This week has been an eventful week as far as school goes. Yesterday we took our first impressions (on fake teeth) and poured our first casts, and then today we practiced using a highspeed handpiece for the first time! My casts turned out OK, no bubbles. The lab was pretty crowded, though, with all 52 of us split between the two labs mixing stone and alginate, but it went fairly smoothly. The simulation clinic was even more fun, but we have a lot of homework for the next week: memorize what the names of a bunch of burs and instruments and what the code numbers on them mean. Not too hard, just have to take the time to do it. We used our handpieces today to practice preping (drilling out parts) this little practice pad. It had different shapes on it, some which resembled preps you might do in certain teeth. It had 3 layers: white (enamel), yellow (dentin), and red (pulp). The idea was to prep the shape without going deeper than the dentin and maintaining the margins (represented by the black outline of the shape). Everyone was dusty from the plastic residue of the practice pad, but everyone sounded like they were having fun!
Some of our other classes aren't too fun, like Physiology. I do like the subject, but the class is just boring. Cariology should be OK, but we don't have that too often. There's also General Pathology, but we haven't had a lecture in there yet. Microbiology should be good, but we don't get around to that until later in the semester.
Tonight, some friends are coming over to play Rock Band. Nothing too exciting, as I'll probably go in to school tomorrow to study and finish up a couple more impressions/cast I need to make.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
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.
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.
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