D2 Year: What Does It Mean To Me?

What does it mean to be a D2 (second year) dental student? Learning dentistry, right? Wrong! Well, somewhat wrong. But we need to step back and look at this from a different perspective (as we say in dispute resolution, get a 30,000 foot view). In other words, if we live with the belief that D2 year is just about individual dental skills, like an extension of D1 year, then we’ll sorely miss the point. And it’s been my experience that when we miss the point of it all then we become frustrated, lose hope, lose motivation, want to quit, want to beat on faculty, turn into zombies, need trips to Colorado every other weekend (soon it will be Illinois and Michigan), etc. D2 year is the same shit different year and everyone feels the same way about their D2 experiences.

So what exactly are you trying to say Doc? In D2 year we are pushing you in ways that undergrad never did or even could. In D2 year we are giving you a taste of stress and pressure, mixed in with some difficult dental skills, like you’ve never seen before and can, if allowed, melt you into a ball of goo OR EMPOWER YOU. BTW, having a successful dental career means overcoming a SHIT LOAD of stress and pressure DAILY and doing so PROFESSIONALLY without melting into a ball of goo. Who ever got that in undergrad?

So ya did good in undergrad. Yay (pat on the back)! That don’t mean jack for how good a dentist ya gonna be. Huh?! Ok, so ya took some tests, wrote some papers, and mixed some chemicals together without blowing your face off. What part of that has anything to do with dentistry? Not much! Say what?! Dentistry is about hand skills, interpersonal communication/relationships, and managing stressful situations. Who of us in undergrad had any time to: take a painting class; take a sculpting class; take a class on management; take a communication class focusing on interpersonal communication? Undergrad is usually about checking off just the right boxes and getting good grades and doing so in order to get the reward at the end. So what does solid undergraduate work mean to me? Perseverance! Being able to overcome challenges without melting into a ball of goo! Ya gonna need that shit to survive in dental school and thrive in a dental career!

D1 year is about working within the lines: take some gooey shit and put it in between the margins (lines) and then use the existing shape of the tooth to form the gooey shit you just placed. Seems hard at the time but it’s a relatively easy thing to do (given enough time and practice). In D2 year we’re forcing you to use your mind and vision and hands to mold and sculpt big difficult somethings from nothing using only wacky liquid and/or waxy shit. Then we throw in twenty different distractions and only give you enough time to do things once so it had better be done right on the first try.

Guess what? Welcome to a day of dentistry: stressful procedures on stressed out conscious patients all while managing a dental practice. In our practices we juggle ten to twenty things at any moment of any given day and they all have to get done and they have to get done well on the first try (SO OFTEN in dentistry there are NO SECOND CHANCES so we have to get it right…any questions?). For instance, you just get a purchase (grip) on a busted root tip and someone from your office (sometimes with attitude) barges into your op and is like: “Doc, I have been waiting ten minutes for you to (fill in the blank)!”. Immediate reaction internally is: “What the fork! Who the fork are you to talk to me like that?! Are you out of your forking mind?! Can’t you see I’m forking busy?! Who the fork pays your forking salary?! Get the fork out of my face you forking tarantula from Hell!”. And then our training immediately kicks in and we smile and say: “How about if we take just a little break. I’ll be right back. Is there anything we can do to help you feel more comfortable while I’m away for a few minutes?”. Want a stressful job in an incredibly calm environment (and make more money)? Be a heart surgeon (“whatever you do do not make any noise, move around, sneeze, cough, fart, belch, barf, interrupt and in any way shape or form bother the surgeon for the next five hours”).

So try to relax, enjoy the ride, learn all you can, get a few C grades, MAKE MISTAKES (it’s OK, they make you a better dentist), let your faculty help you learn from mistakes, pass your tests, let the learning and training take precedence over the grades, and please forget about the senseless quest for a grade. Patients want and deserve the best we can give them. And I have NEVER had a patient ask me about my grades. Topped ranked and lowest ranked people in each graduating class receive the same honor: DOCTOR!