Any D1s? How's your first year?

My first year is going smoothly enough. I didn't really expect it to be as hard as it is, but as everyone says it is nothing like undergrad! Even though I have a degree in the sciences the shear volume of information that is thrust at you daily is overwhelming no matter your background. If you don't keep up with reading/comprehending the information daily you could very easily fall into a hole that is hard to get out of.

On a more happy note, the students, faculty, and staff at my school are amazing! Most anyone would go out of their way to help you in anyway possible. I've made some amazing friends already and it's only a month in.

We haven't really started any clinical work yet. We've been waxing up a storm which is actually really fun and stressful at the same time. At my school you don't get time to "practice" this skill. You just have three hour lab times and have to wax as many teeth as possible as well as possible. We had 5-6 labs total before we turned in our teeth for a grade. Actually that was yesterday. I didn't finish all of mine =( It's okay though. We all can't be amazing at everything. Everyone will have their own niches. I think we start some other kind of waxing next week.

My dental classes really excite me and are interesting. Can't say the same about the basic sciences though. I think I'm just burnt out on it all from undergrad.

So far, it's been a breeze. No exaggerating. I wish you guys only knew how dental school is.

I must say... I'm incredibly jealous of some of you guys.

I'm currently enrolled in 25.5 credit hours for this semester (I also finished Clinical Anatomy + lab over 5 weeks this summer). I am taking 10 classes at this current moment (embryology, biochem, physio, neuroanatomy, and 6 dental courses), finishing two in October and picking up two more. I feel incredibly overwhelmed, but I'm loving 95% of it. Our Staff is absolutely lovely and incredibly helpful.

We're also waxing teeth, which I LOVE but find totally terrifying at the same time. We just received all of our starter kits for prophy clinic (a slow speed, nose cones, scalers, probes, etc). We are using a typodont to learn on, but on Thursday we learned how to use a perio probe on each other (ouch...). So far, it appears to be one day and a half learning, one day practicing on each other.

I heart my kit!

luckily no wax ups yet, though its coming soon..

All i can say is ther is sooooo much info thrown at us. The crazy part is we have 6-8 quizzes a week, including 1 cumulative of all science courses. So i have done nothing but study since ive started. Although I am totally loving the plastinated bodies. Saves time and the structures look incredible, the faculty here so far are amazing, especially anatomy ones.

This upcoming week is an 8 quiz one, so back to studying

Like others, dental school so far is a storm of new facts and studying. right now we have anatomy, dental morphology, biochem, and health care systems. we are also supposed to be teaching ourselves embryo off a cd they gave us. i think we pick up intro to operative in november or october. we had our first anatomy exam last wednesday and our first morph quiz this thursday. anatomy is really cool and our professor is awesome =) wax-ups are going okay and it is really relaxing actually! it took awhile to figure out how to study for anatomy (too late for the exam), but i have another chance for it next week lol.

good luck everyone and stay happy!

Ok. First year of dental school is best described as taking all of your undergrad science books, placing them in your mouth, and the instructors smashing them down your face with a cricket bat.

haisha ni narou said:

Ok. First year of dental school is best described as taking all of your undergrad science books, placing them in your mouth, and the instructors smashing them down your face with a cricket bat.

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LOLOL! YES! that is exactly how i feel!

I actually am pretty comfortable with the workload. At the risk of sticking my foot in my mouth, dental school is not harder than undergrad so far. We have 7 classes, but only 3 of them are "hard science" tough. I took some heavy courseloads in undergrad though.

What I think is the killer about dental school is that it seems like everyone is on top of things, so class rankings are going to be very tough. It seems like if you are set on doing GP, you can cruise through 4 years here. If you want to specialize, you had better be a maniac. No joke. I have met some maniacs here.

Biochem was by far one the hardest courses during my first year... second behind gross anatomy.

Hahaha Musl you know we're in for worse when GDS really starts up.

Anyway, D1 seems to be a whole mix of information concentrated into 2 hours of pure hell per class. Intertwine that with the agony of sitting through 8 hours of lectures in one day (9 hour day), where if you miss more than 5 minutes in a row you're pretty much screwed, and you have a pretty fun starting few weeks.

The information is not hard at all, its just that dental school has consumed me and I have no time for anything else.

mamelons said:

Biochem was by far one the hardest courses during my first year... second behind gross anatomy.

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well, now i know what your sn is all about

mamelons said:

Biochem was by far one the hardest courses during my first year... second behind gross anatomy.

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musl85 said:

well, now i know what your sn is all about

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Wow... I get it now too. That was on my quiz yesterday. I guess as dental students were finally starting to see SDN in a new light.

haisha ni narou said:

Ok. First year of dental school is best described as taking all of your undergrad science books, placing them in your mouth, and the instructors smashing them down your face with a cricket bat.

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I could not have said it any better. Thinking back, what the f... am I doing in dental school? (I ask myself, often); couldn’t I have found some easier lifestyle for myself rather than going through the torture of dental school? I guess I know the answer of that question...
Oh god what the f... did I get myself into. I'm ready to eject any day now!!!

musl85 said:

well, now i know what your sn is all about

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mamelons said:

Biochem was by far one the hardest courses during my first year... second behind gross anatomy.

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So far, the opposite for me. Did okay on the first Biochem test yesterday but got my *** handed to me on the Gross exam last week. (Lecture portion, mostly). Should find out tomorrow what the damage was. Then again, we're only talking about the first round of tests here--could be singing a different story come November. We've got a biomaterials test tomorrow and then dental anatomy on tuesday--that'll include our first graded practical, on #8. So, yeah--my weekend will be spent in the sim lab.

PR Buick said:

So far, the opposite for me. Did okay on the first Biochem test yesterday but got my *** handed to me on the Gross exam last week. (Lecture portion, mostly). Should find out tomorrow what the damage was. Then again, we're only talking about the first round of tests here--could be singing a different story come November. We've got a biomaterials test tomorrow and then dental anatomy on tuesday--that'll include our first graded practical, on #8. So, yeah--my weekend will be spent in the sim lab.

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You must go to San Antonio too

I thought the second gross anatomy exam was the easier of the 3 exams, so try and do really well on it... because the third exam is cumulative head and neck... about 2.5 times as much material as the second exam. Lecture portion on gross was always so much harder IMO... so know the lab stuff really well.

Good luck!

haisha ni narou said:

Ok. First year of dental school is best described as taking all of your undergrad science books, placing them in your mouth, and the instructors smashing them down your face with a cricket bat.

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So true, I'm at MWU too.

we just had our first practical wax up on tooth #6 (thursday).

next week we have 3 quizzes and one exam. the exam is on restorative dentistry (dental anatomy). i suggest during the summer (if you get accepted into dental school) to start learning teeth anatomy and terminology. it will save you a lot of time!!

mamelons said:

Biochem was by far one the hardest courses during my first year... second behind gross anatomy.

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maybe it's just our school, but pretty everyone here is getting murdered by gross. biochem's a close 2nd though.

I love this thread b/c I love seeing how SDN people pretend to suffer through dental school! Don't get me wrong, it's hard and I like to complain too!
Oh yea, I gotta send some love to my fellow SA classmates!!!

So...

I majored in chemistry in undergrad, and I can say with confidence that my classes in undergrad were more "difficult" than in DS. Also, I was more stessed in undergrad, but my circumstances may be different than others. However, I have never had the course load that I have now. If I was to compare the two, I think DS requires 150% the time and the same amount of work. For a realistic comparison, my last 2 years of undergrad were barely a 4.0 and I think that the same amount of effort is gonna get me ~3.5 in DS1.

Warning to chemistry majors out there, studying for DS is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!

So, lets talk about Gross Anatomy...
At UTHSCSA, this is by far the worst DS1 class! To get an idea, the first tests were over "TRUNK" and the clas avg. was a 68 in lec. and a 78 in lab!!! I swear on my life that lec covered over 20 chapters and lab was about 700 terms! Not to mention that we did not get word banks unlike a certain OTHER Texas school!

To wrap this up, i think that DS is: "Work hard , sleep less , party some, hello doctor "

chemtex2008 said:

I love this thread b/c I love seeing how SDN people pretend to suffer through dental school! Don't get me wrong, it's hard and I like to complain too!
Oh yea, I gotta send some love to my fellow SA classmates!!!

So...

I majored in chemistry in undergrad, and I can say with confidence that my classes in undergrad were more "difficult" than in DS. Also, I was more stessed in undergrad, but my circumstances may be different than others. However, I have never had the course load that I have now. If I was to compare the two, I think DS requires 150% the time and the same amount of work. For a realistic comparison, my last 2 years of undergrad were barely a 4.0 and I think that the same amount of effort is gonna get me ~3.5 in DS1.

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You'll see where it gets hard once you get into to pre-clin. You're chemistry degree, work ethic and everything else can only help you so much when you're trying to prep a bridge for the first time.

armorshell said:

You'll see where it gets hard once you get into to pre-clin. You're chemistry degree, work ethic and everything else can only help you so much when you're trying to prep a bridge for the first time.

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Yea, it is a skill that take practice, practice, practice! Dude don't get me wrong, DS is hard, but it is not as bad as I expected.

P.S. Pre-clinical is my favorite stuff right now. I find most of it relaxing (until it is test time). The issue with pre-clin is serious time management and coping with the fact that some people prep stuff perfectly the first time and others, like me, require tons of practice.

Wish I could have been a dental tech in a prior life. It would save me many long weekends.

I haven't found most of the coursework particularly difficult. I don't think that any of my dental courses are more difficult than the middle- and upper-level college biology courses that I took.

The difficult thing is managing the sheer volume of work. In undergrad, I was able to study every detail that I might possibly need to know for most of my courses, and I still rarely felt like I was pressed for time. In dental school, I could easily spend every waking hour studying and still not get every detail in. It's a matter of prioritizing and managing time efficiently, which I'm still learning.

Tooth preps and wax-ups are the real challenges -- you can only learn that sort of thing by getting your hands dirty and making mistakes until you get things right.

Another thing I've noticed is that I can take it for granted that all of my fellow students have a seriousness of purpose that I didn't always see as an undergrad or out in the working world. We're a rather diverse bunch in terms of backgrounds, temperaments, goals, and the like. But we all want to be excellent dentists -- however each of us may define that -- and we all work hard toward that goal.

chemtex2008 said:

Yea, it is a skill that take practice, practice, practice! Dude don't get me wrong, DS is hard, but it is not as bad as I expected.

P.S. Pre-clinical is my favorite stuff right now. I find most of it relaxing (until it is test time). The issue with pre-clin is serious time management and coping with the fact that some people prep stuff perfectly the first time and others, like me, require tons of practice.

Wish I could have been a dental tech in a prior life. It would save me many long weekends.

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I am currently a DS2 at San Antonio -- I think it is great that you are doing so well right now, but do keep in mind that you are only 3 months into the year. Although I found gross to be my hardest course by far last year, different people struggle with different things. Some people were able to do well in gross but struggle in micro or physiology in the spring.

And yes, waxing is very relaxing, but it is hardly pre-clinic. Pre-clinic is what DS2 students are doing -- tons and tons of labwork and practice at nights and on the weekends, prepping crown after crown, setting denture teeth, making record bases, occlusion rims, removable dies, drilling and filling teeth to exact dimensions, etc. And it becomes very frustrating when you end up making a relatively crucial error 5 weeks down the line on a project, and then you have to start back over at step 1... it has happened to plenty of my classmates. Enjoy waxing teeth right now -- it is so much easier than all the stress associated with pre-clinic. And keep doing well in your didactic classes.

P.S. -- dental school gets harder 2nd year, just in a different way.

Here's the skinny:
Biochemisty, Histology, Physiology, Immunology, Nutrition, Clinical skills, Dental informatics, Dental anatomy. 3 hours in lab every monday waxing teeth and flirting with the professors who grade these said teeth and hope they don't hate you.
We have an average of 2 - 3 tests per week here. 76 is passing. Lower is failing. After hurricaine Ike we had 3 tests in a row wed-thurs-fri.
I was a music major in college so I struggle to pass. So far so good. Everybody gets s**t-faced every weekend because nobody gets to sleep or eat or shag very much during the week because there is simply one test after another after the other and no time for fun until friday.

But I get rowdy on fridays.

I. Hate. Dental. Anatomy. AHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh.

trying to memorize all of these tiny little things is extremely frustrating!!!!!

I, too, get rowdy on fridays, and this friday will be no exception. Right after my D.A. test.

le sigh.

ElectraOnAzalea said:

I. Hate. Dental. Anatomy. AHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh.

trying to memorize all of these tiny little things is extremely frustrating!!!!!

I, too, get rowdy on fridays, and this friday will be no exception. Right after my D.A. test.

le sigh.

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DA is one of my favs, it's hard to bust out perfect grillz if DA is not one of your fluent languages. I know what you mean though, it's time consuming memorizing all of the dimensions and relationships but i'd rather do that then memorize regulatory enzymes and all the steps of metabolism.... That was rough.

Loving the first year so far.

Gross Anatomy was pretty condensed, which made it hard, but it's over and things went well.

We started Dental Anatomy a week or two ago. It's hard, but fun to finally do something dental specific.

Plus all the local dentists, and local Dentists Association welcomed us very well! Nice dinner and drinks at their monthly meeting. Pretty great to already be in the 'club' of this great specialty.

Have not regretted going into dentistry.

It's nothing bad so far. The material doesn't to go into too much depth, although it may seem like it. Staying awake in class's a bigger issue for me than the material. So is studying when tired. Passing the exam requires minimal work, because there are a great deal of gimme questions. Honoring it requires quite a great deal of effort, however.

We just had five tests this week including gross anatomy, histology and growth and development... We'll have dental anatomy lab and practical next Monday. I wish we had time to read books, because it is a lot easier for me than just memorizing a list of things. But so far it has being good. I wish you all the best!

Dentsmile said:

We just had five tests this week including gross anatomy, histology and growth and development... We'll have dental anatomy lab and practical next Monday. I wish we had time to read books, because it is a lot easier for me than just memorizing a list of things. But so far it has being good. I wish you all the best!

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I think we should switch schools. I got quite good at straight memorizing a huge list of info. In our PBL curriculum we are not given any consolidated info, and instead are given time to (and have to) go find/read all the info from books.

makushin said:

I actually am pretty comfortable with the workload. At the risk of sticking my foot in my mouth, dental school is not harder than undergrad so far. We have 7 classes, but only 3 of them are "hard science" tough. I took some heavy courseloads in undergrad though.

What I think is the killer about dental school is that it seems like everyone is on top of things, so class rankings are going to be very tough. It seems like if you are set on doing GP, you can cruise through 4 years here. If you want to specialize, you had better be a maniac. No joke. I have met some maniacs here.

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Who's this guy?

UPDATE: DENTAL SCHOOL IS A SWIFT KICK IN THE &%$*$

I like it more than I thought I would though. It's a great challenge.

our dental anatomy is finally over. woo hoo! such a pain in the ass. the wax ups are the best part of that class, but still a pain in the ass. waxing a molar occlusal table, im convinced, is close to impossible- stupid oblique ridges.

Gross anatomy is by far the hardest class; I cant wait to get trashed come christmas break.

Now that dental anatomy has ended, we begin clinical. Hooray for typodonts! I just dont want to throw down 800 bucks for loupes.

haisha ni narou said:

Ok. First year of dental school is best described as taking all of your undergrad science books, placing them in your mouth, and the instructors smashing them down your face with a cricket bat.

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hahaha totally. that's heeeelarious!

the hardest thing so far has been the waxing. The sciences have been mostly review so far, but we just had our first real gross anatomy lecture, which went at a breakneck speed. Luckily I have already had it, but even so, it was still a lot. I really don't like histology that much.

Otherwise I'd have to say that I don't really consider it difficult yet.

Waxing is easy, but it takes too much time. It's somewhat an inefficient way of studying what a tooth looks like, but you understand the dimensions of the tooth better, potentially.

Anatomy in dental school seems to be a truncated version of your typical anatomy course, because I noticed we cover much, much less content than what the book actually talks about. Actually, the material's nothing hard. It's not even all that much information. It's just really draining studying when you've just got done with a 9-5 schedule. ISO time is Godsend, because it allows you to get stuff done when you're relatively fresh.

Accessory classes like ethics, radiology, etc are completely annoying. You sit there half-dazed and don't really learn much. But that's just me. My friends seem to be listening. Some of them anyway.

UCSF2012 said:

Waxing is easy, but it takes too much time. It's somewhat an inefficient way of studying what a tooth looks like, but you understand the dimensions of the tooth better, potentially.

Anatomy in dental school seems to be a truncated version of your typical anatomy course, because I noticed we cover much, much less content than what the book actually talks about. Actually, the material's nothing hard. It's not even all that much information. It's just really draining studying when you've just got done with a 9-5 schedule. ISO time is Godsend, because it allows you to get stuff done when you're relatively fresh.

Accessory classes like ethics, radiology, etc are completely annoying. You sit there half-dazed and don't really learn much. But that's just me. My friends seem to be listening. Some of them anyway.

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I agree with you on the ethics and radiology classes. those classes are really a pain the butt. I will say, it is important to learn how to interpret xrays of course, but i dont care too much about how the darns things work. Our ethics course is mostly guest speakers; so its actually kinda nice to speak and hear from practicing dentists rather than some boring biochem lecture.

As far as waxing is concerned, i dont think the main point of waxing is to learn the structures/anatomy of the teeth. I think the purpose of waxing teeth is to practice using our hands and to generally help visualize the anatomy.

I'm not sure about your gross anatomy, but ours has been comprehensive; and is no way a truncated version of undergrad. I guess it depends on your school, but we learn everthing from the waist up with special attention given to head and neck. So far its been consuming my life.

Things are very dumbed down. However, the maxed-out lecture hours leave us with little time to learn.

It is nice that they read slideshows to us though, since most of us can not read.

MONKEYBOY said:

Things are very dumbed down. However, the maxed-out lecture hours leave us with little time to learn.

It is nice that they read slideshows to us though, since most of us can not read.

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Ditto on the slideshows, lol. That's been my biggest adjustment~most professors at my undergrad thought Powerpoint was "Lazy teaching."
Our schedule is hectic, but doable. Micro/Immuno is the bane of my existence...but only for 6 more weeks! (+boards)

rkamsterdam said:

our dental anatomy is finally over. woo hoo! such a pain in the ass. the wax ups are the best part of that class, but still a pain in the ass. waxing a molar occlusal table, im convinced, is close to impossible- stupid oblique ridges.

Gross anatomy is by far the hardest class; I cant wait to get trashed come christmas break.

Now that dental anatomy has ended, we begin clinical. Hooray for typodonts! I just dont want to throw down 800 bucks for loupes.

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Forgive my allopathic ignorance but I have been curious for a short while now whether dental students did full cadaver dissections or just the region that is material for dentistry. Oh the mystery! Please someone do tell

GZA said:

Forgive my allopathic ignorance but I have been curious for a short while now whether dental students did full cadaver dissections or just the region that is material for dentistry. Oh the mystery! Please someone do tell

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Depends on the school. Some do gross, while here at USC we do more like neck up.

GZA said:

Forgive my allopathic ignorance but I have been curious for a short while now whether dental students did full cadaver dissections or just the region that is material for dentistry. Oh the mystery! Please someone do tell

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We're tested on head and neck anatomy on our dental boards.

Many schools just study head and neck. We study from the inguinal region cranially with special emphasis on head and neck anatomy.

GZA said:

Forgive my allopathic ignorance but I have been curious for a short while now whether dental students did full cadaver dissections or just the region that is material for dentistry. Oh the mystery! Please someone do tell

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Schools like UConn or Harvard where they have 2 years of medical school have to do full body cadaver. At UConn reproductive system is optional for dental students but everything else is same as it is for medical students.

at stony brook, we do the inguinal ligament up, light on the arms and heavy on the head and neck.

rkamsterdam said:

We're tested on head and neck anatomy on our dental boards.

Many schools just study head and neck. We study from the inguinal region cranially with special emphasis on head and neck anatomy.

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Same at San Antonio.