Day 2

Bright and early I awoke, determined to not err in an way. Morning walk with the dog and onto campus by 7:30 am. A full & friendly day began, where all 69 dental students confronted nervousness and the unknown to sit amongst their peers in one meeting hall for the majority of the day. The College of Dental Medicine faculty joined us in the morning, and introduced their background, alma matter, favorite sports team, and occasionally cheered when the student's offered similar sports affinities. The faculty generally seems to be 30-50 years old, with one or two a bit sprightly older. Nearly all the professors have been teaching via this program for a few months - a year+, as my dental degree is Brand.New at this school. I found the faculty excited, innovative, and seemingly hand-plucked from other schools, including Harvard and Berkeley. I believe a lot of other dental schools have faculty that's about as old as the facility itself, and the teaching becomes entrenched in ways of the past. Not so, my school! Aside from age, the faculty is diverse, representing the Slavs, Mexicans, Germans, and Taiwanese. One unique faculty member compared dentistry to vampirism, as both revel in blood.

Were I not so tired already, I would make this far more interesting. As is, it feels like nothing but a log of the inconsequentials. The professors belabored our dress code, as dentistry is a knowledge-imparting profession, and we must look the part of the revered, both now in our 4 years of academia, and later in our practices. "No jegggings and sheer tunics" was officially proclaimed. I'm quite proud one of our doctors is hip enough to cite jeggings as a current fashion movement.

The school fed us 3 meals, gave us hourly breaks, and then had some "ice-breaking" games. We walked around with bingo cards that someone had cleverly written things like, "find someone who can sing an entire Justin Beiber song", or "who has met the President", or "been on a talk show". Thankfully, I have shook Bill Clinton's hand, AND been on Late Night with Ethan Kirschner live at the local public access tv channel when I was in 4th grade, so I filled my name in more than one old Bingo square. We met our MP's, which at the time I didn't even know what it meant. Small groups ventured on photo scavenger hunts with our MP advisor.

That is one thing I'll state about this school. They throw so many acronyms out, I'd need a few teams worth of baseball players to catch all the unknown phrases. MP stands for Managing Partner, and I know which faculty member mine is, but she is not my advisor, nor my dean, and I do know she has an office in our patient clinic. What she does as a MP though, I have no clue.

Today I also came across ECDI, COMP, MGA, HEC, HPC, CODMOAA, and that's all I can list off in a mere 8 seconds. I can assure you you don't need to know what they stand for, but you point be known, medical schools do enjoy acronyms.

I forgot to mention I sat by two lovely folks today. One, a gentleman whose dad is a prosthedontist and plans on continuing in that field. I couldn't even tell you what the word meant before today, but apparently it's the field of dentistry which takes in all the botched jobs by other dentists and fixes them. He says they get the tough stuff. Read, moneyyyyy. The other pal was a lass whom I actually met during my interview back in February. I thought she was cool then, and she's still got a good attitude now. She spent the last 2 years living out of a hotel room in the NW and driving a van with 3 other folks around rural areas offering dental care to children. Pretty compassionate. Also, good fashion.

The makeup of my other students is diverse. Whether or not there is more men or women I couldn't accurately judge, but I would say the ethnic majority is Asian. There are a few kids who were born and raised in Iran, one from Mexico, 2!!! from Wisconsin aside from me, one from Houston, a few from Seattle, a Floridian, a Georgian, and the rest seem to generally have graduated under the UC school system, whether it be Irvine, San Diego, LA, or other cities that I couldn't even place on a map. I would like to note the events of Day 3, but alas, I have just printed out 58 pages of Introduction to Dental Anatomy, and I am fighting with tiredness before even starting the first wave of studying. Luckily, this material is not covered until Monday, when the real schooling begins. I'll let you decide what kind of "schooling" I might be inferring.