If your dental school is anything like mine, you will or are suffering from the same deluge of paperwork, more paperwork, complicated financial situations, patients canceling or not showing up, even more paperwork and a ton of requirements to fulfill every third week of the semester. If you're anything like me, this has caused you extreme frustration, ajita, sleepless nights, feelings of failure and incompetance and perverse joy that you're not in this alone when you see a classmate running past you with wild eyes and an armful of charts. Quite literally, third year has made me sick since the day I showed up in the clinic, naively thinking that it was going to be fun and more fulfilling to not be in lecture all the time
It is for this reason that I have not posted anything for months. I have literally been scrabbling to stay on top of my paperwork so I will someday be confident that I can graduate on time. Every time I see something aberrant on a radiograph or in my patient, my stomach sinks because I know that it is probably not something that I can do. Crowns and class II restorations are turfed to fourth years for graduation. A patient with two crowns and porcelain veneers that I put in her treatment plan was transferred to a fourth year. My patient today has some cavities but his crown will take priority, so that's another operative procedure I won't get to do right away. The list goes on and on.
A note to all of my readers: when you don't show up to your health care appointment or when you cancel for any reason, you are taking money away from the dentist or doctor, or in my case, taking time away from me. I could have used that chair to see another patient to do a procedure on. It's not just about fulfilling a certain number of requirements, it's about basic experience that I won't get if I can't do it on a patient, and therefore I am not as good a student as I could be. There is no amount of reading or watching videos or lecturing that could replace a good clinical experience. I won't deny my responsibility in staying on top of paperwork or patient scheduling, but I can only do so much.
