Teenager enjoys leadership, volunteering, science

Photo: Homedale High senior Mark Vance says volunteering with ALS patients made him want to become a doctor

By Christin Runkle - Idaho Press-Tribune

HOMEDALE — Homedale High School senior Mark Vance has wanted to be student body president for four years.

Mark said that he decided in eighth grade to run for office each year, ending in a run for student body president his junior year.

Now that he’s student body president, Mark is finding the job to be more stressful than he anticipated, especially because he and his fellow student body officers had to put together a homecoming dance in just three or four weeks.
“We managed to pull it off somehow,” he said.

Besides organizing the dance, Mark also approves fundraisers and runs student council meetings.

Mark is involved in INL Team, an academic competition, and in his school’s Science Club, of which he is vice president.

In Science Club, students take trips to “visit anything remotely to do with science,” Mark said. In the past, the club has visited the Bruneau Sand Dunes and its observatory, and members have collected reptile specimens. This year, they’ll visit Salt Lake City.

Mark is also involved in several community service organizations. In Teens Making a Difference, he has helped rake leaves, supervised needy students who were given shopping sprees to the mall, and held baby-sitting nights for local parents.

Mark also volunteers two hours a week for Extra Hands for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). He works with someone with ALS, helping them with housework or yard work.

“That may have been a little behind my decision to be a doctor,” Mark said.

This fall, Mark will major in pre-med, likely at the University of Idaho.

“I mainly really want to do something (that helps others),” Mark said. “I couldn’t stand a dead-end job where there’s no change.”

Mark thinks he’d like to become a radiologist — because of the lack of blood and because the field involves problem-solving and three-dimensional images.

Though Mark likes the more analytical pursuits, he also enjoys art and creative writing in his spare time.

Mark likes taking pictures, developing his own photos and rolling his own film.
“I like finding things people drive by every day and taking pictures from a different angle,” Mark said.

Mark has also written a number of poems, and he even started writing a novel.

Mark said the novel, which he has rewritten several times, is a realistically written fantasy book. Mark said he tries to “research the causes of everything” that happens in his story.

Right now, he’s focusing his research on the mistreatment of the mentally ill, starting several centuries ago.