A Dental Student Blog Something to Sink Your Teeth Into: Dental School

Sorry it has been a while since my last post...been a little busy with school and all. So, how to fill in the past couple of months. First off - time flies! Seriously, it's one big race during the week to get through the exams (at least 2 a week) and then start studying for the next one. I can't believe it is already going to be November this week! Anyways, I will take this post to break down each section of school step by step (with a few tips thrown in there):





1. Waxing - the largest learning curve that I have seen in my class. Some students have already gotten the hang of it, while quite a bit of the class is still sort of struggling developing the skill. This is all ok though! Everyone will develop this at their own pace - it does help to get a portable propane tank and practice waxing at home.

A little advice I got from some of the upperclassmen though was that don't go crazy devoting tons of time to this class as it is only worth 1 credit hour (there are more heavily weighted classes out there). However, I do believe this is a very important skill you should take the time to develop and get comfortable with because you will be using your hands for the rest of your career.

Last time I left you, I believe we were just getting into the basics of waxing - taking an oversized tooth and basically filling in cavity preps with wax and trying to make it look like a tooth should. We went from this point to waxing the entire tooth #12, a premolar.

This jump is pretty much like going from primary school straight to college with not much help in between! But you learn what works for you - from what tools you like, how you like to build the tooth up and carve it down, etc. The good thing is that even though we do have a different tooth due almost every 2-3 weeks, we only have 2 practicals this semester.

We got the first one out of the way a few weeks ago - on tooth 12 - and I did well on it! Right now, we are working on tooth 15, with #18 to follow in the coming weeks. Our last practical is during finals and will be on either one of these (the professor will take a quarter the day of and flip it - heads being 15 and tails being 18).

The full post can be found at this blog:   http://teethstudentdoctor.blogspot.com

This is a good insight into a dental student's life.