During our orientation, the 2nd year students showed us a video that they had made for us telling us how our first year would be. It was really creative, cute, and funny so I thought I'd share it with you. Just follow the link and enjoy!
https://xfiles.uth.tmc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/Users/cmun?x=y&stk=61A8C93524251EB
I recovered my blog from last Monday. Scroll down to read it. It's under the "Update" post. The internet isn't working too well in my apartment lounge tonight so I'm not going to try a long blog tonight. I'll try tomorrow so I can tell all about my long first week of school. As for now, have a blessed day!
I hope everyone is not too disappointed that I haven't posted a blog in a few days. I don't have internet yet and I PROMISE I will be posting more regularly after August 30. I tried to post a blog about my first day on Monday night, but the internet in my apartment messed up and it didn't post even after I had it all written out. I just got to school this morning so I don't have very long to write, but sometime this weekend I will post a mega-blog updating everyone on my first week of dental school. Thank you all for reading and don't forget to leave me little love notes in my comments! :) Gotta get to histology! Have a wonderful day!
P.S. I'll post more pictures from my white coat ceremony soon!
This was supposed to be posted last Monday. I just figured out that there was a draft of it saved, thank goodness.
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It was a great day! I got up this morning, put on my new scrubs, my shiny new shoes, packed my new backpack with my cool new laptop and all of my awesome school supplies and I was off to my first day of dental school. My alarm was set to go off at about 5:00 am and I woke up at 5:20 realizing that I had been dreaming about a car alarm going off for 20 minutes. This annoying car alarm was going off and, in my dream, I had to take it to all of these places and try to get it deactivated but it never worked. I guess that was because it was really my annoying alarm clock! That's the first time I have ever really slept through my alarm. Good thing it was only 20 minutes though!
My first class was dental anatomy lecture immediately followed by dental anatomy lab where we had to perform our first "waxing." Basically what this is is filling in a drilled out hole in an over-sized tooth with wax and contouring it and polishing it to look like the tooth had never been drilled. Essentially, we filled cavities! So it sounds simple enough, but it is one of the more difficult things to do in your first year of dental school. Lots of people have trouble working with the wax. After I worked on my first hole for a while I asked my professor to look at it and give me some pointers on what to do from that point on. She advised me a little, told me it looked really good, and asked me, "Have you ever done this before?" Ummm.....that is like the best thing I have ever heard! She actually thought I had some experience waxing! So I moved on to the biting surface of the molar which is much harder than what we were doing. Same thing...I worked on it a little and then asked for her criticism. She said it looked good again and said, "Girl, you're going to do good!" WOW! I'm a natural waxer! I was so scared of waxing (especially since I didn't know what it was until today), but I'm not scared anymore!
This afternoon I had a class called clinic skills and it only lasted 30 minutes today. The whole point of the class is to learn basic clinic stuff like how to disinfect an operatory, how to dress (gowns, masks, glasses, etc...), and we even get to assist in some clinics. We will spend 4 hours assisting 7 different times during the semester in 7 different specialties. I can't wait for that! It's actually going to be hands on experience. This is why I came to dental school!
That's all of the exciting stuff about my first day. I hope every day will be as encouraging as today was! So far, I love it! We'll see what the rest of the week brings. G'night!
Well it's been a few days since my last blog and I apologize to you who have anxiously been awaiting a new post from me. I'm sure there was some sleep lost! :)
Day 2 of orientation was boring. Same stuff...presentations, paper work, and money spending. However, it marked the day of my first attempt at riding the shuttle to school. Getting on the shuttle at 7:00 am was no big deal except for the fact that it was the earliest I have been up and ready in the last 6 years and the humidity at that time is almost unbearable. Well we got out of orientation around 3:30 and my shuttle is scheduled to pick me up at the dental school at 3:18. Since I missed that one I had to wait for the next one at 4:18. So I'm sitting there watching all of these busses come by and a few shuttles I didn't recognize and 4:18 comes around. I didn't see a shuttle that I recognized and then I remembered that I hadn't been smart enough to look for any identifying marks on my shuttle when it picked me up that morning. There are no signs or anything on it by the way. Around 4:30 I realized I had probably missed my shuttle and realized I would have to wait until 5:24 for the next one. That means I waited for my shuttle from 3:30 to 5:24! The next morning I took down the license plate number! :)
Friday was also boring as far as orientation goes. My parents were here and we went out to eat at Pappasitos for some seafood enchiladas. (If I'm ever at a loss for a blog topic, I'll elaborate more on the importance of the seafood enchiladas.) It was yet another adventure around Houston trying to find the safest, non-scary Pappasitos. Lola took us first to a Little Pappasitos, but we were afraid they wouldn't have seafood enchiladas or something. The second one Lola took us to didn't even exist and the third one was the winner. I'm pretty sure it was about an hour of driving to find this place.
Saturday was my much awaited White Coat Ceremony! It was very similar to a graduation. There were a lot of speakers and then we walked across the stage and some dentists coated us. They literally put the coat on us and we became official members of the dental profession. Yay! I will put up a few pictures within the next few days whenever my mom sends some to me. After the white coat ceremony we just went to eat some pizza at the New York Pizzeria, which I highly recommend if you ever get the chance, and then we caught up on some much needed rest. Our adventure for the day was a trip to IKEA. I knew that it was a big store, but I had no idea how big it actually was. It was probably the equivalent of 10 Wal-Marts! We shopped a little, got some Jack in the Box and went home.
Today has been a day of organizing and getting ready to start school tomorrow. My scrubs are all ready to go, my laptop is charged, and I'm ready for my first day of school! I must admit that I'm a little nervous though. It's gonna be hard! I'm gonna try to get to bed early tonight, so I better go for now. Wish me luck tomorrow!
I've officially been a Houston resident for about 6 days now and I think I'm adjusting but there have definitely been some interesting experiences so far. Just to be thorough, I'll elaborate on some of the more entertaining ones.
The day I moved in, we were told we had to haul a huge Budget truck full of my belongings through a gate, up a freight elevator, across the entire parking garage, through a series of doors, and finally to my apartment. Keep in mind that it is August in HOUSTON, TX! It is HOT here by the way! I guess you could say that it wasn't really an ideal moving situation. I'm sure we wouldn't have made it without my dad and A.C. I knew men were good for something.... :)
So next comes finding a place to buy groceries and other stuff that I usually just run to Wal-Mart for. Apparently, people around here don't really go to Wal-Mart. I guess it's a West Texas thing. I needed little things like a poster frame, a harness for Bonni, and decorative stuff but I had no idea where to get them. Our first idea was to go to Target so I programmed Lola (my trusty GPS) to find a Target. We ended up driving around all of Houston for about an hour probably and finally found a Target we weren't afraid to go in to. Now for groceries... I have heard of Kroger and HEB (we don't have those in Lubbock) but I didn't know what would be our best bet. Lola took us to a place where we learned the true meaning of HEB and we decided maybe we should go to Kroger. It literally took us an entire day just to find safe places to shop and get the things I need. Houston life is complicated!
As if finding a grocery store wasn't hard enough, I ventured out on Monday to try and find a Bank of America so I could deposit my last paycheck from Logan's. Lola took me to a Bank of America, but I couldn't figure out how to pull in to the parking lot. There is a TON of construction around the medical center here and I'm all confused anyway. I drove around to where I thought I should be and made a left turn trying to get back to the bank area. Well...I drove right in to a parking garage! There was no way out without printing out a time ticket and paying for it at the booth. So at 4:03 pm I punched in my ticket and at 4:06 pm I took it to the lady at the booth. A whole 3 minutes! She just kind of looked at me and I just told her I was in the wrong place. Thank goodness I didn't have to pay to get out because, hello, I was trying to find the bank and I didn't have any money! I still am not sure what parking garage I was in and what building it was attached to.
That night was the Psi Omega social at a local bar. It was a lot of fun and my first chance to meet a lot of my classmates. I almost talked myself out of going because I just knew it would be awkward to walk in to a bar I have never been to with a ton of people I have never met all by myself. By the end of the night I was so glad I had gone! I met a lot of new people and made a lot of really good friends already. Now I actually have people I feel comfortable calling if I need anything.
Tuesday night was our "Meet Your Mentor" dinner and I met my mentor, Diana. I love her! She is so sweet and helpful! She took me and my friend Kasey on a private little tour of the dental school and it was great because it was on a more personal level than our other tours. She gives me little tips about things I would never think of otherwise. I'm sure she and I will get along great and I know I'll be needing her help a lot this year!
That brings us to today, Wednesday, my first day of dental school orientation. I had to get up at 5:00 am which is the earliest I have had to be up and dressed in a very, very long time. My hair and makeup were all done and pretty and then I had to take Bonni out. My makeup quickly melted off and my hair just gave up on me. I may never get used to the humidity here! The orientation was nothing special. We just listened to some people tell us how hard we were going to have to work and played the ever exciting ice-breaker and get-to-know-you games. I did, however, get all of my official dental student stuff like my ID badge, my 2 lockers, a key to my waxing lab drawers, my 1st year kit full of stuff I don't know what it is, and my user name and passwords to access all of the school stuff. I'm all set now!
After orientation I decided I would try to find some scrubs. I knew this would be difficult anyway since I'm a "curvy" girl and scrubs are not so curvy. I went to this one scrub shop and the lady told me I could only try on 3 sets. I've never worn scrubs in my life and I had to try on a lot of different combinations of tops and bottoms to find out what was going to look best. Apparently, this wasn't acceptable. I was only allowed 3 sets per visit. I wanted to ask her, "if I left, drove around the block, and came back in, could I try on some more?" She was rude so I left and I will never recommend that scrub shop to anyone! I won't ever buy anything from there. So I went to this other shop that was a little more questionable as far as the area was concerned. It looked a little rough on the outside, but I was so glad I went in! The sweet man in there helped me out so much and even hooked me up with different size tops and bottoms (they don't usually sell 2 separate sizes for the top and bottom - it's usually a set). I have always been a smaller size on top than on bottom and I knew there was going to be a problem if I couldn't buy scrubs like that. So this guy was so helpful and I got 3 pairs of scrubs that fit me great! I told him that I would tell everyone I know to buy stuff from him from now on. I now have my first sets of scrubs and I am all set to start school on Monday.
I still have 2 more days of orientation and then my white coat ceremony on Saturday. Monday will be the first day of actual classes and I was told we will hit the ground running. Hopefully I'll make it through.
I'm sure I tend to ramble in this blog a little, but it's my first time blogging and I really want to have a way to share my experiences with my family and friends that want to know what's going on with me. I'll try to put some pictures up if I can and try to blog as much as possible. I won't actually have full internet access until August 30 so I may not have regular blogs for a while.
To my friends and family - I miss you all and love each and every one of you! I wouldn't be here without your support! I really hope you all keep in touch and maybe even try to come visit if you can.
Until next time..... Cheers!
