Why I like Dentistry

[RichardGT4]

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Hey guys, I'm only a Sophomore in high school, yet unlike many people in my grade, I already planned my future out. I want to become a dentist because of good pay, good hours, and making people happy. I always loved making others feel better about themselves, and a good smile needs a dentist to maintain that.

My parents always encourage me to do well in school, and I alway listen to there advice. They didn't have the same opportunities as they immigrated to the US for a better life. They always wanted me to look at fields with good income, and I chose dentistry over medicine.

People in my class always ask me "why would you become a dentist?" I just tell them that I'm interested. I'm still helping people with there oral health, and I plan on pursuing that dream.

I know there's a test called a DAT. I also know I have to attend dental school and such. But honestly, I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it because I'm passionate about it.

Is dental school involve a lot of studying? Is residency long hours or average? Some dentists tell me that dentist have more flexible work hours than medical physicians. Tell me how job security, pay, and work hours and conditions are like for dentists. Thanks for your time.

 

[Typical Average Student]

Start shadowing a dentist during the summer for a few hours a week to get a feel, you can put it on your resume when you apply for college as well.

 

[RichardGT4]

I generally have a familiar idea on the dental workplace. Shadowing is definitely one good option I may do.

I'm just concerned on the dental school part. Sure it's many years away, but I'd like a little idea on it before joining.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Typical Average Student]

Is dental school involve a lot of studying? Is residency long hours or average? Some dentists tell me that dentist have more flexible work hours than medical physicians. Tell me how job security, pay, and work hours and conditions are like for dentists.

Someone else can shine in on this but this is pretty much the general outline:
- Yes, dental school is just as rigorous in their studies as medical school. Dental school for the first 1-2 years is pretty much medical school + dental laboratory work, you will be working on cadavers, making dental molds in lab, and be taking all your sciences to prepare you for the first part of your boards. Year 3-4 (sometimes even earlier) involve applying what you've learned to real patients, you need a certain amount of cases in order to graduate.

- Depends on what residency you are looking to get into. You can get into general practice residency (GPR) which is 1 year to prepare you even more or you could go into oral surgery (OMFS) which could take 4-6 years to complete. You could also obtain a PhD which could take 12 more years. There are many more opportunities aside from practicing, personally, I'm partially interested in research as well as academia but also enjoy practicing.

- Dentists usually do have better working hours in that very rarely will you have someone that needs their cavities filled at 4am but that also depends on what type of field you get into, if you go into oral surgery, you may be working in a hospital fixing facial trauma and such. So it really depends what you get into.

- Job security............. well. It's hard to tell being that you will probably see a dentist in every street corner (as my dentist likes to say: "I can throw a rock from my office and hit 4 dentists"). It depends on your location. It also depends what field you get into, general dentistry is getting sort of saturated but there's always a demand for dentists.
- Pay is how you take it, you could be making millions filing fraud insurance claims or be broke doing great work in third world countries. It all depends... This ties into working conditions as well.

 

[Frychicken]

- Yes, dental school is just as rigorous in their studies as medical school. Dental school for the first 1-2 years is pretty much medical school + dental laboratory work, you will be working on cadavers, making dental molds in lab, and be taking all your sciences to prepare you for the first part of your boards. Year 3-4 (sometimes even earlier) involve applying what you've learned to real patients, you need a certain amount of cases in order to graduate.

Close, you're not actually working on cadavers. They're mostly just for the purpose of learning gross anatomy and head and neck. In sim lab, you'll be working on mannequins and drilling into fake teeth that are a lot harder than real enamel.

The idea is that you need to learn how to properly control a handpiece that can spin up to 200,000 RPMs before being allowed to put that anywhere near a real patient's mouth. That killing machine is not a child's plaything!

 

[SableFire]

I generally have a familiar idea on the dental workplace. Shadowing is definitely one good option I may do.

I'm just concerned on the dental school part. Sure it's many years away, but I'd like a little idea on it before joining.

Thanks for the advice.

You have to shadow to get into dental school. I would consider starting this coming summer. Don't go crazy though because many schools will only look at what you do in college and don't care about high school.

 

[nucshuc]

Ya, only shadow for interest and to learn more about the field - shadowing hours only count once in post secondary education

 

[Doom132]

You should really start job shadowing a dentist. You won't know for sure if you want to be a dentist until you have done this.
You will see its not really all about making people happy. Everyone does it for a personal reason.

 

[RichardGT4]

I heard that dentist schools require at least 50-100 shadowing hours and some volunteer work.

Generally put, shadowing is require in all medical professions for better acceptance rate.

I plan on doing the majority of my shadowing hours in college because I'll have my own car by then, and winter break is longer along with summer break.

Thanks for the advice! Greatly appreciated.

 

[Doom132]

My advice to you on job shadowing is to start looking during the school semester. During the breaks are when dentists are super busy or on vacation and they usually say no to people asking to job shadow. And also, don't be too surprised when only 1/10 dentists actually accept you for a shadowing opportunity.

 

[Daneosaurus]

You're in high school. Do high school.

 

[RichardGT4]

Exactly. Most of my older friends said they usually start shadowing around college time which is good
I think summer is also a great time to shadow. Currently I'm focusing on my grades for college, and then I can focus on the other important factors.

 

[Bucks783]

It is cool that you want to become a dentist, but you have a lot of school and stuff ahead of you. I wanted to be a dentist growing up, then a pharmacist going into college and ended up switching to business. Now, I am back in school to be a dentist but the real life experience I got from careers after college was priceless. Don't worry about it now, you are young. But if you have some free time - even an hour or two a week - go shadow a dentist for a full experience. It will look awesome on your college application. Don't forget to log those hours!