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Teen of the Week: Parkersburg South senior Elliana McClung looks to nursing career after graduation

By Douglass Huxley 4 min read

PARKERSBURG -- Parkersburg High School senior Elliana McClung has been actively involved in her high school community through Student Council, senior cabinet, and Senior Women's Club.

"It's mainly volunteer work," McClung said about the Senior Women's Club. "I was able to write letters to little kids at Neale (Elementary) as a volunteer thing. We were pen pals. And also ringing bells for the Salvation Army."

This isn't McClung's first experience helping the Salvation Army. She said she also volunteered her time to ring bells and do outreach work for them while in the National Junior Honor Society at Hamilton Middle School.

"We rang the bells and we put together food bags and stuff like that," McClung said. "So being able to do it again for my senior year was pretty nice."

McClung served on the Student Council as a freshman and sophomore. She then took a break from extracurriculars her junior year to focus on her studies but joined the senior cabinet this year. McClung said she likes serving on the senior cabinet because it allows her to focus more on her senior classmates rather than how the Student Council focuses on the entire student body.

She said it also gives her more flexibility to balance school and work as she just got her first job in October at Books-A-Million in Parkersburg.

"It has its perks, its ups and downs, but it's a pretty good job," McClung said.

She said her favorite thing about working at the bookstore is her co-workers because they are always uplifting. She said she took the job because she loves to read and this gives her the opportunity to read things she might not have otherwise.

"If I branch out and read more of what I normally wouldn't read, but hear it's good and people think it's good and will recommend it to me, I will go ahead and read it just to kind of get an idea of what it was," McClung said. "And so if somebody comes in and asks, 'Hey, what's this about?' or, 'I need a recommendation.' I know that that could possibly be a good book to recommend."

McClung said she is always trying to learn things that can help her in her life. She said she joined the automotive program at the Wood County Technical Center to learn more about motor vehicles.

"My dad thought it was a good idea," McClung said. "He said I would get my own knowledge of a car ... I might not go into auto mechanics, but it's still knowledge that I will need."

She said her favorite part of the program is the hands-on approach students take fixing a vehicle.

"It's just you, your hands and it's right there," McClung said. "You know what the problem is. You don't have to dig too far for it. It's just right there for you to see and you have to fix it."

As her senior year comes to a close, she said she is looking ahead to college. She said she's always wanted to be a teacher and took a CTE education course at PHS her sophomore and junior years and loved it but is also considering a career in the health care field.

"Right now I'm kind of leaning more towards nursing," McClung said. "I want to maybe do pediatrics, because that would still give me the kids, that would still be helping people, just I liked being around kids."

She said she is going to register to take prerequisite classes at West Virginia University at Parkersburg for the fall. She hopes to eventually enter a nursing program and gain clinical experience through potential internships later in her college career.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com

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