a day in the life of a dental student: 1st rotation

I am settled right on into my second set of dental rotations, but tomorrow I'm headed back to my first rotation clinic to finish up a case. So can I just talk about my very 1st dental rotation for a minute? Because it was an amazing milestone in this crazy process that is dental school? 

a day in the life of a dental student: mission trip

Since this week is all about practicing gratitude, I thought that I would share a little more about one of the experiences in my life that I am most thankful for... my Dominican Republic Dental Mission Trip. This mission gave me a chance to combine two of my greatest passions, my desire to serve others through dentistry and my love of travel and experiencing different cultures. 

Each day of our mission trip, we visited a new location. And each day we were greeted by thankful hearts, as evidenced by the fact that the governor gave us his personal bus (featured above) to aid in our transportation. Below, I'm sharing just a glimpse into what a day on this mission trip was like. 

a day in the life of a dental student: boards study

The hardest part about prepping for boards wasn't the content, it was time management. My dental school runs on a very unique schedule where we get more clinical hours than anyone else in the country. But an unfortunate side effect of that is that we also get significantly less time off. 

So while most dental schools give their students anywhere from a few weeks to a month of uninterrupted study time-I got 3 days. As you might imagine, that doesn't even begin to make a dent in preparing for a 12 hour exam. So the name of the game became squeezing as much time as possible out of each day to make time for studying. Here's a glimpse of what my average day has looked like these past couple of months. 

a day in the life of a dental student: pulling teeth

Sharing another day in the life as a dental student. This one is all about pulling teeth! It's exhausting and hard work, but incredibly rewarding and I love it.  

As a dental student, I have my own set of patients that I'm responsible for, but every 2-3 weeks I do a week-long rotation within one of the specialty dental clinics at the school...emergency, pediatrics, orthodontics, etc. Today's rotation is in the Oral and Maxillofacial Clinic (OMS), extracting teeth. Let's take a glimpse at my day, shall we? Don't worry though-no graphic photos. 

a day in the life of a dental student: sleigh decay

So close to finishing up yet another semester of dental school (just a few more days!), but before I do, thought I'd share another day in the life of a dental student to reflect my current schedule before things get even busier next semester.

a day in the life of a dental student: yesterday

Yesterday was the craziest busiest day for me. This whole week has been actually because it's right before Thanksgiving break with finishing up lots of projects. But Friday especially was hectic in the best way. I treated pediatric patients all morning and took my clinical practical on exodontia (pulling teeth) in the afternoon. Did I mention it was on a live patient? eek! 

I realize that it's been a long while since I've shared a day in the life of a dental student. That's because I'm such a perfectionist about capturing all the best photos and writing good descriptions etc. And that rarely happens. But yesterday felt like the best day (I actually felt like a dentist) that I need to document. So here goes....an impromptu day in the life of a dental student.

a week of dental surgery

If you follow my insta-stories, then you know I had the opportunity to do dental surgeries last week. It's one thing to drill on someone's tooth and place a restoration. But it's a completely different story to cut away someone's gum tissue, remove parts of their jaw bone, teeth, and then stitch them back up again!

a day in the life of a dental student: spring break

Dental school is year-round, which always makes me jealous of my med school friends. As such, it makes the few breaks that we are given so precious. This year, I did my spring break just right with mixing in a short southern road trip (Tennessee & Kentucky) with relaxing and still being productive and getting lots of work done. Before summer officially begins tomorrow, I thought it'd be a perfect time to share a rare glimpse of a relaxing day in the life of a dental student. 

A Day in the Life: Weekend Edition

For this month's version of A Day in the Life of a Dental Student...I thought that I would mix things up a little by showing what my weekends look like. I've been told that weekends can be wonderfully relaxing and have even been fortunate enough to experience a few of these myself. But for the most part, my weekends are typically longer than my school days. Or at least they feel that way. 

A Day in the Life of a Dental Student

Stab Lab

If you read my January Review, you know that one of the things that I recently covered in dental school was how to numb a patient. When we learned how to do things like drill on teeth and make dentures, we practiced on mannequins with plastic teeth. The plastic teeth are actually harder to work with than real teeth, so it was a good simulation. But you can't mimic major arteries, nerves, or canals in a dummy head. So in order to get real life experience for numbing patients, we injected each other! Here's a peak at my day. 

A Day in the Life of a Dental Student

Fabricating Dentures 

I'm going to do things a little bit differently then my September or October Day in the Life posts.We're going to skip the usual fluff & just focus on the dental experience of a second year student. We have started learning how to make dentures and while it is exciting, it's also excruciatingly time consuming.  

A Day in the Life of a Dental Student

As promised, here is this months "a day in the life" post. Because my schedule varies so much, I plan on posting a new version of this each month. Last month our focus was on root canals, this month it is something else entirely. Things move fast! Here is my current typical day...

A Day in the Life of a Dental Student

Welcome to the A Day in a Life of A Dental Student Series.

 My schedule changes dramatically throughout the course of a year and I want to highlight that. As I move from a second to third year dental student, I will be transitioning from learning pre-clinical procedures to working with actual patients. Some pretty big changes are coming my way and I really want to share and document all of it so each month I will be sharing a new aspect of dental school. Initially, dental school started out with full days of lecture. Now, we are doing preclinical exercises like learning how to numb a patient (by practicing on each other..eeck!) and how to make dentures. Even weekends are crazy around here. 

For today, I will be talking about learning how to do a root canal. 
Here's my exact schedule last Tuesday. 

Day in the Life of a Dental Student: Lecture

As promised I will be showing you what a typical week for me is currently like through this "Day in the Life of a Dental Student Series". Each day is unique so I will covering a few different days this week. Here is an overview of my current weekly schedule:

Mondays/Thursdays: 

8 hrs of Lecture

Tuesdays: 

Morning: Dental Lab 

Afternoon: Independent Study

Wednesdays: 

Morning: Exam & Lecture 

Afternoon: Dental Lab 

Fridays: 

8hrs of Dental Lab 

Everyday class is from 8am-5pm with an hour for lunch. Unfortunately, attendance is mandatory which I am not a fan of, more so for the lecture days. One advantage we do have is that we do not have blocks-which are periods of the semester where you would take several exams in a short period of time. This is the system implemented by most medical programs. Instead, we have a weekly exam and the jury is still out on whether or not I like this. Sometimes you just want a day off, but there is always an exam around the corner. 

This was my schedule for yesterday (Monday) so I had lecture all day: 

7AM The dog wakes me up because he wants to go out and I panic a little because I'm running late. Take the dog out & feed him. 

7:15AM Quick shower & hair goes back into a bun. Too tired for contacts, so glasses it is. 

7:30AM Get Dressed & Basic Make-up

7:50AM I could totally leave right now and be on time for school, but I decide that it's worth it to be late to make and eat breakfast. 

Honey Wheat Bread w. Egg and Fresh Strawberries

Pumpkin Spice Coffee w. Whip Cream & Cinnamon 

8:15 AM Leave for school 

8:25AM-9:50AM  In class and taking notes, really wishing that we weren't still in our neurology unit. Ironically we spend this part of the morning learning about circadian rhythm and sleep cycle EEGs. Just reminds me of how tired I am.