Decade in Review: Pre-Dental Era (2010 - 2012)
The 2010s have come to a close. Last week, we ushered in a brand new decade. This post has been in the making for a LONG time. It seemed appropriate to revitalize my blog by revisiting the journey to this point of my life.
Some say that your 20s are a defining decade. According to Meg Jay, “we know that 80 percent of life's most defining moments happen by age 35. We know that 70 percent of lifetime wage growth happens in the first 10 years of a career. We know that more than half of Americans are married or living with or dating their future partner by 30. Our personalities change more in our 20s than any other time. Our fertility peaks. Our brain caps off its last growth spurts ... The things that we do and the things that we don't do are going to have an enormous effect across years and even generations.” If nothing else, the last decade has been one of immense change and growth for me personally and professionally.
One of my biggest regrets is not blogging for the last few years - a lot of my thoughts and experiences have been lost in the shuffle. It’s fascinating to look back at my blog posts from ten years ago to see where I was at that point in my life. With that being said, I thought I would do a ten year recap!
(My decade in review will be broken down into the three times periods of this decade: pre-dental, dental and residency)
YEAR: 2010
At the beginning of the decade, I was a sophomore at the University of Southern California. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life or career. Actual entries from my blog posts:
I spent the whole summer debating between a career in dentistry and a career in medicine. I thought I had made a decision until Thanksgiving vacation when my aunt arrived in California and turned my world topsy-turvy again. Now, I'm flirting with the idea of becoming a physician's assistant...
Even when I thought I settled on pursuing a career in dentistry, I was frustrated with the pre-health experience in college.
Lately, the nagging feeling that I'm on a strict timetable to sell my life away to dental school has returned with a vengeance. Seeing other colleagues so involved in the community and applying for amazing internship experiences abroad has made me realize that as a pre-health major, these experiences are hard to come by. Technically, I could attempt to study abroad but that would disrupt my timetable in applying to dental school.
I switched majors four times. I started college as a biochemistry major. Then I switched to biology. Then I flirted with the idea of being an East Asian Language and Culture major before finally settling on kinesiology.
Only in a kinesiology lab will you be required to exercise in a sauna for over 30 minutes. It was 47C and 45% humidity in the sauna. I know we do a lot of crazy labs in this department (dunking myself into a tank of water at 8am, maxing out on the treadmill, getting my own blood samples for a blood lipid/glucose test), but this one was the craziest of all. Direct quote from one of the girls in my lab group - "now I know what hell must feel like".
YEAR: 2011
In 2011, I was a junior at the University of Southern California. I finally decided on pursuing dentistry as a career and took the Dental Admissions Test (DAT) over winter break (one of my most POPULAR blog posts of all time.
I’m finally done with the DAT after 28 days of the grind (well, technically 25 days because I was out with the flu for 3 days). I spent my winter vacation studying from 9am - midnight with a few intermittent breaks. I'm relatively happy with my score although I feel like I could have done better in quite a few categories.
I applied for a position in the USC Athletic Medicine Internship program and was accepted! Throughout the year, I worked behind the scene with athletic trainers, physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons, coaches and Division 1 athletes at USC.
My first day as an athletic medicine intern went surprisingly well. There were a few USC football players in the athletic medicine room preparing to train for the NFL combine. The head trainer asked me to wrap a football player's ankle (to prevent severe ankle sprains). Only problem is that I had no idea what that entailed. The football player saw my hesitation - "Coach, she's scared of me, huh?"
No, I'm not scared. Okay, maybe just a tiny bit. It's a little unnerving when your patient stands about 6'5", is approximately double your weight, and possesses a set of ankles that are twice as thick as your own. Not to mention a set of freakishly bulging biceps.
Despite the long hours I have to put in for this program, I'm excited to be in athletic medicine! I'm even excited for the start of spring football season despite the fact that practice starts at 6am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
One of the perks of working for athletic medicine is that you have access to the weight training room at Heritage Hall. I accidentally walked into the weight training room this morning instead of the athletic medicine room and all of the big, beefy guys in there laughed at me. "You're in the wrong room" they informed me as they continued lifting. The weight lifting coach was nice enough to direct me to the right room afterwards. But before I left the room, I saw a few 200lb weights sitting on the rack. 200lbs??!?!?!!?
That summer, I submitted my dental school applications in June.
Submitted my AADSAS application. It costs $1285 to apply to 15 schools. As a result, I'm working my butt off everyday from 4-10pm (while taking physics) to pay for all of the extraneous cost. Pray for me that it doesn't amount to naught.
Then December 1 hit. I thought my life hit the lowest of lows when I received ZERO dental school acceptances that day.
It was a week that I believed would make me or break me and dental school admissions was the last hurdle. I woke up at 7am that morning, dizzy with excitement, anticipation, and dread. But ever the optimist, I was certain there would be nothing but good news. I lay in bed with my laptop perched on my lap. Four tabs were open - the AADSAS portal, the USC Dental School admissions portal, my email, and the Student Doctor Network forum. I kept hitting the refresh button all morning, awaiting an admissions decision to pop up (hopefully good news!).
So I pressed refresh.
Then refresh again.
Refresh.
refresh.
refresh..
refresh...
Again and again, each time getting slightly more desperate and hopeless until I finally admitted defeat around noon.
I was devastated. I was heartbroken. I sat on my bed, paralyzed with disappointment. What do I do next? How do I get on with my life? I had no answer. So I wallowed in despair with a giant tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream and shut down my computer. I couldn't stand to see another "WOOHOO!! I'M GONNA BE A DENTIST!!!!" status update on Facebook or SDN.
At that point, I vowed to work harder and live life to my potential. I told myself I would make the dental school who rejected me regret their decision.
YEAR: 2012
I graduated from the University of Southern California in May 2012 and started dental school at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC in August. Despite the doomsday feeling at the end of the 2011, I received an acceptance letter from the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC in January 2012. I was also accepted to the University of the Pacific Dugoni School of Dentistry and Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health in April 2012.
I wrote an epilogue for my undergraduate career, a reflective essay that guided my dental school experience.
I look back at my undergraduate career with mixed emotions (which I am partly to blame)… As Keith Ferrazzi said, "Human ambitions are like Japanese carp; they grow proportional to the size of their environment".
The "environment" is most certainly abundant at USC and in the greater Los Angeles area. The only limitation is the person's willingness to step out of his or her way to seize the experiences available.
I cringe as I think back to my freshman self, as we sat on the floor in our dorm and talked about our dreams and aspirations for the next four years at USC. While others hoped to become an influential member of the Undergraduate Student Government, become a member of the Order of the Torch, or study abroad in Barcelona, I stated that I wanted to cut back on my involvement in organizations and focus on getting good grades in order to get into dental/medical school. I achieved my freshman year goal of getting into dental school. Still, it was foolish to believe that I would maximize my undergraduate experience by locking myself away in my room with my books.
Despite these undergraduate shortcomings, I still look back at the past four years with fond memories. I look forward to continuing on as an eight-year Trojan, building upon the positive aspects and the shortcomings of my undergraduate career.
On August 20, 2012, we started our first day of dental school at USC.
Hearts pounding. Eyes glowing with excitement. We're anxious. We're ecstatic. For the USC dental school class of 2016, August 20, 2012 marked the first day of orientation - otherwise known as the first day of the rest of our lives as health care practitioners. After so many years dreaming of this moment, it is finally here.
I was selected as the USC Class of 2016 American Student Dental Association (ASDA) representative, a position which launched my involvement in organized dentistry. I also attended the inaugural ASDA National Leadership Conference in Chicago.
