DrStudentDentist

I think I’m about a bit more than a month in. It’s September and I started in July so I guess I’m nearing two months.

It’s Saturday and I’m studying for the three exams we have coming up this next week. Waxing practical included. But I thought I’d take a small break and share my subjective experience of dental school so far.

1) I can’t get through dental school with digital materials alone.

I can’t. Bottom line. I did it and it was a failure in my book. I’m back to printing my lecture notes and writing my notes in the sidelines.

I really wanted to make it work. I feel a bit strongly about limiting my, to use the proper lingo, “carbon footprint”, but I’m noticing that it’s just not as effective as utilizing the note-taking-on-paper method.

What I hadn’t realized about handwriting my notes, until I stopped doing it, was that the physical act of writing was helping to organize and cement the information in my mind. Unfortunately, digital materials, as much potential as it has, just can’t substitute that. It’s great for referencing and pinpointing exactly what I want but come test time, I have to be able to reference in my mind not on my computer.

So with that, I’ve pulled my old post about note taking since I don’t want to steer anyone off course. The bottom line is to learn the material and if you can do it with digital material, all the better. I couldn’t.

2) I came in with high expectations of how dental school would play out and learning to adjust was hard for me.

Like many, I was conditioned to expect a certain grade for a certain amount of study time put in. When that didn’t happen in dental school, I was really thrown off. That and for the first month, there’s the battle with constant fatigue. I can’t tell you how many lattes I’ve bought since school’s started.

One of the things second years would say to us first years, was “You don’t even know what it’s like”. I was confused as to why they’d say that but I get it now. Being an outside observer of the process is a completely different experience than being in it. I walked in with tons of ideas of how it was going to ”work” and well, a lot of it didn’t go as I expected. I had to adjust many of those ideas and come up with a different game plan. I also had to start weighing how much of my personal life I was going to put on hold while I was going after my professional goals. I have classmates who would tell me that they feel like no one understands what they’re going through except other UOP dental students and it’s probably true. Others can sympathize and surmise based on a limited view of the process but well, it’s just not the same as living the life of a dental student.

Hrm, I think I’ll have to finish this up another time. I still have to get back to studying.