Congratulations on making it through and getting into the field of dentistry. I can assure you, it is not going to be just about smiles. There will be tears, sweat, saliva and blood involved at some point in time. But your journey will be worth every ounce of it. Your battles do not end at qualifying dental school, this is where they commence.
Soon enough, you will be loaded with assignments, deadlines, high patient quota and just like that, there will be tens of jaw sets sitting atop your study table in the blink of an eye. But do not get overwhelmed this fast, we have come up with ways to maximize your output and minimize your stress load so that you can still enjoy dental school, how difficult it is albeit. Here are ten things you can expect in the first year of dental studies in Australia and how to cope with them.
- SEVERAL COLLEGE EVENTS
Don’t be the one who turns down college festivities. Meeting your batch mates, seniors and faculty in an informal setting, where you are relaxed and in joyful spirit without the stress of an upcoming lecture lingering in your mind, can really help you bond well with them. It can be a good introductory time with your seniors and we all can testify to the fact that dental school feels harder without a senior willing to lend you their notes. Also, a little party never killed nobody!
- SEA OF ASSIGNMENTS
Remember when you tell your younger siblings to work harder on their essays and finish assignments ahead of the deadline, it is time to practice what you preach. If you fail to make the submissions on time, the curriculum and clinical work will spiral out of control, you will start lagging behind soon enough and will eventually get sucked into this vacuum. So don’t procrastinate and dive into work as soon as it is assigned.
- DENTAL ANATOMY AND DENTAL HISTOLOGY LECTURES
The only subject in the curriculum related to dentistry in D1 year is Dental Anatomy and Dental Histology. It is very important to remember the eruption dates of deciduous and permanent dentition and morphology of all the teeth as lecturers love quizzing you on those and it stays important all through your dental years. Pay extra emphasis on learning Dental Anatomy and dental Histology, it will save you a lot of embarrassment later on in the clinics.
- DISCIPLINE AND CONSISTENCY
If you want to excel at dental school, stay consistent. Keep the promises that you made to yourself during its first week and go through your notes, revisit important points, memorize diagrams multiple times throughout the year. Else you will find yourself inundated with a mountain of notes, struggling to start. Subjects like anatomy can be very volatile, revising them daily dedicatedly is the only way to ensure they get ingrained in your brain.
- HEFTY COURSE BOOKS
A lot of precious time is wasted in waiting around for your course books to be delivered. Contact your lecturers before your term begins to know their choice of authors and buy their books in advance. Preparing from get-go will help you decide if you want to buy new books or opt for second hand ones. Whatever you decide, these hefty books should already be in your backpack by the first week. Start making notes, use colourful highlighters so the words stick out from the textbook and get imprinted in your brain. Nothing screams “studying” more than fluttering post-its and bookmarks.
- REGULAR LECTURES
Your attendance to lectures and clinical classes directly reflects your attitude towards the course. So stay attentive during those, take down notes to make studying easier during exams and listen to your lecturers keenly. Your professors are a reservoir of knowledge so raise questions and extract as much information as you can from them. They might even hint you a few questions that may make it to the next paper!
- YOU WILL INEVITABLY GET STUCK
It is highly likely that you will get stuck eventually, ask for help if you think you need it. Your seniors have been in these situations before you and you can reach out to them or seek the help of a teacher. You can also receive reliable help online just as easily through sites like urgenthomework.com that are willing to provide you with the assistance you need with your homework. They provide a comprehensive guide and make learning several folds simpler. Failing a subject in dental school will set you back by several months and can send your mental health for a toss. If you feel you are struggling, remember that you are not alone and there is help available only if you ask for it.
- DENTAL SCHOOL WILL FEEL BURDENSOME
Someone rightly said, all work and no play, will make you a very lousy dentist. It is crucial to have a life to go back to after wrapping up with dental school each day. So that life doesn’t seem burdensome and each day brims with positivity and not dreariness from back to back deadlines. Have meet ups with friends and form study groups to make studying effective and fun.
- GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY
D1 year of dental school is a good time to participate in community building, volunteering and becoming a part of student organizations. You enter college years brimming with energy and enthusiasm and it is a good time to put that to use. Giving back to the community and being a part of something greater than you, helps inculcate really important virtues that facilitates your holistic growth as a person.
- IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST, GO ALONE. IF YOU WANT TO GO FAR, GO TOGETHER.
This African proverb will never cease to hold true. You have to understand your batch mates are your team players, not your rivals. Do not pit yourself against them and learn to play as a team. Form study groups, lend your guide, show them your hand-skills, pick on their sharp points, borrow notes, for all we know knowledge expands when it is shared. So start seeing your classmates as opportunities to grow and learn than as competition and try to bring them down. It will do neither of you any good. We rise only when we uplift each other.
DO NOT GET BOGGED DOWN, NO MATTER WHAT.
Dental school will seem tough in the first year as you make the transition from a class room to a lecture theatre and have to juggle multiple subjects and clinical work but you will keep receiving sneak peaks of your future life as a dentist which will be encouraging enough to get you past those difficult days. Do not become a part of this rat race, you will naturally feel bogged down, take a break from time to time to reconnect with yourself and your friends. Make constant efforts to balance your student life and personal life and once you get it right on the scale and some time you can get nursing assignment help, only god knows how high you will fly and will scale those echelons of success.
