Sandpoint High grad pays heartfelt visit to hometown

SANDPOINT — There is an old idiom about tugging on the heartstrings, which refers to feeling strong emotions such as love or sadness.

In science and medicine, however, the heartstrings are the something else altogether.

“What you have here are your papillary muscles and then these strings attached are the chordae tendineae,” Nicolette Jessen told Sandpoint High School’s pre-Advanced Placement biology students Thursday, as she described the image before them, which was a up-close anatomical view of the heart valve. “So when this muscle contracts, the strings are pulled tight and the valve closes.”

Jessen, a 2013 SHS grad, is back in town during winter break from medical school, and had the opportunity to teach in Jim Barton’s pre-AP and AP biology classes on Thursday as part of the Idaho Rural Outreach Program through the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Not only did she talk about every part of the human heart’s anatomy, the program provided hearts for the students to dissect as well. The human heart is about the size of fist, though the hearts the students dug into were much larger since they were actually pig hearts.

Being from Sandpoint, Jessen said she was excited to return and be able to teach students in a class that taught her so much about biology in her high school days before she went off to Pepperdine University for her undergraduate studies.

“Mr. Barton is amazing,” she said. “He is a gem here. He prepared me so well for college, I barely had to study for my biology class at Pepperdine.”

Barton said it was “a lot of fun” having Jessen back in the class. His students could also relate to her a little better than they could to him, because he is “kind of like the parent.”

“They seem to enjoy it and it is great seeing her success — It is always nice to see successful students come back,” Barton said.

Jessen attended Pepperdine between 2013 and 2017 before taking a gap year, which she spent in Sandpoint. She just finished her first semester in the University of Utah School of Medicine, and said she is “loving it.”

The most difficult thing she comes across when mentoring other medical students, she said, is when they ask what her “defining moment” was — when she knew she wanted to go into medicine. The reason it is difficult, Jessen said, is because she really didn’t have one. “I am a very, very rare person,” she said. “I’ve known pretty much all my life that I want to go into medicine.”

It was at age 5, she said, when she first told her parents she wanted to go into medicine. So she often uses experiences from friends who had “defining moments” as examples when mentoring others, she said. A lot of people, she added, don’t decide until their sophomore or junior year of college.

In addition to teaching the SHS students all about heart anatomy, Jessen gave a lecture on everything from how to get into medical school to the many different careers in the field. Jessen said she is still deciding between a career as an OB-GYN or a neonatologist.

Not only was Jessen happy to come back to her former school to help out in Barton’s class, she said she enjoys giving back to the community.

“Especially because Sandpoint is rural and kind of considered underserved, so that is just one of my passions,” Jessen said. “And I love teaching, so it is a great way for me to spend my break.”

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.