BY “YOUNG BUCK AND OLD MAN”
I can remember sitting in lectures freshman year of college thinking “what the heck do I want to do the rest of my life?” I did not give it much thought in high school and when I started college I tried to keep an open mind. I never had some huge epiphany moment when I finally decided to pursue dentistry, it more just fell into place over the first couple of semesters of undergrad. I will talk more about how I made my journey in other blog posts, but for now let’s discuss if dentistry is the right choice for you.
U.S. News recently ranked Dentistry as the #2 job overall and the #1 healthcare job in the U.S. for 2018. Pretty sweet, huh? I’ve heard rumors that U.S. News is paid off by the dental profession to make this claim in order to increase enrollment at dental schools. Could this be true? Perhaps. Likely? Probably not. There are a lot of desirable perks of the job and there are also downsides. I went in with the attitude that if I could find a career that would enable me to provide a good living, have desirable hours, good job security, and more importantly be my own boss, then I would be happy. And so far dentistry has done all of these things for me.
First, let’s discuss what it takes to be a dentist, because face it, if you aren’t willing to make the sacrifices of going through school, studying ad naseum for close to a decade, delaying earning money, and possibly owing a lot of money in student loans, then it would be wise to seek out another career path. On top of that, even after enduring all of the above mentioned hardships, you still need to find out if you will like actually being a dentist.
Hopefully by now the weak minded have stopped reading. If you’re still with me, great! Let’s talk about qualities to recognize in yourself that will lead you to a wonderful career in dentistry.
In my opinion the first thing is you have to like science. You don’t have to LOVE it, but you at least need to be interested in it, because you will be taking a lot of science courses. And by a lot I mean you will live and breathe cells and chemical compounds. Now I will admit even though I got A’s in organic chemistry (humble brag), the only thing I really remember is the shape of a benzene ring. After that, not much. But it doesn’t matter, because as important as it is to understand science, the main thing schools want to know is can you absorb massive amounts of information, comprehend difficult concepts, and apply those concepts. In everyday dentistry you aren’t going to be balancing chemical reactions and using a periodic table of elements, but you are going to have to think critically when it comes to treatment choices, patient’s health history, what materials to use, etc. When dealing with the human body you have to be able to think on your feet.
Second is you have to love being around people. I can’t stress how important this is. Not only are you around people all the time but you are working in their mouths, a very personal part of their body. As a dentist you always strive to do the best work possible every day, but let’s face it, most people have no idea what you are doing in their mouths. Most of the time if they like your personality and you don’t hurt them, you will have lots of happy patients.
Lastly, and this is common sense, you have to enjoy working with your hands. You don’t have to be the second coming of Leonardo DaVinci when it comes to drilling on teeth, but you do have to have decent hand eye coordination. In dental school our instructors had a term for students that lacked the manual dexterity. They were called HODAT’s, which stands for Hands Of Destruction And Terror. Rest assured there weren’t many HODAT’s and schools do a great job of developing your hand skills in pre-clinical work.
So if you feel like you would enjoy being a dentist after reading this, get after it!
OLD MAN SAYS
When I was 14 my parents made me go to a testing center called “Johnson O’Conner Human Engineering Laboratories”. They are still in business today. I thought I wanted to be a dentist because I had an uncle that was one and I loved watching him do his thing. Johnson O’Conner tested me and although I already thought I wanted to be a dentist, they confirmed my desire. To this day I still get letters from them following up to make sure I still like dentistry and I do even though I’m in my early 70’s.
I have 4 things that I think you should consider before you even going to college that will make a major impact on liking your profession (nothing worse than being in a profession that you hate and now what do you do???). Carefully, consider each of these! To be a successful and HAPPY dentist there are 4 important things to look at:
- I think you should consider going to “Johnson O’Conner” (713-462-5562 www.jocrf.org) and get tested. They have over 100 years of research to see if that profession is right for you. I think it is really worth it!
- Are you good with your hands-if not, school and the practice of dentistry will be hard for you and not very fun.
- Do you like being with people? The old saying is-“Are you a people person?” You can still be a successful dentist if you are not a people person but it is a lot harder to be happy and be a successful dentist.
- Do you make good grades in school? My first semester of dental school was 42 semester hours of hard college plus level courses. As my dad used to say-“When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” You have to buckle down in college and make pretty much all A’s to get in. Can you do that???
I really like being a dentist and I hope you do also. It is the only profession that I know of that you can control your hours of operation and pick and choose what type of dentistry you want to work on. Good luck and God Bless!!
THE OLD MAN-BUBBA