Does your school do anything to encourage socializing and making friends?

[throwawayacc2]

The thing I see the most about dental and medical schools altogether is how lonely people feel, especially in very competitive schools. Does your school do anything to remedy this? How's things for you personally if you don't mind me asking?

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[smiletiger98]

It's not that bad, people just make things out to be worse than they are. It obviously depends if you want to specialize or not, but there is a pretty good work-life balance in dental school once you get used to it (usually after a couple weeks). You have to put in the work, but that doesn't mean lock yourself away in a dim-lit library for 4 years of your life. You have time to go have fun, explore your hobbies, and do things that make you happy if that's what you want to do. Our school has a social committee in each class that will help put together events for people who are interested, but most of those events are organized by peers and not admin. At the end of the day these programs will take up 4 years of your life, so why make it miserable for yourself if it doesn't have to be? Hope this helps.

 

[Ryxndek]

I think it depends on you and what your goals are. If you're wanting to specialize you're going to be putting in more work than classmates who just want to be a GP. However that isn't to say you can't not go out. We host a lot of social events in my school, going to one tonight lol. But you can still have a life outside of school, but you need to put yourself out there. Yes, there's been some weeks where I've been cooped up studying religiously because I have a lot of exams, but other weeks have been a lot of fun and more laid back. So it comes and goes. I'd also encourage you to go to as many events as you can at first to meet your classmates and get to know everyone outside of school. You're going to be spending a lot of time together so it's nice to see everyone outside of a school setting.

Just be yourself, put yourself out there as much as possible, and just enjoy the ride. It moves quick!

 

[charlestweed]

I’d had great time at my dental school, UCLA. For me, it's a lot more fun than my undergrad years. The Pass/Fail system made it less stressful. I shared a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other dental classmates. And toward the end of our 3rd year, another dental classmate didn’t have a place to live and he moved in to live with us. We frequently hosted potluck parties and invited many of the Asian friends (upper and lowerclassmen) at our school to come to our apartment.

Toward the end of our 2nd year, the class president hosted a joint party with the cross town rival dental school, USC. And that’s how I met the love of my life….she was in same year class at USC. Since the clinical requirements at UCLA weren’t a lot like at USC, I had a lot of free time to drive to USC (only 12 miles away) to be with my girlfriend (she’s my wife now) and to help her with the lab work. Back then, we had to wax and cast the gold crowns/bridges and the mental copings (for PFM crowns) for all of our patients.

 

[ktboulevard]

With being an inaugural class at my school, we are extremely close! I think the way we were chosen by our loud/friendly personalities showed how are faculty were going to be. They are silly, hilarious, and great dentists that we are all super close to. They invested in this program called THRIVE which made us do these ice-breakers and dig into psychology because who doesn’t love learning about yourself? With that, we are with each other from 8-5 Mon-Fri and still can’t go a day without seeing classmates. If you’re involved with SGA or ASDA, I would strongly recommend discussing fun activities. If you need ideas, we did a class Halloween Party (off campus) and class brunch (on campus).

 

[Ne Ge]

UOP has a tradition of treating first year student to a dinner of cioppino. It is super delicious. The food is made by the faculty. Then there's the big brother/sister program where 1st year is assigned an upperclassman to help them navigate everything through school/life. It can be a hit or miss depending on who you get matched up with, though.