Dentists are ______

What can I say?  Ouch.  So this is the general public opinion.  My theory is that people take out on dentists what they should possibly be directing internally.  I mean, seriously, if you don't floss, then you should be angry with yourself. Dentists are just a scapegoat for the people who don't take care of their teeth.  Ha ha! Take that, general public.

September Update

I downloaded an app for my phone that allows me to post to my blog, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I have survived the first round of exams, and am experiencing a very brief lull before things hit the fan next month. In October I have exams for every single class. It's going to be a great time...

Recently, I had exams for both Microbiology and Pathology. Both went decently well, so I'm off to a good start for the semester. Additionally, I took my first two practical exams for Restorative Dentistry III. I had to do a crown prep and make a provisional crown out of acrylic in a three hour time limit. It went about as good as it could have, and I averaged 95/100 between the two. I snapped a quick picture of the temporary crown (its a little yellower than the other teeth, fyi). I took a photo of my friend Rob's preparation, too, which I will upload so you can picture what it looks like under the temporary.

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D1 - First Year Summary

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I'm really bad at updating the blog.  I've scraped together some photos to share with you all.  Hopefully, this will give you a pretty good idea of what I've been up to for the past year.  

I don't really have much to say about the classes that weren't Restorative Dentistry, despite them being 75% of my class time.  You all probably don't care that much about Histology, Biochemistry, Neuroanatomy, etc.  Not to mention, I don't have any cool pictures to go along with this post. BORING.  

So, Restorative Dentistry is the most important class in dental school, so much so, that we have it every semester for a very long time.  As such, these classes are affectionately called "resto" (rhymes with pesto) or "RDI" (or RDII, RDIII, RDIV...).  The first semester is RDI, and I had such a great time.  We spent the majority of our time doing what is called waxing.  Waxing is a step in the fabrication of a crown, but it is really helpful when you are learning the shapes of teeth and how they fit together in the mouth.  During our first week, we were given a fractured maxillary central incisor and told to recreate the missing portion out of wax.  

Here is what mine looked like:

By the way, the fake mouth is called a typodont.  The teeth are interchangeable, so we can easily replace them if we mess something up.  Trust me, we replace a lot of teeth.  We waxed up all sorts of teeth during the first semester.  Here's a shot of the waxing instruments as well as most of the waxing projects before I turned them in:

We also got our first opportunity to work with amalgam during the first semester.  For those of you that don't know what amalgam is, it's an alloy consisting mostly of mercury, silver and copper that hardens when it is shaken together.  It's one of the most biocompatable materials we have available, and it is close to the natural hardness of teeth, which is important, too.  It is also relatively inexpensive.  

This was definitely one of my first amalgams.  Nothing special, anyone can do something this easy.  We also did our first provisional crowns during the first semester, but I have better pictures of my second semester stuff, so you'll just have to wait...  The following restoration is a bit more complicated, but it is still first semester material.  In fact, this one was supposed to get turned in, but I wanted to bring it home and take a picture of it and it never made it back.  I still got my A in the class, so I think I'm in the clear.  

So, that's pretty much all of first semester.  I personally felt that it was a very easy introduction to the shapes of teeth and a few common dental materials.  Oh, yeah, this was also in December:  

Second semester (RDII) was much more difficult.  Dr. Boberick pushed us very hard and I always felt like I was behind on my labwork.  The course focused primarily on restoring decay i.e. drilling and filling as well as fixed prosthodontics (crown and bridge) and boy was is long.  We had class from January to June, for a total of six months.  It was intense, but I learned a lot.  Most importantly, I had a great time doing so.  I've definitely chosen a great career.  

Anyway, getting back to pictures, here's some of my first cavity preps:

Here are a couple of shot of large amalgam restoratations.  We did a lot of these, but a bunch of upperclassmen have said that these types aren't very common. Good practice, I suppose.

Once we moved onto crown and bridge, we spent a lot of time doing crown preps and then making provisional crowns out of acrylic.  Acrylic is basically a polymerizing plastic, which is also used in fake nails.  You've probably smelled the inside of a nail salon.  Imagine how it would smell to have 128 people in one big room mixing their own acrylic.  It was awesome...   Can you tell which of the two teeth below are temporary crowns? One is much better than the other one, but I'd bet they are both clinically acceptable.  

The final project for RDII was quite intense, but left me very satisfied once it was competed.  We were required to to turn in two preps for a bridge, as well as a provisional bridge for those preps, a crown prep, and a provisional crown and gold crown that fit on it.  Here's the three unit bridge:

For the gold crown, we didn't use gold because it wasn't going in a patient's mouth.  That said, it still polished up quite nicely.  I was very proud of the quality of work I was able to turn in for this project.  The first picture is my roommate Chris polishing his crown.  The next two photos are my finished products.  

That's it.  Let me know what you think.  If you have any questions, ask!

Orientation Update ---> I survived

It's hard to believe that in two days I'll be attending actual classes for dental school. Thursday and Friday were both orientation. Thursday included lectures from the Dean of Admissions, as well as Dean Ismail (who is over the whole dental school). I got the feeling that Dean Ismail is extremely interested in listening to the students, and more than willing to make changes when the need arises. This is the kind of progressive mentality that I think will make Temple a great place to be. The dental school is going to be going through some major changes over the next few years (including some significant renovations to the clinics) which will be both exciting and stressful. He also mentioned that the school will be up for accreditation review in 2011, so I'm sure there will be some added pressure for excellence relating to that.

We got our pictures taken for our student IDs during lunch. When I got my ID card, I was completely appalled, because they had cut my chin off in the photo. How do you do that!?! I'm tempted to "lose" my card, but I'm worried that they'll just print a new one with the same pic.

The rest of day one was pretty much a wash. We had various guest speakers, some of which were absolutely horrendous (read: Office of Sustainability, as well as a community organizer...) while others teetered on the edge of moderately amusing (a librarian from the health sciences campus, who was pretty much how I envision Greg in a few years).

Thursday night was a party hosted by Temple Dental at the Summit Park clubhouse (where I live). There was a DJ that seemed allright, and the bar had open draft beers from 7-11. I didn't drink much after the beer went back to normal price, so I was able to drive some of my friends to the house they are renting in Manayunk, a mile or two down the road.

Friday, for orientation pt. II we had more lectures, this time from the people in the financial aid office. The material would have been more helpful about three or four months ago, when I actually was working through the loan process. I can't imagine it was helpful for anyone, but then again, perhaps there are a few UBER procrastinators in my class.

This year is the first year the dental school is going to have a dress code. To tell you the truth, I'm a little bit relieved that we have to wear scrubs. It'll simplify everything. Plus, the scrubs we'll be getting will have our names on them. The only downside is that we have to wear business casual attire until they come in. Oh, I might need another pair of khakis.

The biggest part of the day was the unpacking of our dental kits. Our job was to verify the contents of two large boxes of supplies and instruments, about $6500 worth. Before we could unpack, we had to get our pre-clinic lab assignments. Southpaws i.e. lefties get moved out of alphabetical order so they can sit on the ends of the rows, so I didn't get quite as an early start unpacking as some of my classmates. Additionally, there were a lot of 3rd year students there to help, but my "buddy" didn't show up. I got a bit behind, but then a guy came and helped me out, so I was good.

I also joined one of the dental fraternities, mostly so I could get a discount on their collection of back-tests. For $110 you can purchase all of the exams given by professors to D1s in the last 10 years or so. It's crazy, here's the proof:

Dental School Woes

I've only just begun to look at the full cost of going to dental school. Temple's tuition runs somewhere in the middle of all of the schools I interviewed at. While it's not nearly as expensive as University of the Pacific (in San Fran), and the fact that becoming a Pennsylvania "resident" is rather difficult (so, no in-state tuition unfortunately) it ends up looking about "average" tuition for an out-of-stater like myself. And, of course, tuition isn't the only thing I'll be spending lots of money on. The cost of living isn't terribly outrageous in Philly, but it's nothin' like the midwest, either.

I've been running spreadsheets for about the last week now, trying to estimate how much money I'm going to need to take out in student loans over the next four years. If you take out too much, you'll be the last person from your class to pay back the loans. If you don't take out enough, you eat Ramen six nights a week, and Mac & Cheese (not the kind with Gruyere) for your fancy meal of the week.

In any case, I'm hoping to have my loans paid off within ten years of graduation, if not sooner, and i'm totally prepared to drive my Camry until the wheels fall off in order to make that happen. Eeek. It sure is scary to see how much it's going to cost me, in sum. $300K, less if I'm smart about it.

The photo is a screenshot of a part of one of the spreadsheets, which shows monthly payments, as well as the fraction of interest and principal balance paid.

Dental School Update Map

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Google is so handy! In just a few minutes I was able to make a map of all the places I have heard back from, just so you guys can be in the know about how things stand with my applications for dental schools. I'll update after each interview with my impressions about the school, city, people, etc.

My first interview is next week at University of Florida!!!