Are you a person with "common" sense? If so, when did it hit you...

[2014DMD]

When did it hit you that dental school is a farce?

I mean, when did it hit you that you're just memorizing things for the sake of memorizing them? Or avoiding certain profs because they go out of their way to insult/diminish/make-things-harder for you. But it's more than just some professors on a power trip (or whatever their mental/personality disorder). It seems to be completely endemic of dental schools, from what I gather.

I'm not talking to the gunners, nerds, etc, here. And I don't care whether or not you do consider yourself one - if you've never thought twice about the real world necessity of memorizing some random crap then don't even reply to this thread. I'm talking to the people - some, perhaps, who have even been out working in the real world - who have been devastated to realize that getting through dental school is mostly just a series of hoops you are required to jump through.

And no matter how asinine the hoop may be - in fact, often times there will be faculty or staff members who agree it's a trite/useless/vindictive hoop - you need to do whatever it takes to jump through it, or face the adverse consequences; including threat of failure and/or dismissal from school.

I'm hopeful it changes at least a little bit when I get to clinic, but I've seen enough to know I should never get my hopes up.

There are a few people with enough "common sense" in my class who see the big picture now, and the absurdity of a lot of it, and I've heard second-hand stories of others schools, but I guess mostly I'm just looking for others' firsthand experience.

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[keyboard27]

You wanna talk about absurd? Wait until you have to take your licensure exam. And the jumping through the hoops and problems with faculty and basically everything else you mentioned......that will be amplified 10 fold once you hit the clinic. Trust me, your pre-clinical days of dental school are the easiest ones. Get ready for the real pain of dental school. Spread it on.

 

[mike3kgt]

When did it hit you that dental school is a farce?

I mean, when did it hit you that you're just memorizing things for the sake of memorizing them? Or avoiding certain profs because they go out of their way to insult/diminish/make-things-harder for you. But it's more than just some professors on a power trip (or whatever their mental/personality disorder). It seems to be completely endemic of dental schools, from what I gather.

I've been associated with 3 dental schools now and they are all like that. I also have figured out that there are 3 types of students out there: shiners, recliners, and whiners.

Everybody thinks they are a shiner but these people will rise above the nonsense and absurdity of dental school and make it worthwhile and get the most out of their education as they can. We all go through it and you will not like it at all during or after but ultimately it will pay off in the end. Yes it is true that we can all act like the three different groups at different times during school but ultimately you will be more like one than the other in the end.

You have to ask yourself, which group does it sound like you are apart of right now? What type of dental student do you want to be? What are you goals... how are your actions measured? Ultimately, how do you want to be remembered?

 

[mixoma]

Word to the clinical licensing exams, they are a load of s***! Every one goes through the same dental school BS. My best advice to anyone just starting is to cup your knee caps and just take it. You will get through it and when you graduate you will have your freedom and do as you like. On a side note just think most professors that are lifers at a dental school are there for one of two reasons in my opinion. 1 They are retired, burnt out or injured and like to teach so teaching is a great post practice income, these prof are usually cool. 2 They could not hack it in private practice as they could not produce or run a business, these prof are squares and dental schools are full of them which in my opinion is why dental school sucks.

 

[djeffreyt]

When did it hit you that dental school is a farce?

I mean, when did it hit you that you're just memorizing things for the sake of memorizing them? Or avoiding certain profs because they go out of their way to insult/diminish/make-things-harder for you. But it's more than just some professors on a power trip (or whatever their mental/personality disorder). It seems to be completely endemic of dental schools, from what I gather.

I'm not talking to the gunners, nerds, etc, here. And I don't care whether or not you do consider yourself one - if you've never thought twice about the real world necessity of memorizing some random crap then don't even reply to this thread. I'm talking to the people - some, perhaps, who have even been out working in the real world - who have been devastated to realize that getting through dental school is mostly just a series of hoops you are required to jump through.

And no matter how asinine the hoop may be - in fact, often times there will be faculty or staff members who agree it's a trite/useless/vindictive hoop - you need to do whatever it takes to jump through it, or face the adverse consequences; including threat of failure and/or dismissal from school.

I'm hopeful it changes at least a little bit when I get to clinic, but I've seen enough to know I should never get my hopes up.

There are a few people with enough "common sense" in my class who see the big picture now, and the absurdity of a lot of it, and I've heard second-hand stories of others schools, but I guess mostly I'm just looking for others' firsthand experience.

You really are having a bad week, month, or year. Sorry...yes dental school is like that, but then, so are lots of things. Ever watched Office Space? Life is full of this ****. Wanna see a lot more of it, get a government job.

I can feel your pain, but the truth is, yes, of course a lot of the **** you learn is not remembered later. Yes, you are memorizing to memorize, but it's not as useless as you think. If you want to be the kind of doctor later who has no idea what things are or doesn't understand what a research paper on a clinically relevant topic is saying, you can be that doctor and still practice dentistry. I had a friend text me today to ask me which schedule of drugs we are allowed to prescribe as a dentist. My response, everything except schedule 1. Her response: so what about schedule 2N and 3N? Again, EVERYTHING except schedule 1, so duh, yes those too. She doesn't care about remembering these simple things we all learned and memorized in school and guess what, she gets along fine...you wanna be that kind of dentist who can't remember the names of instruments, the type of antibiotics that are most effective against periodontal bacteria, or which illnesses are contraindications for nitrous, then you'll still be fine...just look it up when you need it.

The truth is, you learn stuff so that it's not completely unfamiliar when it does come up. Stuff comes up all the time and 99% of the time I know what to do, but 1% of the time I realize, wait, I had to learn this but I can't remember everything. There's something about this person or case where what I'm about to do needs more thought. This is where that memorizing comes in. If we never memorized it and forgot it, there wouldn't be that little voice that says, "stop! you learned about this, now go figure it out so you don't harm the patient." Yeah, not every last thing you memorized will come back to be necessary, but that's what the point of it is. If you never had to learn it once, you'll never know to think about it later.

As for hoops in clinic and everywhere else, yep, they are there. To some extent they are dumb as crap. Other times they are there to protect patients from you. You're a novice, hell, even I'm new to this still. If there weren't check points then stuff would slip through and things would happen that may be should not. Those check points aren't to protect the 99% of the patients that would be perfectly fine if all those checks and hoops didn't exist at the school, it's to protect the 1% of patients that would be harmed if the checks didn't exist. You know, the patient that might get an extraction done when it's really a filling, or might spend $1000 and 5 appointments having a partial made when really that partial isn't going to last a year and they need all their teeth extracted and a full denture made.

I know all this doesn't help you at the time. Going through and living through dental school is tough. But you aren't alone. You think government workers don't have to fill out and get rubber stamps from 50 unnecessary people to get okayed to call the fire department when their office is burning? I'm a former English major and I took 3 separate courses on Shakespeare alone in college, but I can't name all his plays. every profession and degree comes with a certain degree of routine memorizing and seemingly pointless steps in a process. It's not just dentistry or dental school.

 

[Shnurek]

...every profession and degree comes with a certain degree of routine memorizing and seemingly pointless steps in a process. It's not just dentistry or dental school.

Well said. Our school has the same BS. We have a professor on a power trip where on our most recent midterm the class average was 58%. And last year 10% of the class failed so they had their summers ruined in order to make up the class. So many BS hoops to jump through no matter what lucrative profession you want to do in life.

 

[yappy]

lol sorry, went into a rant. It's a sore subject for me.

 

[Shnurek]

lol. Earning a doctorate degree in dentistry (a health science), an unrestricted lic. to practice, and you're commenting on "common sense".

Why persue a course of study that is anti-common sense if you're interested in operating at the level of technician?

Tell me, were you also the student who was always saying "ugh!, why do I have to learn this" as you were taking the prereqs?

And hey, if you want to get real world, lets get real f*cking world. You were lazy about memorizing the doses for medical emergencies. A patient has an anaphylaxic reaction. The patient dying "doctor" - they're under your care - what do you do? You forgot the doses for peds and now need to draw up 1:1000 epi. What volume? What route? How many Mg's/kg? Now their heart stopped. What's the ACLS protocol? Did you memorize that?

Thanks for killing my Kid.

Pathetic.

Your multiple spelling errors are pathetic. You are not going to go through SN2 reactions in your head while you think about sticking that epi pen into a kid's shoulder.

 

[yappy]

Shnurek will be a pseudoprofessional who has a superficial understanding of his professional responsibilities.

Cook-book doctor. Easily flustered. Easily replaced.

 

[GTFOOMICT]

I also have figured out that there are 3 types of students out there: shiners, recliners, and whiners.

Awesome

 

[gryffindor]

I had a patient yesterday ask what kind of training was necessary to be an orthodontic assistant. He was then very confused about why the next career move for an orthodontic assistant wouldn't just be an orthodontist. To him, it looks like I just glue the brackets and they (the assistants) just change the wires, so why not just train them to glue the brackets as well? I really wanted to give him a piece of my mind and say "If there's no difference, can you please let people know to stop suing their doctors then and focus on the nurses and assistant instead?" Instead I reminded him that I was also trained to yank teeth and use a high speed drill inside of his mouth, and the privilege to do those things came with my education and training to recognize and not kill someone with a serious bleeding disorder or some other medical condition who comes to my dental chair needing dental procedures.

Be glad the hoops are there for now. Lots of people in politics and other dental-health organizations (some hygienists) are looking to take away the hoops and train sub-dentists to do exactly what my patient assumed under some guise of "access to care" and "saving money."