I just don't see how so many pre-dents commit to dental school without ever really experiencing the profession. Say for example medical school, where students go through various clinical rotations in order to find their niche, and then commit. What if when you pick up the drill and get your hands in someones mouth we just don't like it? Will we just join the other nagging dentists on dentaltown who hate their job? This is just such a huge life choice and now that I am so close to having to make a decision, I just don't know what to do.
I'm only a student, but through life experiences I've become confident that I can learn to love things worth doing even when I don't like them at first. I think you can too if you have an open mind and an assiduous work ethic. When I was younger, my family pressured me to take music lessons to perpetuate a family tradition. I hated it originally, but the ritualistic nature of daily technical practice gradually incorporated the music into my core personal identity. And then, when I began to master some of the techniques, I gained almost a spiritual sense of fulfillment--my successes turned my hobby into a calling. That's how I
learned to become passionate about a technical skill.
I imagine that the same principle applies to the procedural aspects of dentistry (given that you already know through shadowing that you would like to treat patients and potentially manage a business). Again, I'm only a student, so experienced dentists can speak to this point better than I can. But in general, people tend to like doing things when they become good at them to some degree.
Moreover, there are so many things you can do with a dental education besides general practice if you are a motivated student. The oral surgeons I've shadowed told me that they were originally driven to specialize out of a dislike for operative dentistry moreso than a passion for OMFS, and yet they are now very satisfied (and successful) with the work they do. Some dentists have even made careers out of doing non-clinical work, such as research, academic administration, policy, etc.
Lastly, if you manage to pay off your student debt in a reasonable time frame and still hate the work you do, you could switch to working as a part-time associate (say, two days per week) and still make a living wage. Or you could change careers completely. This might not be possible for everyone these days, but dentistry isn't necessarily a life sentence.
Choosing to commit to a profession is indeed a huge decision (and an increasingly risky one), but remember that dentistry will only be one part of your life; there are many other parts (e.g. family, religion, hobbies, community service) from which to draw meaning and happiness no matter how your career unfolds. Sometimes I also worry about whether my dental career will be a bust, whether I will ever get out of student debt, etc. But when I see homeless people freezing on the street, immigrant deliverymen running around the city doing backbreaking work for minimum wage, or even my investment banker friends making money but doing meaningless work, I realize that my worst case scenario is still what most of the world can only dream of: doing work that helps people and living a middle-class lifestyle in a "first-world" country.
