A-Z of dental school

A: accuracy, precision and aesthetics. You would never realise the importance of a millimetre until you enter dental school. In optech, we had to drill a cavity prep on fake ivorine teeth measuring 2 by 3 by mm I think.. if you missed it by 0.5mm, REDO!

Aesthetics: choosing the right colours for your fillings, teeth set up for dentures, wax ups, blah blah..

Articulator: one of the priciest item you can get, 1.5k. If you lose the incisal pin(one single metal rod measuring less than 10cm in length and less than 1mm in diameter), please fork out $150.

B: Bintan! Our class outing for Dec 06. Had a lot of fun travelling on the magic schoolbus lookalike to search for cheap local seafood, and venturing into the other half of Bintan Island, where few tourists would visit. And also playing the ' 4th grade pig' game.

C: Clinics and competencies. Calling patients, preparing instruments, writing instrument lists, passing competencies (yay!), failing them(give me Baygon..). all part and parcel of dental school

D: determination. Dental school really saps up a large part of your energy, but you just have to grit your teeth together to pull through the course.. and in the end everyone will make it.

E: anndoe. Enough said, I'll never touch another root canal if I have the choice. No way.

F:Fire. We get burnt quite a bit in dental school. I've got a few battle scars on my hands, thanks to the invisible bunsen flame. Some of us had our hair burnt, and had to snip off the curly fringe, plus the smell that you get when you burn hair.. eew. Fires had occured in the clinics as well. During our last term, we were at clinic 2, and the bunsen burner was upset into a cup of alcohol. Luckily no mishaps happened, hehe

F is my clinical group as well! The field trips that we had, the really small group tutorials that we had(just 4 of us), and the presentations that we had to do, and the pranks that we played on the 2 guys for pontang-ing OS postings at AnnDiSee.. haha.

G: graduation. The end point that all of us work towards throughout the four years, by planning our schedule, selecting patients, exam cases, the studying that we have to do after a hard day's work..

H: Happiness! When you finally get out of hell..

I: instruments. Instruments in dental school cost a bomb(ok.. make it three). Some are really priced ridiculously. Take for example, a $15 bib holder. I can achieve the same function with a raffia string and two clothes pegs, but 2 crocodile clips strung together by a clear plastic costs $15! Not to mention, our handpieces, worth $700 to $1K each. Not fun to lose them. Our combined class bill has not been the highest in history, thankfully.

J: Jokes, mostly lame ones. Next time, don't name your daughter Monica Chng.

K:kick-your-ass instructors. Some acts include, threatening to kick you out of clinics for an undisclosed period of time, threatening to throw your articulator/denture/denture design sheet/provi into the bin, performing a David Copperfield stunt... at 1230/5pm.

L:Lab 4. Where I literally spent more half of my life in the past two years at, breathing in doses of acrylic dust, laughing at crappy jokes made by people across the lab, fretting over broken casts, chipped teeth, trying not to get myself deaf from the drilling and trimming, polishing casts... and celebrating my 22nd birthday! The things we do in the lab..

M: mugging in the medical library. I've not studied so much in my entire life as compared to what I did for my final exams. It was stressful, but when you see your other classmates slogging with you, you are motivated to work as well. The library is also a fridge, especially in rainy days, do pile on more layers, if not, you'll be chilling your toes off. I wonder how some girls can survive with so little cloth around them.

N:Nepal, the grad trip destination for 9 of us, including myself, together with 4 other medical students. It was definitely an experience that I won't forget, and the scenery was equally breathtaking, esp the sunset that we saw at Tukuche. The river crossings were awesome too, but they made my blisters hurt a lot when I came out from the water. But well, we're only young once.

Nurses: They've helped me a lot through my clinical years, both the part time and full time nurses. I remembered that one of the part time nurses had even willingly stayed back with me after 530 cos I was held up in my clinical session, during my last term. When I asked her to go back she said ,'It's ok, you guys are very busy this term also, we don't mind helping lah, since we are not busy after work also.' That was a really nice gesture, and thinking back, I was really lucky as a student. Now in the working place, such acts are harder to come by.

O:orientation, both as a freshie, and as a organiser. I don't really fancy orientation programmes in general, because I'm not a person to warm up that fast. Some highlights from my year 1 orientation: WS imitating the sexy timer during our good night song(damn I should have opened my eyes), being in the same OG as the crappy guys like MJ, Stanley, Yee Hau, and being contented with our position as the 3rd best(when there are only 4 groups).

Highlights for my yr 2 orientation: being dressed as a ghost for fright night, together with Linlin as my partner; cutting cutting and more cutting; painting, painting and more painting; our phoenix, which turned out looking like a KFC brown bird (we used it as a decoy later to lead other people into thinking our float really looked screwed up); and of course, the sumptious meals that we had, with ZX and Nijam as our food ICs (soya beancurd, fish and chips, drinks, as opposed to our year one diet of chicken rice, chicken rice, and more chicken rice)

O also stands for the trying occlusion classes we had during special term in year one. Your willpower is put to the test as you try to be awake, after lunch, and for a darn boring lecture, showing you videos that doesn't really make sense to you. That, my friends, is determination at its best.

P:priority. This is the system where different clusters of students get priority for booking of clinical sessions. Thanks to our class reps, who've taken much effort in making it as fair to everyone as possible, we had our fair share of different clinical sessions each week. Kudos to them!

Q:queue! The perennial favourite activity of Singaporeans, queueing for Hello Kitty dolls, queueing for good food, blah blah, but over here, we queue for the turn to use the trimmer, the broom and dustpan(back in lab 2!!!),for the turn to consult our instructors, to draw instruments.

R:Redo! The dirty, cursed 4 lettered word that all abhor. I recall the 'cemetery' I had for all my frasaco teeth from optech days. $2 for each redo, and when the darned screw breaks off when you're changing the tooth, another $2 again. Urgh.

S: staff canteen at NUH- where we get our daily nutrition from the chicken rice, wanton mee, ban mian and of course the teh ping, where you get a caffeine rush for just 60 cents. Guaranteed to keep you hopping like a happy bunny in clinics. Potent remedy for the lethargy that you get from long nights of studying and lab work.

T: Two CD machine. The holy machine that dispenses Milo, 100 plus, coffee, tea at a discounted rate of 20 cents. I still have not figured out why it's 2cd(2 cents drink), since it's 20 cents. I always looked forward to the pilgrimages that we made, after clinics, to bitch or complain about our day, and find strength to carry on with the drudgery in the lab

U:UROP, aka FYP. Days spent on figuring out how to use the fancy machine that we purchased, breaking tips that were as thick as your hair but cost 300 per piece. Editing the poster for the 100001th time, changing the colour scheme, layout and so on.. Going to Jarkarta for the conference, being well fed for 3 days, 5 full meals daily, with sumptuous pastries... heavenly

V: see E.

W: wax up. Learning how to sculpt a tooth in wax back in year one, observing every curve, angle, width and so on. Trains your eye for details, but can be very frustrating, when you dont' have enough reduction and your wax pattern keeps breaking.

X:exchange at UNC. I remembered boarding the 5 pm flight on Friday, rushing back home to wash up and do last minute packing after school was released at 1pm. The SIA flight was awesome, UNC was 'to die for'. Other highlights include the Duke Chapel that Kim brought us to, Wilmington beach, Micheal Jordan, Jodie Foster in the flightplan premiere, Universal Studios, Disneyland, Zhang Shan Wei, factory outlet shopping. The desserts there were sedap..

Xmas party: It's an annual class event, usually at some body's place. I've not missed any of them and we had gift exchanges, pot luck and so on, the last one we played charades and watched 'Road Trip'. The event is proudly brought to you by Stan and Yong He.. hehe, i'm looking forward to this year's (hint hint)

Y: YEP. Something meaningful that I did in year 1. We(I, Anqi, Lin) raised funds and went to Khon Khen to teach the villagers health education, and set up a children's library. The project was together with pharmacy and arts students. Did newspaper collections and t shirt sales for fund raising. Made a few good friends, both Singaporeans and Thais as well

Z:Zen-like attitude. At the end of the day, take a deep breath and look at the people around you. Never mind if you've got to redo the special tray due tomorrow, never mind if your provi for your competencies had slipped off, and you can't find it ever again amidst the mess on the floor. No use kicking a fuss, cos it doens't help much. Just do it.... again.