Other 1st Semester classes at UCSODM

We had a lot of classes first semester besides Anatomy and Biochemistry, most of which seemed to be of minimal importance. Let's list them out with a short (opinionated) description:

Intro to Microbiology: somewhat difficult, very relevant to Part I boards, but wasn't sure what the point was considering the fact that we have full-blown Micro this semester (DS1 Spring).

Professional Decision Making: a completely pointless, 1/2 ethics 1/2 statistics course. Obtained absolutely zero knowledge from this class that will prove to be helpful to my dental career.

Introduction to Dentistry: The overview of the different disciplines of dentistry was interesting, standing around in clinic looking for someone to hold suction for was not.

Introduction to Dental Materials: kind of interesting, actually learned some use stuff in this class. But, it's an "intro" class, meaning we will have the actual class at a later date. Now that we are in operative (sim clinic), though, I can appreciate why they might have wanted to introduce us to dental materials without going into too much detail right away.

Dental Morphology: this course actually consumes a lot of your time as it involves creating properly formed teeth out of wax. There is a lecture portion of the class, too, which covers the anatomy of the various teeth. This is probably the most frustrating class for many people, as whether or not your tooth looks "good" is very subjective and depends upon the grader. Learning the anatomy of the teeth is obviously very important, though, for both working as a dentist and passing Part I of the boards. This course actually continues into the Spring a week or two, and our final is next Monday.

There it is, the low-down on UCSODM (University of Colorado [Denver] School of Dental Medicine) 1st semester courses.