Wait… you didn’t know I was gone? Allow me to explain.
This post is a little bit of a life update, along with some information about another post I recently made private, and a description of the trials and tribulations of a dental student navigating pandemic-era dental education. If this interests you, please read on.
why this post exists
I took a several month hiatus to study for finals and the dental board exam. I had written a farewell post indicating that I would return to the blog in April of this year (I’m a little early, so that’s fun).
This previous post was essentially a rant about dental school. It’s set to private for now, and maybe I’ll release it again at some point, but it’s honestly a little embarrassing and I never felt right about it.
While drafting, I kept thinking that maybe I shouldn’t publish it. If my identity were revealed one day, the post could be connected back to me and subsequently my school, and I wouldn’t feel great about that.
But at the same time, I kept thinking, “The people need to know. They need to know about these things so that they can think very carefully before they venture down the harrowing road that is dental school.”
I struggled with my desire to be informative and my wariness at the prospect of failed anonymity—that this could reflect poorly on me and the profession in the future.
So I’ve decided to summarize the post in question here and give a bit more context, since I believe that the content is still important. I’ll include some excerpts where I can.
the shitty parts of dental school
Maybe you’ve found yourself in a similar position at some point in your life. You find that your studies aren’t aligning with your passions, or your chosen career path isn’t bringing you as much joy and fulfilment as you thought it would. Maybe you keep plugging along in the same direction, hoping it will get better. Maybe you take the plunge and declare a new major or find a new job. But some things are harder to move on from than others.
Once you start dental school, unless you’re hella rich or live in Europe somewhere where your tuition is covered, you’ll be in at least 5 figures of debt. It’ll likely jump to 6 by the time you graduate. Understandably, it can be exceptionally hard to rationalize leaving at this point. One of my classmates left after first year and I have a ton of respect for him. It’s a sunken cost, but it’s still a cost, and that does make it hard to walk away from it all. Dental school might be the single worst financial decision I’ve ever made, but that’s to be determined by the next 10 years or so—I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
Even in first year, I felt that dentistry might not be for me, but I kept pushing because I thought it would get better. In some ways it did, but in other ways it got worse. Seeing patients is a lot more fun than lab work, for instance. But trying to meet clinical requirements is stressful, especially when you’re battling setbacks due to the fallout from our friendly neighbourhood virus (Did someone say Corona? What a truly unfortunate name for a beer these days). I had a ton of patients cancelling and delaying treatment over the last two years, which brings me to my final semester of dental school right now, still not having delivered any dentures. It is what it is.
In my previous post, I likened my dental school experience to ordering a three course meal and being served a single cold French fry. Maybe that’s a bit harsh (I was angry, okay, and I don’t even get angry!). But dental school during a pandemic is a complete clusterfuck. Some might argue that it’s a clusterfuck regardless, but this is on a whole other level.
Dental school is not glamorous.
It's a hole you dig yourself into under a gargantuan mountain of debt, desperately hoping that one day you manage to claw your way out of it, maybe in the next 10 years if you're lucky.
It's managing the faculty's high expectations and jumping through silly administrative hoops and questioning yourself even though you know your shit and sticking your hands in somebody's mouth hoping they don't accidentally bite you or transmit an infectious disease.
It's scheduling patients and battling back pain and scrambling to meet clinical requirements so that you're not held back while the rest of your class graduates without you.
It's submitting questionable lab work and studying for board exams and looking for jobs and applying to specialty programs and finding time for hobbies and some semblance of a social life so that you don't lose yourself.
Enter the pandemic, and you have the added pressure of limited closed rooms. New regulations require closed rooms for any procedure that may produce aerosols (tiny droplets suspended in air), as is often the case with handpiece (aka drill) use. This means that if we schedule a patient for fillings, crowns, bridges, root canals—basically most dentistry other than the majority of denture procedures—we need a closed room. These are super limited at the school clinic because the clinic was designed with an open concept in mind. This is great under normal circumstances because you can easily call over the instructor or grab additional materials as you need them. However, our school literally had to convert offices into dental operatories in order to accommodate the new regulations. And this is just one of the major modifications that had to be made given the circumstances (I won’t bore you with the rest).
The transition to private practice will be challenging regardless. There are so many alternative techniques and materials that we aren’t exposed to. Would it have been nice to get more experience in school? Of course. But the reality is that real world dentistry is very different, and some of the things we do in dental school we may never have to do again (bless all the dental assistants and lab techs doing good work in private practice so we don’t have to). There’s no getting around this transition, whether you’ve done 3 root canals in school or 30.
I’ve been a bit of a downer thus far—let’s talk about some good things for a second.
the less shitty parts of dental school
Dental school has imbued me with the ability to decide what fazes me:
Instructor bashes my crown prep without telling me how to fix it?
Fine. Whatever. Not fazed in the least.
A patient is still in a lot of pain even after giving a ton of freezing?
Okay, this is a setback, but I can figure this out.
Instructor chastises my time management?
No sweat. Maybe he’s having a bad day, or maybe I really am slow. Regardless, I did my best.
An instructor gives meaningful constructive feedback?
Great! I’m going to learn how to do better.
I’m going to speak directly to current and future dental students here:
Have you ever cried while border molding? I have. Tears streaming down my face while pulling the patient’s cheeks in sad slow circles. The instructor was pretty harsh that day.
A lot of dental school involves being told that your work is shit and that you need to do better. As someone who absolutely hated making mistakes growing up, this was a really hard pill to swallow. The truth is that You Will Fail. But you will get back up and get on with your life. At the end of the day, it’s just teeth and you can’t make everyone happy.
I still remember one time when an instructor took over my crown prep and basically did it for me, only to then suggest that I call in another dentist to evaluate the prep. That other dentist tore that crown prep apart even though I barely touched it. It just goes to show that some parts of dentistry are incredibly subjective, so don’t beat yourself up if things don’t look great. Also, only you know the conditions under which you had to work (patient moving around a lot, large curious tongue, etc.).
What I’m trying to get at here is that dental school has the potential to make you question everything. I would be in clinic some days overwhelmed with thoughts like “how the hell did I get here” and “what decisions brought me to this low point in my life”. But you know what? Having these thoughts is totally normal. Talking to my classmates, we’ve all felt this way at one point or another. It doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy dentistry; it means that you don’t enjoy dental school. And though I can’t attest to it yet, I hear that these are two very different things.
A lot of dentists didn’t enjoy dental school. Just look at this Reddit post.
When I reflect at length about my dental school experience, the parts of dental school I disliked most had to do with the school rather than the dentistry: admin hoops, difficult faculty, and so forth. Treating patients is actually fun when you’re not worrying about where the hell the instructor is or if you submitted the right paperwork or why all of the periotomes have been checked out from dispensary and you can never seem to get your hands on one when you need it the most.
And someone is always hoarding a dental surveyor somewhere…
I don’t think I ever sincerely believed that I would be a dentist for the remainder of my working life. I still have trouble admitting it. The thought seems novel, but I think I had just buried it to protect myself, because why on earth would I (or anyone, for that matter) go through all of this to pursue a career that I wouldn’t want to continue until I retire? But the thought has always been there and it’s something I continue to grapple with to this day. I’d honestly rather be doing a lot of other things, and I hope that writing between day-to-day dentistry will get me there one day.
Why did I choose dentistry, then? As with most things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I think I liked the idea of being a dentist, but I wasn’t prepared for everything it involved. It really is lifelong learning. I’m graduating and there is still so much I don’t know and a lot of things I’m not great at. As one instructor put it, “You’re all still babies—there is so much more to learn out there.” Are you prepared for that?
I’m holding out hope that I fall in love with private practice. Everyone I’ve talked to says it’s a massive improvement. I’ll definitely give an update after I start my first job.
If you can, follow your passions. At the end of the day, you are the author of your life. Don’t let anyone make important decisions for you. If you can marry your passions with your career, do so without hesitation.
Not really sure how I wanted to end this post, but let this last quote be a shining beacon of hope for all my fellow dents and pre-dents:
In here it kind of sucks, but it gets a lot better out there. Sure, the field is becoming more saturated and it's harder to find a full-time job as a dentist near a city centre these days, but a the end of the day you're still a fucking dentist and that's pretty rad. You'll live a comfortable life, which is far better than most can say.
And for the love of all that is holy, shadow a TON before you commit to any career, especially if that career is dentistry. If I knew there was this much wax involved, I probably would have decided to become an accountant instead.
(I fucking hate wax)
As always, feel free to discuss in the comments below or reach out via the contact form. I’d love to hear from you!
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Hey thank you for this post. I am also a dental student who went through dental school during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have learning disabilities and that along with having my 2nd year scheduled during 2020-2021 academic year, the school initially wanted to dismiss me but I had to prove and fight hard that all the spontaneous changes in a rigorous curriculum in a tumultuous time made their assessments of me extremely unfair and frankly ableist. However, I just graduated and while I am grateful for many of my experiences in dental school, I still have a ton of PTSD from it that shakes me time to time. I would love to talk some time with you.