Become an RDA. Best way to do it (if I could go back) is to volunteer as an assistant for free and then ask to be hired a few months later or apply somewhere else with the experience (RDA school is $3k+). The pay isnt great but you will really get an understanding of how things work. Dental school will teach you clinical skills but it cant teach you how to deal with patients well like a dentist who has been practicing for many years can. Clinical skills are only a small portion of making a good living as a dentist I have come to realize. There are great dentists who graduate from prestigious schools every year but your success has nothing to do with how well you can fill a tooth. Your patient has no idea how amazing their filling is.
The most important things that I have learned from shadowing/working for four dentists is how to interact with all types of difficult patients and patients in general as well as how to run a business. Those are things they wont teach you in school. You will also learn many ways to do certain things if you work in corporate dentistry like I do. For example, one extraction can be done four different ways. Some dentist prefer forceps, some prefer solely elevators....I have seen a dentist (the one I look up to the most) use k-files to elevate root tips.....there are so many techniques!! I have learned so many tricks about how to deal with tough clinical tasks such as crazy weird teeth extractions, crown preps, how to make temporaries look amazing, etc. I feel like ive been practicing for years with the amount of nonsense tips and tricks I have obtained..all of which I am sure I would not have learned from just doing to dental school. This means that later on when I am dealing with something difficult I can use a trick I have learned rather than give up as a new dentist and refer to a specialist...causing my patient to sometimes lose trust in me because they have no concept of "specialist vs general dentist" and think GP's should be able to do everything.
Also, if you find a cool dentist like mine, they will let you do things like place sectional matrix/rubber dams, v-rings, coronal polish, NO2, adjust fillings....some of which is illegal but hey if they trust you then I say do it but thats just me. In fact, the dentists that I work for said next time they are getting work done they will teach me how to give local anesthesia on them haha shhhh
Also you can make great connections for letters of recommendation or in my rare case a dentist I work for was the class president of a well known school last year and has guaranteed he can get me an interview this cycle because he used to be in charge of interviewing.
In summary the main point I want to make to end the whole shadowing vs RDA discussion is that shadowing only allows surface level interaction...RDA lets you see the knitty gritty details and you are more likely to be around when a difficult procedure comes along.
