{"id":169766,"date":"2026-10-19T09:25:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T13:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=169766"},"modified":"2026-10-19T09:25:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T13:25:19","slug":"a-fresh-start-leads-to-finding-his-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2026\/10\/19\/a-fresh-start-leads-to-finding-his-people\/","title":{"rendered":"A fresh start leads to finding his people"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After transferring to Wright State, biological sciences major Landon Perry found his community, excelled academically and became a peer mentor helping other students succeed. (Photos by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n

Landon Perry began at a university where lecture halls routinely held 300 or more students, and he felt like one more face in a system that did not know his name. The paperwork felt just as impersonal, and just as confusing.<\/p>\n

By the end of his first semester, he was on pace to eclipse $20,000 in debt for one year \u2014 a steep price for Perry, who is the first in his family to attend college.<\/p>\n

Then a friend attending Wright State told him something he couldn\u2019t ignore: After scholarships and financial aid<\/a>, she was paying about $1,000 out of pocket for an entire semester. Perry took a close look at transferring and made a decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor my past three semesters here at Wright State, I\u2019ve only paid $6,000 total out of pocket \u2014 less than what I paid for one semester at my last school,\u201d Perry said.<\/p>\n

He became a Raider in the summer of 2025 and did what he had learned growing up in Rossburg, Ohio, a village of about 150 people with a volunteer fire department, a church and a bar: he showed up.<\/p>\n

Since arriving, Perry has started most mornings at the Center for Health Professions<\/a> before 6 a.m. \u2014 studying, helping classmates map out schedules, prepping friends for finals. He was not assigned to be there. He kept showing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to be seen, you have to make yourself seen,\u201d Perry said.<\/p>\n

And with the financial pressure eased, Perry found that he was also able to get more involved in campus life<\/a>, joining the Anatomy and Physiology Club, Biology Club, Compassion in Action, Hand to Hunger and Pre-Health Society.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Wright State, you find your people \u2014 people who align with what you care about.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The involvement did not go unnoticed. This past year, Perry was inducted into Tau Sigma, the national honor society for transfer students, and selected for the Dean\u2019s Circle. The acting director of the Center for Health Professions, Alycia Ketter, also asked him to apply to become a paid peer mentor.<\/p>\n

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Landon Perry regularly arrives at the Center for Health Professions before 6 a.m. to study and help classmates map out schedules and prepare for finals.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cLandon is the kind of student you notice because he doesn\u2019t just look for opportunities for himself \u2014 he looks for ways to contribute and help the people around him,\u201d said Ketter.<\/p>\n

Perry is now a junior majoring in biological sciences,<\/a> minoring in psychology and pursuing the pre-medicine track, weighing careers in dermatology or plastic surgery \u2014 fields he\u2019s quick to defend against assumptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so much more to plastics and dermatology than Botox,\u201d he said, crediting an unlikely source for his career aspirations: watching \u201cDr. Pimple Popper\u201d with his uncle, and seeing the look on a patient\u2019s face when they left more confident than they arrived.<\/p>\n

He has also become, by his own account, the person who makes sure others do not feel overlooked \u2014 a role he\u2019s grown into naturally as a peer mentor.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Wright State, you find your people \u2014 people who align with what you care about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After transferring to Wright State, biological sciences major Landon Perry found his community, excelled academically and became a peer mentor helping other students succeed. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":169767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2064,725,715,4297,2109,746,4298],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-biology","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-people-of-wright-state","category-pre-health","category-science-mathematics","category-student-profile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169766"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169878,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169766\/revisions\/169878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}