Helloooo! I hope you’re all doing well. So exciting that we’re in a new year! Wishing everyone the best. This week, I just wanted to take time to give a little preview of what’s to come for semester 2 of year 1 as a dental student! So if you’re interested in the dental school content, feel free to stick around and if not, that’s totally fine too. I’ll see you next week. 🙂
I started my second semester of my DS1 year at the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine this past Tuesday and there’s a lot to accomplish in the next few months! I am taking 14.3 credits this semester (as opposed to to the 19.5 credits I completed last semester) and some classes I really look forward to include operative dentistry (direct restorations I), immunology and microbiology, oral radiology, and oral histology. Out of my entire course load, 5 of my classes are on a graded scale (meaning grades are received on a scale of A to F), and 4 are pass/fail I believe. For my pass/fail courses, a pass is considered anything at a 75% or above.
I think that semester 2 is going to be exciting! I get to start truly working on my hand skills as they relate to actual dental handpieces and begin drilling on plastic teeth later in the month. I have absolutely ZERO experience drilling so this will be a fun new journey.
From what I have heard, I will have much more free time than I did last semester, and I look forward to that, but knowing myself, I will definitely be using that time to study. This semester, I hope I can work more on giving myself time to relax and actually enjoy the things I want to do when I’m not studying or practicing anything. Last semester, I found myself feeling guilty for taking time to relax or do anything not school-related. I felt like that time should have been spent getting ahead in making my study guides or something else and that made it hard to enjoy working out or enjoy a show on Netflix even. I deserve time to rest and I think that actually acknowledging that and working on that will help me perform even better in classes, with lab work, and in our sim clinic as I get to work in that too.
Here’s to another good semester of school! If you’re all enjoying the dental school content, please let me know and if you’re not into it, also let me know. We can always change it up. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave them as a comment or reach out on my contact page. I hope you all have a wonderful week!