Drug testing

[deleted771467]

Will there be drug tests in dental school?

If so when, at the beginning or throughout the four years?

Thanks!

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[n02688402]

Not gonna lie, I'd also like to know

 

[2TH MVR]

Lol.

 

[ab117]

Of course the forum is supposed to be anonymous but if I was an admin or faculty at VCU and stumbled upon this post, I would now instantly be 99% sure that someone in my incoming class who's from Florida uses illegal drugs haha.

 

[deleted771467]

Of course the forum is supposed to be anonymous but if I was an admin or faculty at VCU and stumbled upon this post, I would now instantly be 99% sure that someone in my incoming class who's from Florida uses illegal drugs haha.

I’ve been around for a while...i do not care what VCU might do if they came upon this post, I want to know what they usually do, time table

 

[Yesnoyes]

Every school is different. I know that Columbia drug test in the end of the second year, other schools are during orientation.

 

[periopocket]

Will there be drug tests in dental school?

If so when, at the begging or throughout the four years?

Thanks!

Bro you may never get drug tested. Im in a VA dental residency and I was the only out of 3 incoming who got drug tested and it was by chance and never again was there a test already 2/3 done with program. Dental school rarely ever test.

 

[ESPN907]

Will there be drug tests in dental school?

If so when, at the begging or throughout the four years?

Thanks!

Does stab lab count? Lol

 

[CanadianGurl]

What if the drug is legal in your home country/state?

 

[ab117]

I’ve been around for a while...i do not care what VCU might do if they came upon this post, I want to know what they usually do, time table

Just making a joke man, you’re coming off really standoffish. My class hasn’t been drug tested and I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it. But the school’s official policies say that students are prohibited from using any illegal drugs on or off campus. I kind of doubt anything would ever actually happen, but that’s their official position.

 

[Life of Pablo]

 

[deleted771467]

lol
Great vid bro!

 

[deleted771467]

Just making a joke man, you’re coming off really standoffish. My class hasn’t been drug tested and I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it. But the school’s official policies say that students are prohibited from using any illegal drugs on or off campus. I kind of doubt anything would ever actually happen, but that’s their official position.

My friend, I realize that it’s hard to read emotion or context from this text. I was being direct, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.

Thank you for the info and keep killing it buddy!

 

[deleted771467]

What if the drug is legal in your home country/state?

^Good question

 

[cooliyak]

What if the drug is legal in your home country/state?

Usually doesn’t matter. If the school receives any federally funding, they have to enforce federal law. CU has played around with the idea of regular/periodic drug testing (and say they reserve the right to for certain situations) and that is what they said when someone brought up that it was legal in Colorado.

 

[islanddrive]

lol I asked one of my buddys in dental school at michigan and he said there are for rotations affiliated with hospitals

 

[Tootyfruity]

Just gotta carry clean urine around

 

[2TH MVR]

Boy ... have things changed. Not once was I drug tested in undergrad, DS or Residency. Drug testing was even mentioned back then. Every generation has had their drugs of choice. So what has changed? Anything to do with the partial legalization of weed?

 

[princeafrica]

Boy ... have things changed. Not once was I drug tested in undergrad, DS or Residency. Drug testing was even mentioned back then. Every generation has had their drugs of choice. So what has changed? Anything to do with the partial legalization of weed?

Kids are smoking Juul starting in elementary. By the time they are done with high school they have almost tried everything if not everything

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

Boy ... have things changed. Not once was I drug tested in undergrad, DS or Residency. Drug testing was even mentioned back then. Every generation has had their drugs of choice. So what has changed? Anything to do with the partial legalization of weed?

See "war on drugs" for that. Drug use has gone down since the 1980's among teens but our fear/concern about it has risen due to the media.

 

[hellopeople]

Nope. You can keep smoking.

... or using adderall if you're a gunner.

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

Will there be drug tests in dental school?

If so when, at the beginning or throughout the four years?

Thanks!

Not sure about VCU but I was told by a D1 at one of my state schools that they drug tested on the first day.

 

[mmc12]

I was never drug tested in dental school. I did have to undertake a drug urine test prior to starting any of my GPR programs.

 

[redhotchiligochu]

See "war on drugs" for that. Drug use has gone down since the 1980's among teens but our fear/concern about it has risen due to the media.

Mainstream media is well-known for distorting facts and selling fear (aka “fake news”), from BOTH political spectrums.

Back to OP’s question, drug testing is rare. It technically can be enforced at my school, based on our student handbook, but it’s very rarely enforced. Plus, if such a thing happened, you’d almost definitely hear about it on SDN or some local news outlet.

If you’re paranoid about it, keep yourself drug-free for 7-30 days before orientation, depending on how uh... lipophilic or ionized the drug is.

My $0.02

 

[deleted771467]

Mainstream media is well-known for distorting facts and selling fear (aka “fake news”), from BOTH political spectrums.

Back to OP’s question, drug testing is rare. It technically can be enforced at my school, based on our student handbook, but it’s very rarely enforced. Plus, if such a thing happened, you’d almost definitely hear about it on SDN or some local news outlet.

If you’re paranoid about it, keep yourself drug-free for 7-30 days before orientation, depending on how uh... lipophilic or ionized the drug is.

My $0.02

best response so far!

 

[GoDental101]

Don’t do drugs kids...stay in school. My friends mom swore her dentist was high when he did her RCT. The dentist ended up doing the wrong tooth. She sued him for malpractice. Just be smart and either stay off the drugs or stay out of professional school. There’s a reason it’s against every single schools code of conduct.

Just my $0.02

 

[gangazi]

yes, every 3 months

 

[gangazi]

plus random testing here and there

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

yes, every 3 months

Does your school have any trust or respect for its students? Y’all are paying hundreds of K to be there and went through a selections process.

 

[ab117]

Does your school have any trust or respect for its students? Y’all are paying hundreds of K to be there and went through a selections process.

yeah but they'd also be liable if someone screwed something up on a patient and they were high. I mean that sounds excessive to me too, but paying tuition is hardly an argument against it, the fact that you pay a lot of money to a school has nothing to do with their legal department wishing to minimize liability.

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

yeah but they'd also be liable if someone screwed something up on a patient and they were high. I mean that sounds excessive to me too, but paying tuition is hardly an argument against it, the fact that you pay a lot of money to a school has nothing to do with their legal department wishing to minimize liability.

You’re right I hadn’t considered the liability aspect.

 

[deleted771467]

Don’t do drugs kids...stay in school. My friends mom swore her dentist was high when he did her RCT. The dentist ended up doing the wrong tooth. She sued him for malpractice. Just be smart and either stay off the drugs or stay out of professional school. There’s a reason it’s against every single schools code of conduct.

Just my $0.02

There is a reason that’s against a schools code of conduct, because the federal government has made it illegal.

Your argument seems silly and perhaps hypocritical if you have ever had a beer while being a medical professional.

You should not drink and drive, or drink and performed a medical procedure. Same for any other drugs.

So, kids, Don’t listen to anybody. Live courageously, create your own identity and your own value system. Live courageously because you only have one life!

 

[princeafrica]

Just don't do drugs. I have only done two drugs my entire life - ibuprofen and "smoking" smarties in middle school

 

[AppalachianDentalBoy]

I have only done drugs my entire life

And just like this princeafrica incriminates himself

 

[princeafrica]

And just like this princeafrica incriminates himself

LOL This is clear evidence tampering

 

[GoDental101]

So, kids, Don’t listen to anybody. Live courageously, create your own identity and your own value system. Live courageously because you only have one life!

You realize you just defined anarchy? Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? Great book!

 

[doc toothache]

What clinical staff think of a stoned student might prove to be less important than what patients think.

 

[deleted771467]

You realize you just defined anarchy? Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? Great book!

Have you heard of the strawman fallacy? You should look it up, it’s a good concept to know.

And yeah, sophomore year of high school, Oink oink oink

 

[gangazi]

Does your school have any trust or respect for its students? Y’all are paying hundreds of K to be there and went through a selections process.

I cannot tell if you are trolling or not

 

[Life of Pablo]

Just to throw this out there because I didn't know, but some places that you extern at during dental school will drug test you beforehand. You'll be sitting through a lecture and they'll call you to tell you to go pee in a cup.

 

[Thiscrazyputa]

Will there be drug tests in dental school?

If so when, at the beginning or throughout the four years?

Thanks!

 

[deleted771467]

Call me a goody two shoes or whatever, but I would never let a dentist who is high to work on me. Yeah I'll sue the hell out of them.

Everybody here, and the rest of the world, agrees and understands that at no point a medical professional should work while under the influence of alcohol or any other drug. This discussion is about whether dental schools test for current illicit drugs that may stay in your system after you have used them.

 

[ab117]

Everybody here, and the rest of the world, agrees and understands that at no point a medical professional should work while under the influence of alcohol or any other drug. This discussion is about whether dental schools test for current illicit drugs that may stay in your system after you have used them.

I know it can be frustrating to feel like others are being disingenuous or not getting your point but these people are also just expressing their opinions about something they obviously have an opinion about. Disagree or agree with the rules/laws. That’s fine, because your side of this argument obviously has merits. Doesn’t mean that the side you disagree with has none.

You keep re-entering this thread you started to counter every single person that posts something different than what we obviously know you believe. It’s still a forum meant for open discussion and you seem so belligerent and defensive. I hope you conduct yourself differently in real life or you’re definitely going to cause some (likely unnecessary) friction between you and your classmates and/or faculty.

 

[GoDental101]

Everybody here, and the rest of the world, agrees and understands that at no point a medical professional should work while under the influence of alcohol or any other drug. This discussion is about whether dental schools test for current illicit drugs that may stay in your system after you have used them.

Here’s a direct answer, maybe not the one you want, but the one you need. They do test. Hopefully you either stop using or you get tested and kicked out. Good luck though!

 

[deleted771467]

I know it can be frustrating to feel like others are being disingenuous or not getting your point but these people are also just expressing their opinions about something they obviously have an opinion about. Disagree or agree with the rules/laws. That’s fine, because your side of this argument obviously has merits. Doesn’t mean that the side you disagree with has none.

You keep re-entering this thread you started to counter every single person that posts something different than what we obviously know you believe. It’s still a forum meant for open discussion and you seem so belligerent and defensive. I hope you conduct yourself differently in real life or you’re definitely going to cause some (likely unnecessary) friction between you and your classmates and/or faculty.

The idea of an open discussion is exactly that, to discuss. I keep entering this thread in order to clarify my point and/or offer a differing perspective/counterpoint to posts I disagree with, which again is the purpose of a discussion.

At not point have I done what you just did. You started an ad hominem attack for my willingness to provide an opposing view and clarify/expand on the discussion.

I don’t know you, so I’m won’t do to you, what you just did to me. But I will ask you to consider the fact that for growth, both intellectual and emotional, is necessary to hear differing perspectives and not just shut them down when you consider the argument over.

In a free society we should be able to discuss a broad range of ideas without resulting to personal attacks.

In the end, just wanted to say, I love you my friend and everybody here. And again, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings or anybody’s feelings here.

 

[deleted771467]

In my first reply to this thread I simply made a joke. It was just meant to be a funny comment. You replied to me saying that you didn't care what they thought, which to me seemed defensive and standoffish, and I told you as much intending it to be constructive criticism regarding the way you are conducting yourself in a forum consisting of your professional colleagues. This place isn't just full of idiots arguing with each other, we're presumably all reasonably intelligent, rational people.

The way you are talking sounds, admittedly subjectively, to be disrespectful to all these people that are talking to you that are probably on the same or higher levels of achievement, capability, and even intellect as you. If I sounded that way in a professional environment, I would want to be corrected because that's not how I would want to be perceived by my peers. or superiors. I only attempted to extend the same courtesy to you as I would expect from others, honestly believing that it might be helpful and recognizing that the possibility that you didn't intend to sound like that, even if I perceived it. In that same reply, I also honestly answered your question based on my experiences so far at the same school that you'll be attending later this year where we will almost certainly meet and become personal acquaintances. It's in both of our best interest to build and maintain the type of professional relationship I already mentioned, but while I tried to inform you, again, constructively by intention, that the way you're conducting yourself may rub people the wrong way, you've simply come back and doubled down on your belief that the way your acting is absolutely fine. I would feel fairly confident saying that I'm not the only one in this thread that has interpreted your tone in your posts the same way. You haven't been discussing, or asking questions about viewpoints, you've been selectively contradicting every single poster that has chimed in with anti-drug opinions, and informing them that you wish for this thread to maintain it's narrow focus solely on the topic of the actual testing methodologies and timetables of dental school drug testing. You are the only one in the whole thread that has said repeatedly that you think we should stop the discussion of our opinions on the legality and ethics of recreational drug use and limit it specifically to the exact question you originally posited!

The thing is, I can only assume that you're probably specifically wanting to know about marijuana use, and I don't even disagree with you, I also believe that the illegalization of marijuana has historical roots in the oppression of minorities, that its current classification as a schedule I drug doesn't make sense and should be changed to the same as tobacco and alcohol, and that choosing to use it or not is a personal choice that almost certainly won't result in any harm to anyone else, because that's what all the historical and scientific evidence that's available to me on the matter suggests. That's why your claim just now that I've committed an ad hominem against you is absolutely absurd, because up until this very comment where I will now freely admit that I am directly contradicting something you previously said, I haven't actually been arguing with you about anything. This particular comment is the first time I've contradicted any statement you've made. Meaning that your aforementioned claim against me of using an ad hominem attack -in absence of any actual argument - is, in fact, the first genuine employment of the strawman fallacy you incorrectly accused GoDental101 of using when he did nothing more than correctly observe that your self-identified moral philosophy resembled a reasonable person's interpretation of the somewhat-ambiguously defined concept of anarchy, and your pseudointellectual fixation on incorrectly pointing out fallacies, which you've done twice now, only further confirms to me that you came into this expecting and possibly even hoping for it to cause an argument, and knowing all along that you would act belligerently and defensively should anyone dare to contradict your controversial personal opinion. Saying that you won't do to me what I did to you is the second genuine strawman, similar to the first but subtly different, because you're attempting to discount the validity of my claims by implying you somehow have the moral high ground because you wouldn't stoop to my level. You're trying to make what I've already said sound worse than it was to change the focus of the argument to your subjective interpretation of my assertion. Instead of saying "I disagree with what you said about me and here's my evidence", you falsely imply that I'm trying to be hurtful and resort to personal attacks and you would never do such a thing, therefore your side of the argument has more merit than mine. Textbook strawman.

I'm trying to let you know that the way that you have communicated in this thread seems to me to be belligerent and defensive, and further I'm also letting you know that I think you're the one being disingenuous because of your bizarre and illogical reactions to multiple posters' reasonable statements and opinions. I'm not reacting this way to you because I'm offended, it's because I hoped that if you were unaware that your colleagues may be thinking that your attitude came across that way, making you aware of the possibility could help you avoid experiencing negative consequences in your professional life if you were to accidentally say something that would upset another student or faculty. I may be wrong and I fully admit that, and I would apologize to you if I was. I could be the only person in this entire thread who thought you sounded like that, but other posters saying they're not sure if you're trolling or not implies that I'm not. If you were in clinic and a D4 or an attending or a patient told you that they perceived that the way you interacted with them or someone else was rude or inconsiderate, it would be wholly inappropriate and entirely to your disadvantage to claim that such an assertion were an inadmissible ad hominem attack. Constructive criticism is subjective and may not always be right on target, but if there's even the slightest possibility that it may actually help you improve something about yourself, it should be seriously and carefully weighed and considered before being discounted, even if you initially disagree with it. Even then, coming back later to inform your attending that after considering for a few hours, he was wrong about thinking you were rude and that you won't be carrying out any more introspection on the matter would be absolutely insane.

Alright, let's break this down...

So, "key and peele" have a great sketch in which Kegan, misreading his friend's texts, gets really angry at Jordan and wants to kill him. When in reality, Jordan was just communicating with no ill intent. I think I'm Jordan here, the guy playing video games.
plz watch->
We all come from different cultures, countries, and ethnic backgrounds, which often results in different forms of expression and indeed, miscommunications. I definitely have failed to properly communicate here by arising so much anger and hurt in you. When I say "I don't care what they think" I mean it. Part of growing up for me has been realizing that what other people choose to think, based on their perspective and lived experiences, has little to do with how I comport myself, that is what I chose to express in that reply. You are right though, I could have found a better way to express that.

To your point of "correcting" my expression... I am trusting that you are being sincere here, so I feel like you don't see how bad that is.. I would never dare to correct another adult on their expression (with obvious exceptions on calls to hate or violence). Really think about this for a second. You, and your experiences/environment have some kind of supremacy in regards to my expression.. really, really think, sincerely about this, and what that would imply... People often choose to identify with their persona, and that's fine. But, I am not a "student" or a "college graduate" or perhaps, not just those things. We stand on no mountain top of intellect, morality, or worth; Our expression, in a sense, a flavor of our character, is the same. It stands in equal value to our fellow humans. What saddens me is that anyone would assume to curtail someone's expression, specially considering that we are discussing a very mundane issue. The day that I change, to be liked, to fit in... is a day that I would not respect myself anymore. Every branch that I have cut, every root that I have watered has been to be a better human being, to help others, to build, in some small way, something better for the generations to come. That said, the struggle is real, I am a flawed human being and I do the best I can.

To your other point, I express my opposing views to the posts that I disagreed with because I feel part of the thread. I see this as an ongoing discussion. I only chose to clarify my point when I thought that someone's reply was perhaps misunderstanding my question. I specifically wanted to clarify that at no point was my question about testing condoning using drugs while practicing any form of healthcare. At no-point have I asked any body to stop posting anything. I feel like your are being disingenuous here. The community, and our country benefits from honest discussions on topics like these. Again, I only meant to clarify, (I apologize if my posts were perceived in any other way) please let this thread continue and grow as we discuss all manner of issues. I mean this.

An ad hominem is an attack on a person, sometimes used to distract from an argument. This is word-for-word what you said:
"you seem so belligerent and defensive. I hope you conduct yourself differently in real life or you’re definitely going to cause some (likely unnecessary) friction between you and your classmates and/or faculty." Here, you attack my character, who I am, with the after thought that nobody will like me because of how I express myself. This is quintessentially an ad hominem.

I think we can see that the above reference to your ad hominem attack dissolves your straw man accusation.

In my previous mention of the straw man fallacy, (which I easily concede may have arisen due to my failure to better elaborate on my ideas) I simply alluded that calling for people to look at the world through reason arguments and honest contemplation might be a better way to live one's life, rather than taking tips on what rules to follow from me or anybody else. To quote Goethe, "a man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself".

I have continue to express my opinion in a logically consistent manner. You have chosen to attack the way I express my ideas with ad hominem and bullish tactics, such as your consistent use of " no body will like you, no body will like you, no body will like you"...

I sincerely hope that my fellow students and faculty have harden characters and open minds, I give people the credit to be exposed to different ideas and expressions of such ideas without being hurt, offended, or upset. Your reference to adults being upset by my language here out-stands me. Really, of all the crazy things happening in our country, in our planet, -people would be "upset" and result in "negative consequences"- really? I hope this is a fluke, and the dental students and faculty will be just like the people I've met in Spain, Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, and here in the U.S., good people with open minds, and open hearts; but incase they aren't, and if Kevin Malone is right when he said, " if you go fishing for a fluke, chances are, you just might catch one", then, then I will adapt and overcome, as I have always done.

 

[CanadianGurl]

y’all settle down smoke a j and chill ok??????

 

[2TH MVR]

I love Key and Peele.

 

[ThisCrazyAvacado]

Will there be drug tests in dental school?

If so when, at the beginning or throughout the four years?

Thanks!

y’all settle down smoke a j and chill ok??????

Ya done messed up A-A-Ron! Get your @ss to O Shag Hennessy's office right now!

 

[deleted771467]

Why not? It's a normal and reasonable thing for adults who respect each other to let each other know that they may not be making themselves understood how they intend, or that one has gone too far, or misspoken, or that their argument doesn't follow. These things occur constantly in everyday conversation without any offense being given or taken. At the same time, I never "corrected" your expression, just informed you of how it could possibly be interpreted in an unfavorable way. That's not the same thing. This is the first but not the last time that you say I did something that I legitimately did not do. I'm not saying that I hold myself above you as a D1 when you're a predent and I think I stated as much in my post that you're responding to here. My point was that we're all on equal ground, we're all smart, we're all capable. This is why the way you wrote ever bothered me the first place. Because it seemed dismissive of these other people on this site that you are now saying are on equal footing with you. If that's the case, it doesn't make sense for you to say "strawman much?" to any of them, instead of saying something like, "yeah I guess that does sound like anarchy, but there are elements of anarchy that I think I might agree with." Don't you see the difference in tone? One is subjectively dismissive and maybe even disrespectful of someone who you should consider no lower than you, and the other is open, honest discussion.


If you trust that I am being sincere, which I maintain that I am, why do you still take such issue with it? If you fully acknowledge that my intention is to potentially help/protect you or help you improve your communication with others (even if you don't agree it needs improving), I don't understand the rest of this paragraph where it's such a big deal that I did something that, as I said above, adults do in normal, everyday conversation with each other, all the time.

I never said you did, so what is this refuting? You did say:



all of which sound like you're shutting the poster down rather than wanting to listen to their opposing viewpoints that you tout the virtues of later, which sounds to me like you're the one being a little hypocritical.




In these statements you act like I'm the one trying to shut down back-and-forth between posters, when at this point I still haven't even stated my opinion on the actual discussion, just offered factual information on drug testing at VCU. Claiming that you've hurt my feelings when I've never said such a thing is another attempt at mischaracterizing me to make me sound like I just can't handle you disagreeing with me. Remember again, that up to this point, I haven't disagreed with you about anything, you've only pretended like I have. This is another logical fallacy, ignoratio elenchi.

I'm not angry and I'm not hurt, I just want you to also understand what I was actually trying to tell you and not take my meaning 3 steps further than what I actually wrote and then act I'm personally insulting you, because I'm not. I don't know anything about you and I have no reason to dislike you, but you have to admit that you're the one who took this from "we're having a discussion" to falsely accusing me of attacking your character. You're the first one who brought up logical fallacies and tried to use them to discount other people's statements. You can go back up the thread and see that you did it before I ever even used the word fallacy. I only integrated those into my own argument when I identified your admittedly incorrect usage of them against me.

Your video perfectly illustrates my own point. You ARE Jordan here and that's all I was trying to tell you from the very beginning. Knowing that people can be sensitive to subtleties in communication, I thought it appropriate to try to tell a colleague they might not be coming across in writing the way they intended. Beyond text being hard to interpret, the fact is certain words and expressions mean certain things, and if you use them incorrectly, which you just admitted you did, with both types of fallacies you've accused me of, it will inevitably lead to misunderstandings. Coming into a professional environment and accusing other people, under misunderstood definitions, that they're committing logical fallacies when they're not - in a non-existent argument - is, honestly, kinda weird and kinda rude, which is why I first took issue with your comment to GoDental101. Not even what was directed at me.


This assertion is factually untrue because I never attacked your character to refute your argument about anything. Only made subjective, qualitative note about your manner of communicating, unrelated to discussion of any other issue. This does nothing to dissolve my straw man accusation, because you still used two straw men to attack me, one being my non-existent ad hominem, and the other being when you discount my arguments on the basis that you don't like the way in which I presented them and you would never do such a thing.

"Ad hominem (Latin for "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself."

an ad hominem attack by nature requires that one be arguing against another's position by attacking their character. Pointing out the perceived tone of a post is not attacking your established position in the discussion, and it is not attacking your character in attempt to undermine said position. As I said, I agree with your stance on drugs and I was never arguing you in the first place, ergo it is by definition impossible for me to have committed an ad hominem. I really don't believe that you are a rude person or anything like that because I have no evidence of that, and I never said that's what I believed. I was just trying to tell you that was how I thought your post sounded, and whether your appreciated it or not, I sincerely promise I had good intentions. I pointed out to you the possibility that if that's how you act in real life, you may want to examine that, because it's legitimately something that can cause problems between students and between them and faculty, and that would not be in your best interest. Again, this is not an examination of character, but one of one specific example of a behavior. It's like, an order of magnitude different than what you're saying I did. You have to parse the difference between "you seem to be acting like" and "you are", and "I think you might be" and "I know". You're conflating your own undeniable misinterpretation of what I actually wrote with me being disingenuous. If I'd wrote what you said I meant, I would be being disingenuous, but you're interpretation of my meaning isn't compatible with the words I actually wrote without some serious baseless extrapolation.


Nobody could ever possibly read "Have you heard of the strawman fallacy? You should look it up, it’s a good concept to know." and think, "he's not calling this other person out because he disagrees with the observation he made, he's just suggesting that people look at the world through reason arguments and honest contemplation as a better way to live one's life." What you write has to match what you mean or no one will correctly interpret what you actually mean. That's a completely different string of words with a completely different meaning than the comment you posted.


Factually untrue, as evidenced by the predication of your arguments on misinterpretations of the points you've attempted to refute, ie. your arguments themselves don't logically follow, and on misunderstandings of the principles of logic and debate that you've attempted to use incorrectly to support your own positions that were, in the first place, contrary to a position, that I never even held, that is, that I had a problem with your character, which I never did and never asserted.


Factually untrue. As already addressed I never participated in an ad hominem, and saying "talking like you have to me and others in this thread in real life might rub people the wrong way and potentially cause friction in professional environments" =/= consistently saying "nobody will like you". Changing the tone and intensity of a claim is not paraphrasing, it's twisting. You're again trying to establish that I said things that are different enough from what I actually said as to not have the same meaning, and then attacking those. That's a 3rd strawman.


Yes really! Students and faculty are people! People are cliquey and subjective. They can be good people like you say you've met all around the world and like I have too and still let their subjective judgments be colored by personal opinions. Good people have cognitive bias just like bad people, and even if you can try to account for it, you can never eliminate it. You can hope that they wouldn't be and that's fine to be optimistic, but sincerely believing that all or even most wouldn't is pure naiveté, and that was the origin of my initial concern for you. That you might, unaware and unintentionally, talk or act in the way you have in this thread to people in dental school and possibly accidentally cause problems for yourself. This entire forum is riddled with complaints about subjective grading and favoritism for certain students and such, because those things are part of the nature of how we're evaluated in dental school. People do get screwed over because they upset the wrong faculty and stuff like that, and it's in your own best interest as a dental student to know that and to try to avoid causing a situation like that for yourself. I've told you that I agree with your opinions on the topic of this post, but just imagine if you were to be talking about this kind of thing in the hall with another student you know well, never even knowing that you were overheard by a secretary or faculty or another student or something that didn't agree. What about when you get called in for a "random" drug test shortly after this conversation you thought was private and you smoked earlier in the week? Now imagine, completely hypothetically, two different people that might have overheard you. One has a similar personality and similar interests to you, maybe you've studied together a few times. They may not say anything. The other might never have actually talked to you much but has heard you around the halls in the first couple weeks of school and thought you seem a little loud, or a little obnoxious, or a little inconsiderate whether any of these are objectively true about you or not, and they go straight to the dean with your name. This is an extremely realistic, if unlikely, scenario and is all I've been trying to tell you from my initial comment. As dental students, the way we conduct ourselves can have unintended consequences. People fail labs or whole years or get dismissed because of stuff like this. If some people think that the way someone conducts themself is inappropriate, that can absolutely cause problems between that person and other students or faculty. They're not going to think, with all the other stuff going on in our country, our planet, am I really going to be upset about this? They're going to think, man, I don't really enjoy hanging around that guy, or worse. And again, I'm not even saying that I think this will ever happen to you, just that stuff you've said has already made at least one dental student at your future school, me, think that maybe the way you talk to your peers is not my favorite. Believing you should be yourself is one thing, saying that you don't care what people think, and asserting you mean it, can legitimately be contrary to your own self preservation as a student in a doctoral program, because your performance will be subjectively evaluated by people who all have differing opinions about how certain things should and shouldn't be done.

I'm really not trying to be a jerk here. In fact, we're not even really arguing any more, because you've admitted to my main point: That the way your posts read may come across the wrong way, with your video reference and these quotes,


I don't want to just keep arguing with you because that was never my intention, and apparently we actually agree, but I certainly felt like I had to defend myself when you mounted an actual attack against me the was entirely based on things I never actually said or did, and I feel like I've addressed each of those points. I'm sorry it turned into an argument and honestly, there are no hard feelings on my side. There's no need for you to apologize if your posts were perceived the wrong way, because I legitimately was never offended by them, just thought they sounded different/more negative than you might have meant them. If you recognize that maybe, just maybe, you didn't express yourself perfectly, that's all I ever even wanted. If you do reply to me again, I only ask that you reply to what I've explicitly stated, because I'm sincerely not using any subtext or implications or anything here, I'm trying really hard to only write exactly what I actually mean in language that's unambiguous as possible.

Just got off a 12 hour shift cooking and washing dishes, I don't have the energy for this. Just wanted to say, I love you buddy and hope all goes well for you in dental school