First Day of School

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!