside with the program however, is that she cannot take all the classes offered at Hamilton that she would have liked to take. If her schedule permitted her to, she would have taken AP Psychology, so she can learn about the science behind thinking. Gauchan says that switching from campus to campus is fun; however, she finds it time consuming. If there was anything she could have changed about her daily schedule, it would be not having to leave the EVIT campus so late. Despite the struggles of commuting, Gauchan loves her program and is excited to take this early step in her dental career.