Holy Crap

Here is a perfect example of how crazy D-2 year is.

Wednesday was our first day of fixed prosthodontics at 8am. We had a bunch of busy work to do which eventually had the entire class crammed into the wet lab trying to pour up models and mount them on an articulator. There are 6 sinks, 4 or 5 vibration mounts, 4 cast trimmers, and 6 index pieces for mounting the maxillary cast. There are 67 students. This room is NOT large.

Now I'm not whinning too much because I actually got a lot done but the atmosphere is just unbelievably stressful with everyone hovering around trying to use the various equipment. Everything was finished around 6pm. Unfortunately as a D-2, the day doesn't end so easily like last year. I went out for dinner with classmates and promptly returned to mount my teeth for endo on friday. Thankfully the instructor approved the molars I had collected so things should be workable.

So we mount the teeth which actually takes forever simply due to lack of experience (I hope to get efficient as we do more). Unfortunately, the stone takes longer to set because we mix it with acrylic (so that you can still see the roots with radiographs). So we finished all our pour-ups by 9:30ish but now have to wait awhile in order to safely get them out. After the chore of mounting them in the first place, nobody is interested in taking them out early.

I ended up staying at the school until midnight with a classmate taking radiographs of other teeth, followed by the same on the mounted teeth once they had really dried up. Students are supposed to be out of there by 10pm I think, so we had to carefully dart around avoiding the random security patrols. If anything, this kept my mind awake enough to finish all the work.

So my day essentially was 16 hours with a 1 hour dinner break (skipped lunch).

The hilarious part is that today, I was done at noon with nothing really left to do until endo. We have two quizzes tomorrow but I don't really feel like studying. It just is nice to essentially have a chill day in the middle of this rollercoaster week. The first week of the semester I might add.

I know I say this all the time, but dental school is bipolar. You have intense moments where you feel like there is no way in hell you will make it out, followed by euphoric days when you actually have the time to sit back and acknowledge how much you have actually learned.

However, I'm pretty sure that Saturdays will officially become 1/2-days of school for me this year..

good times.