It's kind of like when you're in third grade and you see the math that your older brother is doing in algebra class and you freak out because you're doing long division and the stuff that he's doing has letters in it. Letters, man, freaking letters! By the time you get there, you're ready for it. You've been trained to that point, so keep that in mind. Everyone else has not been given a secret formula by the Dentinati (I've said too much) and you're the only one out of the loop. I'm not saying that dental school is a cake walk, but it's not something beyond your abilities as a person. It's like getting hit by a paintball for the first time. You've heard of paintball, the game seems awesome, you're all stoked, but you've also heard that it hurts to get hit. Some guys even get welts and bruises! You get to the field and the guns are loud and you see guys shooting the plywood backstop at the chronograph station and with every "whop!" of the plywood you're thinking, "Sonofa.....I'm about to get shot by that?!" Then you get out there and the whistle starts and everyone runs and paintballs start whacking the barriers all around you and all you can do it peek out and pop off a few before you get freaked out and hide again. Then some mall-ninja with his own gear runs up and hits you right in the thigh, right in the really sensitive spot inferomedially to your butt cheek, right...freaking....there, and gives this nasally laugh that contradicts his tactical attire and yells "You're out, you're out, you're out" repeatedly while his voice cracks. And you sit there stunned for a second, but as you walk to the net you're thinking, "That's it? That's what it feels like to get hit? I can take that. That wasn't so bad. I'm gonna get that little bastard." And then you go into the next round and do somersaults and roll over 55 gallon drums and hood slide across the junk cars and do sick-nasty evasive cool guy maneuvers until you come upon mall-ninja's encampment and you unleash on him, pretending to not hear his cries of defeat or the referee's whistle. And as you're being escorted out, you're thinking, "Hell. Yes." That's what the first semester of dental school is like. After that you may find yourself cornered and being lit up relentlessly by mall-ninja and his 15 year old friends, but you can take it, and at the end of the day you go out with your buddies and have a girlfriend and a future. Mall-ninja waits for his mom to come pick him up in the minivan while looking at the maxim calendar on his phone. Don't be that guy. Take one in the thighbutt, brush it off, and be a better person because of it. You can do it. I know everybody on here says that, but actually, you can do it. Thighbutts are overrated anyway, unless you're a cyclist, but you won't have time to do that outside of the weekends and by then you'll be healed.
