I’m really bummed today. One of my oldest friends from home is getting married, and I’m not there today. So I’m bummed. Really bummed.
I’ve been planning on attending his wedding since August. I knew that this was going to be a busy quarter, so I planned on getting everything done by this past Thursday or Friday so I could fly back to LA this weekend for the wedding. I’ve been working my ass off since Tuesday, but by Thursday afternoon, I took one look at my schedule and I knew that I wasn’t going to make it. There just wasn’t enough time for me to line up at the airport, fly out, kill my entire Saturday with a wedding, and then wade back through the airport routine on Sunday. There would be no way I could return in time with all my work done, even if I did bring my articulator and casting kit home. I currently have 4 preps to cut by Thursday. I have an anatomy test on Monday and a dental anatomy test on Tuesday. My carving is due on Tuesday. (I’m pretty sure I have another project due on Monday, but my memory fails me now.) And this is after I’ve been really grinding at it and putting the hours in.
Earlier this week, I thought that if I could cut all my preps by this past Thursday and got them checked off (I didn’t) and took my carving home to work on, I would be good to go. But the work in dental school can be pretty unpredictable by nature. It doesn’t take much to screw things up so badly that you have to restart. You can drop your cast, chip off the edge of a tooth, or cut something just a little too deep, and then that’s it. Nothing you can do but go back to the drawing board. That’s pretty much what happened this week; two chipped teeth, and three redos. Four preps turned in, and only two checked off, with another two to cut by our next operative meeting.
This quarter is going to be really busy. Last quarter, I had time to write in my blog fairly consistently for the first half, then things kind of petered out as we crept closer to finals. This quarter, I don’t even know if I’ll have time to socialize. That's the one thing that I really don't like about professional grad school - seems like everything else in your life goes on hold for a while. It sucks.
