Try Not To Get Sick

I was struken ill last sunday which made the last three days a living hell. I blame the random weather shift from sub-zero to the 50s, followed by sub-zero again. My lungs don't know what is going on.

This led me to the realization that getting sick really blows in dental school. Point A - missing a class with weekly quizzes will hurt your grade and missing any clinical related class that requires sign-offs will slow you up.

If you stay home more then one day you are just letting everything snowball. Point B - everyone knows this, so everyone shows up even when they probably should be in bed. This just ends up getting classmates sick and the lecture hall becomes one giant hack fest.

Point C - taking tests/quizzes is far more difficult when you feel like shit.

I was the worst on tuesday, and as fate would have it - tuesday was the longest day I have spent in class of my short dental career. I was gone from 7:45am until 7:00pm with a short lunch break. We had to mount our maxillary casts from last semester on an articulator and make everything look nice. As you might imagine - cramming every D-1 into the wet lab and having us all need to use the sinks and grinders at the same time becomes a bit..uh...crowded?

They really ought to stagger the schedule out a bit.

While I'm on gripes, neuroanatomy is the most unorganized and poorly taught class I have ever experienced in my entire life. Luckily most of my classmates agree so I'm not the only one completely confused.

OKOK, griping aside, the other classes are fine (for the most part). Biochem is terrible..but that is merely because I don't like biochem and the pace is too fast. Pathology might be my favorite so far, namely because it is taught well (hmm correlation between teaching and class-satisfaction).

So far we have just had a bunch of quizzes and two major exams. Grades are holding fine and I hope to keep them up. I stuttered a bit this week because of all the lying in bed exhausted time (not much studying), but I am begining to feel better.

On the plus side, I am going to a classmate's wedding this weekend so fun times are around the corner. On the down side, we have a bunch of exams coming up that I probably should be studying for.

Ah well.

This semester is harder (duh)..apparently the hardest of all 4 years according to some; but it hasn't run me over yet. And I figure if I can get through a 12 hour day while being unable to eat lest I projectile vomit it all over the place in concurence with my pulsating brain nerve endings and hacking throat..I'll be allright.

I really wish I could have more coherent posts. My original intentions were to have a nice organized documentation of all the classes, and exactly how things work during the first year - but I just don't have time/motivation to do it.

But this serves the purpose as well. My inane babbling serves as a literary window into the madness that is dental school.

Keep sending emails, that is the only thing keeping me posting.

Out of Control

This semester is absolutely horrendous compared to last. I have finished three days and already feel like I have been through three weeks. Allow me to compare:

Semester 1:

Physiology I
Histology I
Anatomy I
Comprehensive Care Ia
Microbiology

Semester 2:

Physiology II
Histology II
Anatomy II
Comprehensive Care Ib
Biochemistry
Occlusion
Pathology I
Neuroanatomy
Radiology

Am I the only one that sees the enormous imbalance here? Granted anatomy II ends after 8 weeks, but comp care class work will fill its spot. Comp care Ia was also a free ‘A’ pretty much last semester, but now they have removed the filler portions like ethics and epi and we are stuck with pretty much all clinical dentistry. They are also beginning to grade us on the quality of our work. Many of these classes also require MASSIVE amounts of reading (which is of course being quizzed weekly). We had ZERO quizzes last semester. To make matters worse, I was involved in the summer research program here and am required to do a poster presentation during the clinic and research day in February. Might I add that I didn’t actually get anything worth putting on a poster done, but they still want one.

Sigh. Fortitude is where it is at people. I was quite satisfied with my grades last semester, now I am more concerned with passing everything than maintaining the GPA.

We will see how things go, I’m sure I will be a D-2 before I know it; but it just seems like a LOT of stuff to maintain.

And as you might imagine I have no time to add further commentary, so I am off to read the endless pile of reading assignments we have gotten in the first three days.

Stay tuned to see if I live or die.