I know I should be updating more frequently…, but second year is just God awful. Labs everyday, and when I have no lab scheduled, I am still in lab making up the work I did not get done. I am in school on weekends doing more lab work. I have exams coming up and I havent even started to stusy because I spend 90% of my time on the 11th floor labs. D1’s enjoy your first year and the summer after that, second year is a totally different monster.

This is all on top of the crazy schedule I have. There are days I leave at 9pm and then have to come back in at 6:45 AM. The worst news is, the semester has just begun…… the end is nowhere in sight!

Hard to believe we have midterms two weeks into the summer session. Will update soon. Thanks for reading

I could not have been more correct when I predicted the first lab was going to be a total bust. The funny thing is, it is the exact same thing we had to do in our 1st D1 lab with minor alterations. I will admit, I totally suck at taking alginate impressions. Either I really stink at it or the faculty row instructor I had was real picky about everything. It is probably a combination of both. Wednesday was the first day of lab. I had to stay extra late just to get one alginate impression done so I could get signed off on the work. Some people had not only gotten both alginate impressions done (one for each arch), but they had made the plaster casts. Guess who those students were?

The AP’s…..not surprising. The D2’s have a lot of catching up to do. The great thing about the AP’s is that they know all these neat tricks, so to speak, if you screw up or are having trouble, so having AP’s has its advantages. Take the time to learn from them. I guarantee they will make you feel like a moron in lecture. They know everything being taught in lecture as well. It is funny how the Professors ask the class all these questions, and the only ones with the answers are the AP’s. Lots of catching up to do.

But back to lab, so I had to come in today (Saturday) to get my mandibular arch impression and then pour the plaster to make the casts. The mandible is such a **** to get an impression from. You always screw up something. If its not the retromolar pads that are the problem, then you have too many air bubbles. I must have done it 20 times before I finally got the hang of it. I got in at 11AM and finished at 4pm. What a fun start to the weekend. Im going to take pictures of the whole process on Monday so you guys have some clue as to what I am talking about. The good thing is that we have lab once a week in the summer, so if you dont finish something in lab (no one but the AP’s do), you have the rest of the week to get it done.

Ill have more on our lecture classes tomorrow.

Today we got our new instruments. I felt exactly like I did the day we got the instruments last summer, overwhelmed and scared as hell. Great another year of learning the names and uses of all these new tools and what not. Just as you get used to one thing, gotta start learning about other things, no rest I tell you. Tomorrow is the first day of lab, and that means one thing: alginate and casts. Its the first thing we did in lab during D1 too. I hated it, it was worse than any wax up, insertion or preparation I had done.

I remember the first day of lab, it was utter chaos. I really thought that I should drop out of dental school, that it was totally not worth the money. The first lab is the most poorly instructed of all the labs, and it was the most confusing. Here you are, a total newbie, trying to create the perfect alginate impression of the typodont with little to no help from faculty.  You will redo the alginate so many times due to those damn air bubbles. You spend most of the 3hrs trying to get that done. Then, you get to the tough part. You have to pour dental plaster into the alginate impression to make the stone cast, then add more plaster for the base. Once all that hardens you have to trim the cast so you get proper margins and smooth flat surfaces. What a nightmare. That day I was scheduled to leave lab at 5pm and I left around 8pm. There is no one to show you how to do anything. Had it not been for D2’s, it would have never gotten done. Also, these things break so easily. I had to redo one of the arches after I chipped a tooth. Just horrible. So all you D1’s, its gonna be damn ugly in the beginning, but after that it is smooth sailing for the most part.

And tomorrow I have to do all of what I described above, and I havent done it in a year. The great thing about D1, is that you only need to do this once. In D2, we will be makng many of these casts……just great.

Oh yeah, I also learned today that something like 8 D2’s are repeating the entire year. They failed D2 classes, had to re-mediate and then failed the remediation’s. So apparently you get to repeat the year if you fail remediation. Not fun and very costly. I guess that will serve as the incentive to kick start the study machine. Ill let you guys know how lab goes tomorrow…

Well, today was the first day of my 2nd year here at NYUCD. Sadly, the first professor we had reminded us that we should have enjoyed the month long break we had, since it would be the last. Nothing like looking forward to non stop doom and gloom on the first day of school. I have to say, classes seemed worse today than they did at any point during D1. I guess I just wasn’t ready to go back, so it might take me a while to get into that groove.

I am really nervous about starting lab. The good news is that it is only once a week in the summer, the bad news is that it is about complex restorations and we have to do removable prosthodontics, which I hear are a real **** to do. Compounding the difficulty of the material is the fact that the instructor is much tougher than Dr. Bucklan. Oh how I long for the days of D1. Haha, never thought I would say that.

The other good news, is that we no longer have weekly quizzes in D2 and no more comprehensive science midterms and finals. Every class will just have its own midterm and final. I cant help but wonder what affect this will have on my grades and studying habits. The good thing about having the weekly quizzes, is that you can gauge how you are doing before the midterm and make improvements in your studying. Now we cant do that. Studying every week for a quiz also forced us to keep up with the work. Now we have a midterm date set far away from the current date, and it seems like there is no incentive to start studying. The procrastination that I  had abandoned during D1 is slowly creeping back into my system. I must resist!

The other major news is that the class is now the D2 class plus the AP’s. To be honest, while I am sure they are nice people, I have no interest and probably will not make any real effort to get to know most of them, other than my lab neighbors. The saklad lecture hall is just too big, and there are so many new faces. Hell, I have not even met or spoken to many people in my D2 class yet, let alone the extra 100 AP’s. Maybe I will have a change in heart down the road, but right now, I am too comfortable with the group of people I have known for the past year to make any real effort in terms of making new friends.

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.

I began publishing my thoughts on the second semester courses:

http://dentulous.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/first-year-second-semester-overview/

The first thing I wanted to write about, are the other classes we took during 1st semester.

Epidemiology & Critical Thinking:

This course runs from early October to early December. There are 2 professors that teach this course, Dr. Morse and Dr. Katz. There is a midterm and a final for the course.

Lets just say this class is one of the classes you cant wait to get behind you. The first part of the course deals with Epidemiology, the various types of studies carried out etc. The key to doing well on this course is to just know the definitions, how to carry out some of the calculations preformed in Epidemiology, and know some of the examples Dr. Morse gives. Also, old exams are another key to success. Many similar questions appear on the exams.

At first you will think this is the most boring **** I have ever had to sit through. Believe me, up to that point, it probably will have been the most boring course you have ever taken. Then you get to the second part of the course, the literature analysis part of the course taught by Dr. Katz. I guarantee, you will be begging to have Dr. Morse back, wishing you can take back all the bad things you said about the first part of the course. Watch a nice percentage of the class stop showing up for this course. In literature analysis, you read journal articles, and pull out information from the article, and identify what kind of study the article is. It is a real pain in the ***. The sad part is, this portion of the course is a preparation for the SAPL (Skills In Assessing Professional Literature) course you take every year of the 4 years at NYUCD. So it is in your interest to understand this stuff because you will be tested on it all 4 years. Very little of the material you get tested on in this course is on the final, but it prepares you for the SAPL course you take in the spring of 1st year and every subsequent year.

Ethics: This course runs from the end of September to the middle of January. There is a final on the last day, and you can work in a group of 4.

Well, the course title says it all. It is about ethics in dentistry. It is a very relaxed class. You will read cases in class and participate in discussion with Dr. More. You will watch a video or two in class. It is a no pressure class, and Dr. More is very funny.

Dentistry as a Science and Profession: This course runs from Sept. to Nov.

Also is taught by Dr. More. It is P/F, so it is another very laid back class. In this class you just learn about the dental profession and all the specialties and mission of the dental profession. It is a total joke of a class.

Dentist-Patient Relationship:

This course is taught by the infamous Dr. Hittleman. He is a psychologist and this course focuses on, well, the Dentist-Patient relationship. If you have heard of Dr. Hittleman and his interviews, you will be terrified at the thought of taking a course with this man. I know I was. Surprisingly, he is very laid back in the course and is hilarious. His examples are very funny and does a good job of explaining all the psychobabble he will throw at you. This is the first class, if I am not mistaken that you use the CPS clicker in. The points you get will serve as extra credit on the final (only one exam in the course, so dont screw it up). The good thing about the final is that it is open book, and he releases a bank of questions that could be on the exam. As a result, you will have adequate time to prepare, but the questions are tricky. The best thing to do is to get a group and answer the questions together before the exam, do as many old exams (concepts are the same and some questions are repeated). The test is worth 100% of your grade, so put effort into it, it is not P/F! Also get as many of the 10 points extra credit since you will need it….. It is the type of exam where there can be more than one answer correct, and you must choose the most correct answer.

Health Promotion I: From mid November to Mid January

This course is taught by Dr. Sehl, she is an expert in geriatric dentistry, and she will teach in many courses. There is a final exam and 3 quizzes that contribute to your final grade. The course deals with many issues in Dentistry such as sealants, fluoride, community health promotion, perio disease and other dental diseases. This course gives you insight into the demographics of dental diseases and what can be done to change them. I can’t remember any issues with the course in terms of difficulty. The exam questions can be specific if I recall, so know what certain studies showed etc.

You can see the in the 1st semester, it is very busy. Sooooo many classes and as a result soooo many exams. I guarantee that at the beginning of the second semester, you will think that it is much easier than 1st semester, but that all changes when the end of Feb./ beginning of March rolls around. No more fluff classes, all heavy science courses.

Well, a big apology to all. I was on vacation and left everything related to dental school behind. So I have 2 weeks left until classes begin, and I will use those 2 weeks to talk about second semester and my D1 experience overall.

Oh, and D1 was a total success, so all that studying pays off.

So we finished Friday the 29th. I will refrain from getting too excited until i get my final grades. So stay tuned. Lots to say.