Goals
How I Chose Dentistry
It is really important to me that I am confident and happy in the career path that I choose. There is also a great importance in the work place environment and how that fits into my own values. I have been open minded about what career I wanted to pursue for a long time. I always knew I wanted to work in the health care field, but knew that medical school was not what I wanted. I quickly realized that I enjoyed interacting with others and seeing the progress within a patient. This helped me come to the conclusion of picking a career that was more clinical orientated in comparison to research oriented. Last summer, I had the opportunity to shadow a dentist where she performed an extraction. I asked a lot of questions and saw myself in this career as it offered a lot of things I was looking for. Recently in November, I attended IU dental day through the IU school of Dentistry in Indianapolis. This was an experience where I met with current dental students, learned a few skills, and toured the dental school. While I was there I was able to use handpieces, practice making dental impressions, and wax a tooth. My favorite part was waxing a tooth and being able to use the hand tools. It was a meticulous job that required concentration, patience, and focus. While performing this exercise I could imagine myself in dental school and doing this kind of work all the time. One of the D3 students even came up to me and praised how well I was progressing and was much better than most for my first time. This made me feel really confident about myself and my ability to perform well when attending dental school in the future. This was an experience that solidified my desire to pursue dentistry, I realized that I want to do this every day.
Why Dentistry
I am currently wanting to pursue dental school after graduating from my undergrad. My professional goal is to figure out what I would like to specialize in. I think this career is one that I am passionate about because it combines so many different skills. In order to be a great dentist, you must have great communication, a strong science background, be artistic, and teach others. These are all things that I would love to have as a daily job. I think I am pretty good at each of these skills, however, there is always room for some improvement. I want to use this internship to accomplish my goal of figuring out where I would like to go from dental school and onwards. Being passionate about my career is an important part in reaching my full potential. This is a career that I want to have for the rest of my life since it offers me different challenges each day and allows me to always be critically thinking. I think it is one of most important careers in health care because people generally see a dentist twice a year in comparison to a physician. They have the opportunity to disclose important medical information that a dentist can help them further navigate. Having good oral health translate to having a healthy body. People underestimate how important good dental care is and I want to be someone who teaches others the importance of it.
Future Dentistry Related Goals
A professional goal I have is to work with a program that offers dental care internationally. There are so many who do not get proper dental care. It is often more than just bad teeth because it can affect the entire body. Working with something like borderless dentists or dentistry without borders is an ultimate career goal once I have finished dental school.
I would like to be more involved with IUPUI’s Pre-Dental club. I think running for a position would be a great way to be more involved in dentistry and IUPUI. I also mentioned earlier that dentistry is about combining so many different skills and professions. One of the most important ones is having the ability to teach others about proper dental care and persuading them to care about it. I would like to be TA during my IUPUI career. Being a health communications minor and a TA would help develop those important skills involved with teaching others.
Upcoming Goals
My goals for this semester are to finish organic chemistry 2 and cell biology with an A as well as develop well disciplined study habits. I will need good study habits in order to prepare for the DAT over the course of the summer.
My big career goal is to become a dentist and have my own dentist office. I know that I would eventually like to specialize in something but have not completely decided on one discipline. I have been thinking about orthodontics and pediatric dentistry as possible specializations. I think this is something that I can spend my time in dental school deciding on. In order to achieve these big goals, I have to break it up into small goals over the course of the next two years.
By the end of this month I would like to do some research on the best study material to help prepare for the DAT. I would also like to figure out a summer schedule that will allow me to take a physics class and leave time for studying. I also will have applied to a leadership position in predental club for the upcoming year. By the end of this semester I would like to have completed organic chemistry 1 and 2 in order prepare for the DAT. It is also vital that I line up a few dentist offices where I will be able to shadow dentists for the summer. I would like to complete at least 30 hours this summer. By this time next year, I would like to have my DAT completed and start working on my applications. I will also complete another 20 hours of shadowing during the semester to help save time for my applications. If I stick to the plan that I have made hopefully I will have also finished all my prerequisites for dental school.