Well, here I am, 2 days away from beginning my second year. I am not anywhere near as nervous as I was at the beginning of the first year, but I am a little anxious. I guess its from hearing former D2’s telling me how much worse second year is than first year. More lab time, harder classes, introductions to the clinic, seems kind of overwhelming, but if we can make it through D1, we should be able to handle D2……I hope… haha.

I honestly just cant wait to get into clinic and be done with all the didactic stuff. At this point in my life, I just want to be done with school, you know? But the good news is, you get what you put in. Thankfully I am in a competitive and rewarding profession, so I know all the long days and nights will be worth it in the end. It is kind of amazing how fast the year can pass by. On the one hand, you finish another year of professional school, but on the other hand, you are older a year and can’t help but look back at the years that have passed you by. You begin to wonder if going through 4 years of school and then maybe a residency were really worth it. So many people my age get out of college, find a job and are done with school. They have all that free time after work for themselves and are enjoying what remains of their youth. I guess that is one of the reasons I hesitate to do a residency, a part of just wants to be done with all this schooling and just enter the work force. You know, start my career, make money, spend it and live a little. You can do that in dental school, don’t get me wrong, but having all those exams and the pressure of school hovering over your head takes away from the experience. I guess I will know what to do when the time to decide comes or I fall in love with a specialty or what not.

Now that almost everyone is on facebook, I try and find all these people I once knew, way back when, and see what they have been up to. It is kind of disheartening to find that you are only one of a handful still in school when your 23. I know, that is still pretty young and there are older people in dental school, but I just want to be done. But for every time I rethink my decision, I remind myself how much fun dentistry is, all the opportunities that lie before me, and of course, the good money I will be making as soon as I get out. Like I said, once you get to operative, you will know if this is the profession for you or not. You will either love it and look forward to going to lab, ot hate it and find it a chore.

Yeah its a long road, but from what I have learned so far, totally worth it.

So we get started July 6, and already a professor for one of the classes has emailed the class and informed us that we will have a quiz the first day of that class. Oh great, exams already….. What is worse, is that it is SAPL 2. SAPL for those of you who have forgotten is Skills in Assessing Professional Literature. You analyze journal articles. Man this class just wont go away. It is so damn boring. WTH, I just finished SAPL 1 a month ago, at least give this crap next year in the spring, gimme a break here or something. At least it only consists of 6 lectures.