Getting scared...about starting school

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sjdent

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I'm starting dent school in a little over a month. I am really starting to freak out. It's been such a GLORIOUS summer of no studying........don't think I can handle putting my nose in the books again. :pity: YIKES. Oh my god what if I fail or am at the bottom of my class or or or or or. Plus I suppose starting at a new school is always sort of scary even though I'm in GRAD SCHOOL now. Anyone else feel my pain? :scared:

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Well good luck and keep us posted on how things go!
 
Its very funny that I am both nervous and kinda excited to start the school. I mean I am lookin forward to finally do what I have dreamt my whole life, but on the other hand I am very scared as I know that its not gonna be a piece of cake. But hey its like if anybody could do it then I will do it too, so yeah I think its gonna be a great experience on the whole.
I wish everybody good luck, and hope everyone enjoys the first year...
Viraj
 
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What do they call the person who graduates last in the class. - Dr.
 
to Sjdent:

Two years ago I was in your shoes. Don't worry-- Orientation in most schools are designed to ease you gently into that "study mode" from that summer "party mode".

Most dental school orientations for freshmen are about a week long, give or take a day or two. They usually start off with things like luncheons and tours, move on to light things like CPR certification and then intro to the labs and equipment issue, then classes start the week afterwards. You might not realize it, but by the end of orientation week you will be "in battery" for the school year, ready to jump into Gross and Histo.

Go with the flow, don't panic, and good luck!
 
You are walking down the corridor and you can't seem to keep the excitment in you. Finally the swinging doors of the gross anatomy lab open up and you take a deep break......AAAHHH. Such refreshing air, the stench of formaldehyde lifts your spirits. It is more "fruity" than all that puke you were smelling while partying. You lift up the sheet and













and













and











GET READY TO SLICE AND DICE

:oops: YIpeeeeeeeeee.
 
Heh heh...

Just you wait until the end of the semester to see how Gross Lab smells like then.. :D

Seriously though, Gross wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Then again, University at Buffalo's med school facilities are pretty new and they had a state-of-the-art ventilation system-- You could hardly smell any odors in the lab. My dental class actually got a higher class test average than the meds that year in gross... :clap:

It will be fun. Really! (evil grin)
 
Yup. I'm right there with you guys. It's funny, I had a dinner send off w/ a couple of my friends but it didn't feel like I was going anywhere. Then I came home and did some serious packing. All of the sudden, I got an eerie feeling. I can't believe I'm moving away from Chicago for a looooong time! My life is about to drastically change this Saturday!

Good luck to all the D1's!!!!:clap:
 
Don't fret. All of you will be provided a personal trainer/tuitor/goffer. They will massage away those headaches after a hard day in gross anatnomy so that you can party hardy every night. They will prep you for every exam so that you can party hardy every night. They will cook your meals, do the dishes, wash your clothes, and clean your rooms so that you can party hardy every night.......NOT!
 
groundhog you suck! ...u had me feeling pretty excited there with the personal assistant bit! lol....I guess I'm in the same boat as the rest of you, very excited that school is about to start but also growing more and more apprehensive as the first day of orientation rolls closer (next Wed.!)...but thanks for the words of encouragement UBTom, I hear 'ya :clap:

So how many classes are most of you taking first semester? We've got 7(!) at UNC, uggh......
 
All of this talk about beginning classes got me thinking: what would it be like to be a D1 at Ohio State, where the orientation begins on September 24?!

That's well over a month away. Hmmmmm.
 
to Groundhog:

Heh heh... Now I wouldn't mind paying double what I'm paying now to go to a dental school like that!

to Waiting:

Good luck! Yes, 1st-semester can be hectic. The nice thing about dental school is that everybody takes the same classes in the first year so you can just "follow the herd" and not get lost. Since your class as a group spends so much time together, you will get bonded with your classmates rather quickly for mutual support.

Here at UB we really throw everything including the kitchen sink at the incoming freshmen-- 8 courses: Histo, Gross/Embryo, Biochem, Preclinical Lab, Clinical Dentistry 1, Dental/Oral Anatomy, and Biomaterials. That's 22 credit hours total for the Fall semester, and it gets worse from there. :laugh:

But if I managed to survive (and I'm by no means the sharpest tool in the shed as the saying goes), I'm sure y'all can too. :D

to Gavin:

Wow, Orientation at OSU starts so late?!? Makes me wonder how will they be able to finish all the dissections in Gross by Christmas... Unless OSU either has 1) Gross as a year-long course or 2) abbreviated to just the head-and-neck region as some dental schools are doing. I would be very interested to see what the curriculum is like over there!

Again, good luck to the class of 2006 everywhere!
 
Encouragement is good! Still scared ****less but sooooo excited. When do you guys all start?
 
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Orientation for juniors here at UB starts today. :p I just spent the better part of yesterday calling up patients to cajole them to come in next week when school starts.. Talk about stress! Despite my best efforts I only managed to fill 3 clinical time slots out of 6 with appointments.

Now I realize how stress-free Freshman year really is! :D
 
groundhog - I have two of those personal assistants who cook, clean, quiz me for exams and give me aspirin for my headaches. I call them Mom and Little Brother. And when I get in a monetary bind, I pick up the phone and call my personal banker, Dad. They live 10 minutes away and are constantly bailing me out of the dental school prison. Hey, that's one of the advantages of going to the local dental school down the street! Seriously though, as much as I complain about not being in NYC or Boston or any major metropolis for dental school, it is nice to have them closeby. Last year I was so swamped one weekend, my parents actually came to my place and made me dinner to make sure I didn't go hungry. Now that's service!
 
Now I realize how stress-free Freshman year really is! :D [/B][/QUOTE]

WHAT?!?! Seriously, from you guys who have experienced the trials of starting dent school, what can we all expect.....
 
LOL, okay, maybe not stress-free... But a different kind of stress I guess.

During the first two years of dental school, you are going through normal academic stuff such as lecture courses and written exams. While there is pressure on you to do well, there is little or no uncertainty-- If you study enough, you will do well on the tests. How well you do is entirely in your hands, barring extraordinary circumstances.

The last two years of dental school is a different kind of stress because now there is uncertainty-- You are not sure if your patients will show up, not sure if they have the particular problems you need to work on to meet requirements (operative, RPDs, FPDs, perio, etc.), not sure if you can actually finish a planned procedure within the allowed clinical period (3 hours per visit), clinical instructors might grade differently (some might say a prep is good while another might not), so how you do in your third and fourth years might also depend on circumstances beyond your control... Which is a very stressful thing to deal with.

So enjoy your first year at dental school-- The pressure is there, but it is certain that you can do well that first year if you work at it!
 
Griffin04,
If you are a guy, I'm glad to read that you are getting yourself in shape for when you will take on a wife to do all of those chores. It can be very hazardous to ones health if he attempts to adjust "cold trukey" to being coddled and pampered. You are to be commended for your extra effort. Your new wife will also appreciate the fact that you will not have to be retrained. She will be overjoyed when she discovers that you whipped yourself into a fine tuned specimen of a domestic flop and that she will be free to attend to your every need in the most effecient manner from day one.
 
Tee hee...

Groundhog, as Griffin's classmate for the past 2 years, I can vouch for Griffin. :D Griffin's future spouse won't be taken for granted LOL..

I on the other hand would probably be a spousal nightmare while in dental school... "Woman, git me a sammitch!" *burp* Jest kiddin'... :laugh:

Truth be told, dental school is so busy me and many of my classmates have no time for a social life. :p
 
This thread is making me laugh. Actually groundhog, I am female. But I would have no problems if my future spouse wanted to stay home and cook and clean (and maybe work part-time?) while I went out to earn my place in the dental world. However, most guys I meet don't seem to share my point of view - apparently it's a matter of pride for them to earn their own paychecks.

UBTom says if you study, you will do well on your exams for the first two years. True for the most part, but since grades are straight up A, B, C, D, F, it is heart-wrenching when you miss that A or B by one point, or worse, half a point. And it has happened to me on a few occassions, leaving me very bitter (operative dentistry - argh!). Ok, back to sjdent's original concern. Don't even think about failing. Aim for your best. Don't be afraid to ask for helf if you think you are in trouble in any class. Ask the teacher or see if there are tutors at your school. Ask the serious upperclassmen for their advice so you don't end up doing useless work for a class that doesn't need it. Of course, ask the serious ones b/c you will get upperclassmen who will tell you the generic "Yeah whatever, first year is sooooo ridiculous." Ok, I have to go get CPR certified, post more later.
 
griffin,

OK. I'm trying to think of a way to ask this w/o sounding ridiculous. Got a question for you...or any other veteran that wants to share advice!

When we're talking "hard" are we talking significantly harder than undergrad? Granted, we all took different majors, but remember what a shock going into college was coming out of high school? Yikes.

My med school friends always laugh at me going dent. One says her dental school friends are always going out on the weekends while they're stuck studying every day of the week.

I don't know..........I suppose I'm starting to work myself up over this. I was focused on just getting in for SO LONG that now that I'm actually starting.......AAHHH!!! :eek:

What would you guys have done differently? And what worked for you as far as passing? Did school REALLY take over your life?
 
to Sjdent:

I wouldn't say Freshman year dental school is any harder than undergrad courses.. Heck, you might have been exposed to some grad-level stuff like Biochemistry already while in undergrad-- That's the level of difficulty you can expect with dental school courses.

It's not so much the difficulty of the material, but the amount of courses they will make you take. The freshmen here at UB SDM are loaded with 22 credit-hours. The courses are not more difficult, but there are more courses. :D

Dental school can actually be more work than med school. For the first two years you are sharing major courses with the med students like gross, histo, micro, path, biochem, etc., but on top of that you also got a lot of preclinic courses where you have to put in a LOT of time learning the techniques like cutting various preps on teeth with the high-speed handpiece, making complete dentures, RPDs, FPDs, everything. (just wait until you try to master indirect-vision-- Using the intraoral mirror!) It's definitely no cakewalk, I don't care what any med student says.

But again, the material is not more inherently difficult-- It's just more of it. If you got the fortitude to keep current with the studying and finish all your preclinic projects on-time, you will do fabulously.

Good luck!
 
yeah ive heard the first two yrs of dental school are pretty time consuming w/the labs...like both med and dental students are done w/classes, but dental students have a lot to learn in lab...someone told me that the carving etc is really tough to get a good grade in so you really have to put in a lot of work in lab....its funny that you two are at UB, I know one person there...I wonder if he's in your class :) Oh, and what do you guys think of Buffalo overall? I'm from Albany, so I know its somewhat similar, except the snow in buff is worse...is your campus near the other schools (med, pharm, etc)??
 
Hey there Vixen,

Yep, my fortitude was sorely tested in second year, particularly because here at UB they want you to learn to do lab work too (fabricating FPDs and RPDs), whereas some other schools like NYU have eliminated those things from their programs altogether. It adds a LOT to your workload, and I have clocked at least 2 overnighters in the lab trying to complete those projects when time was particularly tight during midterm and final season for Microbiology and Pathology. Griffin actually found second year easier here at UB.. Then again I readily admit she's a better student than I. :D

If your friend is in the Class of 2004, yep we probably know him. We're a pretty tight bunch, having survived two years under a very challenging situation, with all the difficulties we had as the first class of guinea pigs for the experimental DVD-textbook curriculum.

Our location.. We share the UB South Campus with the medical school, nursing school, architecture school and a bunch of others. The School of Pharmacy is in the bigger North Campus where all the undergrads are.

The snow isn't as bad as I had feared... Only gotten snowed in once in 2000, and everyone missed the 80+ inch-storm in December 2001 because we were all away on Christmas break.

Advantages of UB: You get your own operatory at the end of 2nd year, you don't have to fight for a chair unlike some other more crowded schools like NYU. The facilities are relatively new, which makes experiences like Gross very tolerable. Tuition is pretty low as dental school goes if you are an NYS resident (major selling point), and cost of living is cheap. You can get a 2-bedroom apt. in a nice neighborhood for around $550-600 a month!

Disadvantages: You will have to manage your own patients, i.e. you have to call them up, cajole them to come in, you will have to reschedule if someone cancels on you. Other schools like NYU actually have secretaries who does all that for you so you can concentrate solely on performing dental work. The other major disadvantage I feel is the DVD-textbook electronic curriculum, but this is starting to permeate other dental schools as well (NYU, Tufts, UNC and a few other dental schools are using the same thing these days I think).

If I knew what I know now back when I was applying to dental school, UB would not be my ideal first choice, but still in my top three. Real life dictates that as an NYS resident, UB is my only real option... I couldn't pay through the nose like one of my sisters and her classmates did for NYU-- They all owed in excess of a quarter million dollars apiece when they graduated in 2000, no joke. I'm sick of Columbia, having done my 4 years of undergrad there, and I could forget Stony Brook-- They only take like 25 students and it's impossible for me to get in there. So out of the four NYS schools UB is pretty much it for me..

Anyway, good luck whichever school you choose!
 
thanks for the info UBTom! :D
 
Just to clarify, Tufts doesn't have the DVD curriculum, although BU does have that....
Viraj
 
to Viraj:

Thanks for the clarification. I knew one of the Boston-area schools uses it, didn't know for sure which one.

Looks like more and more schools are adopting that DVD textbook though... It seem to have its uses, but for courses like Gross Anatomy it is definitely a lot better to have a hard paper copy of an atlas.

Good luck to ya, and in a month or so we expect to hear you tell us how you passed the first Gross practical with flying colors. :D
 
sjdent - Hard means having to take an excess of 20 credit hours at once. Gone are the days when you balanced organic chemistry with a blow-off class in world music. Now, just about every class requires some effort and memorizing. This semester we have 26.5 credits and that number just doesn't phase me anymore. I was definitely a paper and essay writer at a small college. Now in dental school my classes all consist of two scantron multiple choice exams, a mid-term and a final. That's been kinda rough only b/c multiple choice can be unforgiving at times and sometimes they like to pull the multiple-multiple questions. But I learned quickly that classes have very little to do with understanding (unlike college) and are all about memorizing and regurgitating a packet of notes and studying old exams. Even the National Boards consisted of studying the released exams!

Your question is not ridiculous. When I started first semester, I only wanted to pass Gross. After the first exam, I realized I was capable of passing with more than a C, and I studied hard for the B. After that, I changed my outlook on dental school classes to the following. Aim for the A. Doesn't matter how hard the subject or what people say about the teacher, aim for the A. This way, many times you will succeed and get the A and feel proud. But sometimes you will stumble yet most likely end up with the B, which is still very much more respectable than failing. Don't even let yourself think you will fail. But if you find yourself in danger in any class, GET HELP!!!! Don't wait for finals, start in October if you think you can't handle Histo or Biochem. There is nothing wrong or shameful in asking for help and getting tutoring to make it through a class. Hey, it's much better than repeating the year b/c you failed one class.

I find myself often talking my friends out of thinking they will fail or only aiming for a C b/c they are capable of so much more than that. Aim higher and you won't be disappointed. Of course, you can't be all talk, you have to work very hard too with this attitude, memorizing and reading the lectures and putting your time in lab, but I think it works well for me and my friends. True, the last person in the class is still called doctor, but may not get that coveted residency spot in Boston and have to settle for rural Vermont instead (no offense to people in rural Vermont). Teachers often tell you "10 years from now, your grades won't matter." They're right - stuff I did in high school certainly doesn't matter anymore, but meant a lot when I was trying to get into the college of my choice. Next year when I apply to post-grad, grades matter so I don't really buy that. (Now if only they would hurry up and send us our board scores.....)

So did school really take over your life? For me it did, but in a good way! When my non-dental friends ask me what I am up to, I don't have much to tell them b/c almost everything I do is dental related. But my dental experiences include not only class, exams, and lab work, but also being involved in yearbook, newsletter, ASDA, research, and the benfits of each of those activities. Since first year, I've been to San Diego, Orlando, Connecticut and am headed to Portland and NYC this semester. They have all been fabulous dental related experiences in ASDA and research (and all funded by the school!!!). I am having a busy life in dental school, but very varied and beyond the classroom and am happy with it.

"My med school friends always laugh at me going dent. One says her dental school friends are always going out on the weekends while they're stuck studying every day of the week. "
HAHAHAHAHA - this is not the case at the SUNY medical schools (at least Buffalo and Syracuse). If I had a dollar for each night I studied while my med student roommate went out the past two years, I would have a nice $500 scholarship. A hard schedule for them was having a micro exam on Wednesday and and Pathology exam the following Friday (NINE DAYS after the micro test). Man would they complain about what hell the next two weeks were going to be! Meanwhile, the dental students quietly studied for the SAME exams administered on the same days, and also dealt with numerous quizzes and practicals and lab projects in the dental classes during the same two weeks. We wanted to complain, but we didn't have time to complain b/c we were too busy studying for some quiz. So don't let the med students bully you. We have it worse the first two years, but they pay for it in their third year (and the hellish residency AFTER med school).

vixen - I really like UB dental. I am definitely happy here (even though my class drives me nuts sometimes, I still love them all). I like the classes, the faculty, the facility, the students, the opportunities I've had, and the low cost is an added bonus. The only problem I have isn't even with the dental school, it's just Buffalo. Then again I've lived here for many years and am itching to go somewhere new. My classmates from downstate don't mind their four-year-stay so much and say it's a better study environment here since there are less distractions. I don't mind scheduling my patients, I just pray they will come in or else I am screwed out of the points for that day. The clinics are so clean and bright and everyone has their own permanent chair for two years. I am really looking forward to clinic this year!

To what UBTom said, I liked second year better b/c there wasn't as many lecture classes. First year, I wasn't interested in learning about Neuroanatomy or Physiology, that's why I liked it second year when I got to take the laboratory courses in Fixed and Removable. Wax-ups (carving) are one of my faves, b/c I take them home and do them in front of the TV (they require very little brain input). And I was there when UBTom clocked the all-nighter. Don't be scared, it didn't have to be an all nighter. We had four days to submit this complicated operative project, so you theoretically could have done it a few hours a day for four days. But some of us figured we might as well do the all nighter so we could spend the other three days studying for finals. Also there were tons of laboratory steps that could have gone wrong, and having something go wrong on the fourth night would have had really horrendous consequences....
 
Awesome post Griffin!
 
Agreed -- superb post. That's the type of stuff we are all looking for around here!

BTW, fellow predents, don't let the dental school credit load scare you. My cousin is at Creighton where the freshman class takes 96 credit hours, and he says it is no harder than the 35 credit hours he took each year as an undergrad. That's not to say that many won't find it harder or more time consuming, but the general principle is that the credit hours are certainly manageable, and undoubtedly "beefed up" by many (if not most) schools.
 
Griffin/UBTom, you guys are a great help!

Question for both of you. I'm starting NYU this fall (actually 1 week!:eek: ) How hard was it to adapt to studying off of a computer screen (ie: DVD)

Did you guys do a lot of reading off the screen or did you print all the pages so you could highlight? I think that's the aspect that I'm not really looking forward to. Yeah, it's great to just carry a laptop to the coffee shop and not have to carry around 100 lbs of books, but I'm so used to highlighting right out of the text. What was your study habit w/ respect to the DVD's?

Also, my buddy that goes to SIU dental told me that he averaged 4 quizzes/2 exams per week his first year. That could be good right? That means less material is covered in such a short period of time...just pure memorization.

Gavin:

96 credit hours? Is that even possible for a term? Here we all are talking about 25-30 credit hours (max) for D1's........96 hours?
 
Originally posted by Centrum
Awesome post Griffin!


Geez, Centrum.....700+ posts in less than a month. Your a Crazy Maniac, my friend. I bet you've been taking your Centrum Silver.

I was happy to pull my post count to 1.00 post per day. You're the next little vixen.

DesiDentist:D
 
Originally posted by DesiDentist



Geez, Centrum.....700+ posts in less than a month. Your a Crazy Maniac, my friend. I bet you've been taking your Centrum Silver.

I was happy to pull my post count to 1.00 post per day. You're the next little vixen.

DesiDentist:D

dont be jealous desi :) you and gavinc have a lot to learn.


griffin, thanks so much for that post! Its nice to get an "insiders" view instead of hearsay....."my cousin's girlfriend's mother's sister told me" :rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by Pi__Guy1
96 credit hours? Is that even possible for a term? Here we all are talking about 25-30 credit hours (max) for D1's........96 hours?

Yeah, like I said, they are beefed way up @ Creighton (and possibly other schools). Histology and Embryology are 16 credit hours, and General Head & Neck Anatomy is 21 hours, etc. etc.

I suppose my overall point was that the credit hours are manageable, and if you are accepted, the schools has every confidence that you will pass your classes.
 
Originally posted by DesiDentist



Geez, Centrum.....700+ posts in less than a month. Your a Crazy Maniac, my friend. I bet you've been taking your Centrum Silver.

Centrum has been neglecting us and visiting those other forums "down south" from here ;) . It's easy to post 50 a day in those liberal forums.
 
lounge=liberal....interesting :rolleyes:
 
well since i dont have other responsibilities (marriage and kids yet), i figure, why not? Then again, there are lots of married people that post in the lounge also....makes for nice study breaks! :clap:
 
to Gavin:

(grin) That sure is a novel credit-hour system they got there at Creighton...

The system we use here at UB is the number of hours per week the lecture goes (I think most universities use this system). Histo for example at our school is 5 credit hours because we get 5 hours of lectures in that subject per week.

Credit hour systems aside, yes dental school courseloads are manageable... If you are diligent and do not fall behind.

to Pi-Guy:

Personally, I think the DVD has its uses.. The advantages of portability and ability to search for specific information across many volumes are indeed very useful. BUT...

For things like Gross Anatomy, I think I prefer a paper copy of an atlas to study from. Even with nice display resolutions like 1600x1200 on the latest laptop with huge screens, you often still cannot see the entire dissection figure in detail unless you magnify it to the point that you see only parts of the figure on the screen, and have to scroll back and forth to see the rest. This is clumsy and unwieldly to say the least. It is also cumbersome to have to switch back and forth between the figure window and the explanatory text.

SO... In conclusion, I feel that for something like Gross the Vitalbook DVD is Completely useless. I was lucky to have inherited a paper copy of Netter's Atlas from my oldest sister (MD, Sophie Davis '94), who passed it to my next sister (DDS, NYUCD '00) then to me (DDS, UB SDM '04, hopefully). :D That well-used copy of Netters saved my bacon (and will become a family heirloom heh heh).

Personally I also liked to use the paper edition of (also inherited) Wheater's Histology Atlas for the same reason, because it's figures-heavy.

For other courses where graphical depictions of your subject of study are not as crucial like Microbiology or Biochemistry, the DVD can indeed be adequate. I've occasionally used the highlighting tool in Vitalbook for those and it seems to work OK (definitely can work fast if you are used to it).

I'm sure you will do good at NYU. My sister loved the program and now she teaches at the NYUCD AEGD program as a part-time adjunct instructor. If you ever bump into a Dr. Angel Hong in the Kriser Building, say hi. :clap:
 
Originally posted by DesiDentist



Geez, Centrum.....700+ posts in less than a month. Your a Crazy Maniac, my friend. I bet you've been taking your Centrum Silver.

I was happy to pull my post count to 1.00 post per day. You're the next little vixen.

DesiDentist:D

Yeah I got out of hand. Once school starts I am limiting my SDN and internet intake to about an hour or less a day. Really don't want the carpels to start hurtin' anymore!
 
Originally posted by DesiDentist



Your a Crazy Maniac, my friend. I bet you've been taking your Centrum Silver.

DesiDentist:D


I am too young for the silver. But of course I am taking the original Centrum.

Desi,
To keep that average around 1 a day, I would suggest visiting the Lounge and contributing to my smileys only thread...
:)
 
Originally posted by vixen
well since i dont have other responsibilities (marriage and kids yet), i figure, why not? Then again, there are lots of married people that post in the lounge also....makes for nice study breaks! :clap:


Yep, I post there when I'm not changing my son's diapers.
 
Tons of thanks to all of you who replied to my original post. and Griffin, WOW! Very informative.

Dammit, we're all going to pass! :D
 
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