Pakgirl
I'm just finishing my first year. Your question is difficult to answer because it varies with each week/semester/class.
There are some weeks that I was in the gross anatomy lab from 6-midnight. Therefore I was at school from 8am-midnight! I have also been in Prosth., Operative and Occulsion lab for many after school hours. Believe me they were not fun. Then they're days that I was out at 5pm.
In general dental school (at my school) has been challenging and unforgiving. We are taking over 30 semester hours in our 2nd sem. Nearly 8 classes ranging from 1-6 credits. Time management is the biggest issue. You must learn quickly what study habits work best for you because (for some) they are drastically different than what worked in college. Example----In college you may have had a couple of days or even weeks between tests and most likely finals week was the only time you had 2-3 exams in a day/day apart. Our dental school has proven that you can learn several classes Histology, Gross Anatomy, etc... and take both exams the same day as well as each classes' lab exams and then be tested in another class on hand-skills with wax-ups or preps----all along the other classes expects you to have read 60 pgs. of their new information so you know what is going on in their class. Not to mention quizzing you even though they know you just had 4-5 exams in 3 days. It would be easier to count the weeks that weren't like this than to count the ones that were! The wealth of new terminology and the amount of information is mainly the problem. The classes in-and-of-themselves aren't that more difficult than college----but the numerous sem. hours and the expectations of the professors----create the difficulty.
The point is just get ready to work. It is manageable and they've selected you because you fit the "model" of other's who have succeeded before. The greatest advice I can offer is allow confusion, uncertainty, and stress to become allies. You won't understand every concept taught, you won't immediately be able to take a high-speed drill and do a crown reduction with perfect margins and 6 degress of axial taper. Remember the hand-skills and many dental concepts will take years to perfect and because most students entering dentistry are somewhat perfectionists and detail-oriented it is hard to not understand a concept or have perfect hand-skills immediately. But you will soon learn you won't have enough time in a day to learn everything! Otherwise you could spent day and night trying to learn yesterday's material as well as today's.
Good luck and enjoy your summer.
RRB
