Tuesday, January 19, 2010

New perspective

Hey all,
In our efforts for you not to get bored with just my (and Dr. Ric's)
writing I wanted to spice this thing up. I had the pleasure of getting a comment from a dental student and I jumped all over that.
I wanted to hear more about dental school. I wanted to hear what the professors were like. I wanted to hear how they are being educated. I wanted to hear if it is still dog eat dog like it was when I was in school.
This is this ghostwriters first time and will give us just the tip of the iceberg today. I am hoping this type of blog catches on and he/she will write for us and go into more depth next time.
Read it, I think you will like the style and the innocence.
I hope it brings you back to an awesome time in your life....now that it is over.

Hello!
To preface this post, let me start by saying that I am dental student.
Yes, you read that right, student. Maybe that brings back incredible memories of first patients, celebrating new life milestones with your classmates – birthdays, weddings and babies, or life-long friendships. Or maybe that makes you shudder thinking of late nights of studying, stressing over national board scores or trying to meet requirements. If you are of the former, hang with me, because those aspects of dental school haven’t changed. If you are of the latter, still hang with me, but those stressors still haven’t changed.
So why I am here?
The last week of December found me sitting down at a computer, taking my Part 1 of national boards. 400 hundred questions in 7 hours – you know the drill. For the past weeks leading up to my exam, I had been eating, sleeping and breathing with study cards and notes. My social life had waned and I had started to lose touch with what was going on in the outside world (I am only slightly kidding with that last statement.) With boards over and Christmas break upon me, I finally got to spend lots of quality time with family and friends.
One night I dragged out my computer to see what was happening in the real world and my other world – the dental world. Stumbling across this blog was one of the highlights of break. I fervently read through the archives, trying to see what dentists in the “real world” are up to.
As dental students, that is often one of the things we like to ask our professors and those practicing dentists – how are things done in the “real world.” In school, we learn to do things the textbook (read the long and stepwise way) because we need a solid foundation to build from, but students still love to find out how things really go down in practice. I digress.
So anyway, I sent this blog an email and here I am, today’s friendly ghostwriter. This is going to be a crazy busy semester with classes. Practicing dentists – do you even remember what some of your dental classes were? If you can, props to you, because I can hardly remember what I took in college…
Oral pathology, oral surgery, endo, dentures, cased-based learning and removal partial dentures are on deck, and you better believe I am fist-pumping excited about what I get to learn. That’s right – excited. Giddy, to say the least. Dental school continually becomes more competitive to get into, and each day I try and remember how lucky I am to be able to chase down my dreams of becoming dentist. On the days I see interviewees touring my school, I am always grateful that the “getting into dental school” phase of my life is over. At age 23, it has been a dream nearly 10 years in the making when I realized early in high school what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
It seems fitting with it being 2010 to celebrate my almost 10 year anniversary of wanting to be a dentist with a group of those who care about dentistry. For those in practice and a student no more, maybe you breathed a sigh of relief that you are not in my scrubs. For those non dentists, you too probably breathed a sigh of relief that you are not in my scrubs because you don’t like saliva. Or needles. Or blood. At least you are still breathing and hopefully thinking of dreams in your life that you have accomplished or are on the road to accomplishing as well.
Thank you for reading and thank you to Dr. John for letting me share my thoughts.
May your 2010 be filled with blessings.

I loved that part of my life. People kept telling me these are the best years of your life and I didn't believe them. But now I want to go back. I want to go back to 2 patients a day. I want to go back to "that will be $25 for those 3 fillings" . I mean, I love my life now but those days were awesome.
I am so glad this ghost writer can bring me back. I hope you liked it.

Have a great weekend,
john

Ps If you live in another country and you want to give your opinion on dentistry we would love to have you.


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