I’m rushing, I know I’m rushing. I feel the beat of my heart beating throughout my entire body. Underneath my yellow gown, I can feel myself getting sweatier and sweatier. Good thing I remembered to put on deodorant today. My anxiety levels are shooting out of the roof. Why? I got out of class late, and I’m trying my darndest to set up for my medically complex patient in time. I’m under a particularly particular faculty, and I feel nowhere near prepared. I’m getting to the point where I’m so stressed; I’m forgetting the little things. Have I gathered all of the materials I need? Do I even know exactly what I’m doing today? Have I looked up all of my patient’s medications, so I can give that stellar start check? As dental students and young practitioners we’ve all been here. In the journey to become a dentist, it is almost impossible to not experience the stress and anxiety similar to above. For some of us, it may be every single clinical experience, and for others it may be during our competencies and testing situations. No matter what, it would be remiss to ignore the effects that stress has on our work.

It’s in moments like these that we need strategies to deal with this tension. Lucky for us, there is a myriad of methods to prevent stress, anxiety, and other debilitating emotions from taking hold of our lives and our dental careers. My personal favorite is Mindfulness Meditation. You’ve probably heard of it, as it’s a bit of a “hip” topic in the psychology world. This is for good reason, as there are plenty of scientific studies to back it up.                               Photo Credit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-firestone/mindfulness-benefits_b_2965648.html

Often, when people think of meditation they think that it is the absence of thoughts and feelings—a spiritual experience that only monks who practice for lifetimes get to go through. They couldn’t be more wrong. Mindfulness is actually being very present in the current moment. It is accepting and not judging your current situation. The very key to mindfulness is not that your mind doesn’t think of things, but that when it does you bring yourself back to the task at hand.

Mindfulness is a skill that can be practiced and honed. You probably won’t be very good at it in the beginning, but being good at it is not the point. The point of mindfulness is to not let your emotions and thoughts control you. Having mindfulness meditation in your “tool box” can take the hectic situation from above and flip it on its head. Mindfulness is most definitely not a cure-all to all stresses in life. However, after practicing mindfulness, when you start to feel those familiar feelings of stress and anxiety creep up on you before a challenging clinic session, you will have a tactic to no longer succumb to those pressures. Rather than freaking out over the things you cannot change, you take on the procedure one step at a time. You will make less mistakes, and most importantly you will provide your patient with the best care possible.

There are four different ways of practicing of mindfulness: breathing meditation, body scan, loving-kindness meditation and observing-thought meditation. The key is finding which one works for you. You can find a myriad of different sources to learn about each type and to get resources to help you out. Those include apps with guided meditations (Headspace is my personal favorite), podcasts, and videos on YouTube. Whether you are a mindfulness expert or simply a beginner, I encourage you to continue down the path to a healthier, happier you and a less stressful, more enriching dental school career.

On January 15th, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport at 3:25 pm. Less than six minutes later, the aircraft crash-landed in the middle of the Hudson River. Everyone onboard survived and few serious injuries resulted. The event known as “The Miracle on the Hudson” immortalized the commander of the plane, Captain Chesley Sullenburger. Somewhat less well known is Sullenburger’s copilot, First Officer Jeffrey Skiles. Flight 1549 was Skiles’ first time flying an Airbus A320 since passing the qualifications to do so. As the keynote speaker at the recent 2017 ASDA Annual Session in Orlando, First Officer Skiles described the systems and protocols that led to the successful crash-landing on the Hudson. When a flock of geese collided with Flight 1549 shortly after takeoff, the airline crew initiated a cascade of emergency procedures. As Captain Sullenburger communicated with the control tower at LaGuardia, First Officer Skiles reached for the Emergency Procedure Book readily found in every airplane cockpit. Although this was Skiles’ first commercial flight on an Airbus A320, he had been trained for this. To simplify training, cockpits are standardized across the airline industry. This minimizes the unfamiliarity of a new aircraft. Other industry standards include seat belts and life jackets for each passenger and crewmember. These environments reduce the possibilities for failure or confusion. The familiar cockpit allowed Skiles to act quickly and confidently with each step of the protocol. Seat belts and life jackets at each passenger’s seat minimized panic and injury. First Officer Skiles sited a large part of his success that day to the standards set in place that diminished the possibility of failure.

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The airline industry is not alone in manipulating an environment to encourage success and influence human behavior. Plants and vegetation in inner-city housing developments reduce crime rates. Parks and trails result in improved community health. Advertisers use color to conjure certain emotions. Thanks to Annual Session being held in Orlando, I was able to make a quick trip to Disney World where I noticed myself being manipulated by the psychological puppeteers of Disney.

Because of ASDA-related activities that took place in the afternoon, my group only had three hours of magic before the park closed at 10pm. Despite our limited timeframe, we decided it would be worth it to jump into a 60-minute line for Space Mountain. To our surprise, just 20 minutes later we could literally see a light at the end of the tunnel! We went from this long, dark tunnel to a large room where we could see people getting on the ride. It looked like we’d be on the ride in no time. This disillusioned sense of progress kept our spirits up until another 20 minutes later when we realized the line had yet to wrap behind a long wall before re-entering the room. We ended up waiting a full 65 minutes!

It turns out Disney spends loads of money on studying the psychology of waiting in a line. To keep thousands of park attendees in good spirits, they design the lines in such a way that repeatedly gives people false hope as they endure the long wait for popular rides. A simple Google search on “Disney World psychology” revealed other ways Disney uses the environment to manipulate emotions and behavior. The walkways throughout the parks are made of black pavement, which encourages park-goers to seek the cool shade provided by nearby shops and eateries. Taking it a step further, some of the shops pump out fragrances that smell like freshly baked goods. Other shops crank the air conditioning to encourage shoppers to buy a hoodie that they would otherwise neglect in the Florida heat. Sections of the park Disney wants to remain hidden are painted in a color referred to as “No-See Green,” a shade of green easily overlooked by the human brain. This is uncanny, as I don’t recall seeing any “No-See Green” in Magic Kingdom…

While shadowing in dental offices during undergrad, I noticed this same use of environmental manipulation. Operatories, countertops, and cabinets were labeled to encourage organization, efficiency and infection control. A printed schedule displayed a morning huddle at the start of the day to confirm plans and review goals. Even switching a patient’s manual toothbrush for an electric one had repeatedly demonstrated a successful outcome in improving oral hygiene. Changing the environment for patients and staff yields real results!

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It’s difficult to invoke change in people who aren’t motivated to change. Being quite stubborn and impulsive myself, I have obsessed over this idea that changing one’s environment will change one’s behavior. As students, we can mold and model our environments to ensure success! The following are some examples of environment adjustments that have worked for me.

During my undergrad, I began every day with my phone. Checking messages, news, and social media consumed precious time that would have been better allocated toward working out and making breakfast. To change this, I set up a charging station outside of my bedroom. Before bed, I put my electronics in a drawer where they are charged out of site. I am not allowed to open that drawer until after breakfast. Hiding the electronics has been a simple change to my environment that has drastically improved my morning routine—just like “No-See Green”.

Other habits can be easily manipulated by simple adjustments. I’m a natural night owl. My nocturnal habits quickly became a problem in dental school, so I committed to going to bed earlier. The commitment fell apart within two days. After repeatedly failing to change my habit of staying up late, I turned to my wife (my copilot, if you will) for help. I told her my plan to set an alarm to go off at 9:00 pm every night, signaling for me to begin getting ready for bed. I asked her to help me stick to that commitment. The nighttime alarm combined with reliance on a copilot has yielded great results. Don’t have a spouse? Find one. Just kidding. Ask a roommate, friend, classmate, significant other, or family member to help you out!

After a decade of trying to set meaningful New Year’s resolutions, I was tired of letting those resolutions slip away by mid-January. All my mentors and role models successfully set goals and resolutions. Why couldn’t I? Did I lack motivation? Did I lack discipline? Yes. And yes. My wife and I decided to write “Weekly Planning” into every Sunday night in our calendars. We don’t let anything get in the way of our weekly planning session. This time is used to review goals, discuss obstacles, adjust our routine, and plan the upcoming week. It was such a simple change! We even took it a step further and laminated a protocol that we follow every time we plan. Excessive? Perhaps. But here we are, mid-March, and I’m still plugging away at the same goals I set in January.

Whether it’s to avoid disaster, maximize efficiency, or encourage a certain behavior, customizing an environment is a powerful psychological tool. As students, we often have so much to worry about that we can’t spare the mental and emotional energy required to constantly motivate ourselves toward success. If you’re struggling to exercise, study effectively, eat healthy, manage relationships, keep track of goals, maintain your sanity, or land a plane, try changing something in your environment that will make it harder for you to fail!

Dental Conferences are like rushing for a sorority; endless small-talk and prattle of where you're from, what school you go to, what year you’re in, and what position you hold. It almost feels like a rapid-fire competition of who can ask the most questions and how quickly someone can fill those awkward silences (my favorite). At this point, I could probably say I’m a small-talk aficionado given that most of my extracurricular activities have involved this sort of interaction with people. However, I have slowly come to the realization that these kinds of conversations, although I do them mindlessly, leave me exhausted and apathetic. One of the beauties of student dental conferences is the myriad of networking opportunities. We have the ability to expand our little black book of contacts in the hopes of making connections with the people that will be in our future professional community.

Networking: “interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts, especially to further one's career” - Google

That last line has never sat well with me and I doubt anyone would like to be described as an opportunist or a carpetbagger. This type of “you scratch my back I scratch yours” mentality limits ourselves to the facts and figures of conversations instead of digging deeper to who we are as people. It seems that having one insignificant conversation with somebody and handing out our business cards like they’re Halloween candy will automatically put us in a position to ask for favors in the future.

Why does Networking only have to be small talk? Why can’t it also be big talk?

I understand that some people are uncomfortable with getting straight to the big questions right off the bat. But I will argue that you can definitely turn insignificant pleasantries into meaningful dialogue and part of it is getting over our fears of looking too inquisitive or intrusive. We all know what open-ended questions are; we do it with our patients all the time. Why can’t we do the same when networking?

This mentality may be in due part to my ENFP personality and my will to find the deeper meaning in anything and everything (I strongly encourage everyone to know their own Myers Briggs letters). I don't mean I will always try to have existential conversations or discuss the nature of the cosmos with every stranger, but I will absolutely try my best to leave an exchange of dialogue knowing something enticing about a new person. Opening-up and having a moment of feeling listened to will make a person much more likely to “do you a favor,” if that's what you’re looking for in networking. I know it sounds like common sense, but I challenge you to make an effort and skip the small talk when meeting a new person.

I decided to try this out at this year’s ASDA Annual Session with the first person I met, a foreign student who came to the USA at age 12 and also identifies as gay. Right after our exchange of names and schools and right before I asked him what year he was in, I stopped myself and went straight for it: “Tell me about your experience being in the LGBTQ community while going to school in Kentucky”. BOOM! He looked a bit taken aback by the question and I started regretting my decision. He tilted his head to the side, looked at the floor and started rubbing his chin. Suddenly, 30 minutes passed as he was telling me about a horrible but character- defining incident, the people in his life who stuck up for him, and how lucky he is to live in a city where he is much more accepted than the rest of the state and his native country. It was beautiful.

In the days that followed, we would happily run into each other and exchanged our excitement for the day’s itinerary. By the end of our time in Orlando we said our goodbyes, and as he hugged me for the last time he smiled and said, “if you ever need anything or if you’re ever in town, you always have a place to stay.” And that, to me, is real networking.

Annual Session 2017 has come and gone. After five fervent days in Orlando of legislative meetings, resolution debate, emotional elections, and evening festivities, ASDA has launched itself into the year ahead. Here are some highlights from the week:

-Colorado took home the Gold Crown Award for Best Chapter Blog. 

-John Luke Andrew (Colorado '18) was elected District Nine Trustee. He'll oversee the dental schools from Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma.

-Houston ASDA became the new top dog with their well-deserved win for Ideal ASDA Chapter. Their very own Tanya Sue Maestas also became the new ASDA National President. District Nine continues its prolific reign (Colorado was last year's Ideal ASDA). #D9sofine

-Becky Bye (Colorado '18 and current Colorado Chapter President) authored and defended a resolution to unify all dental schools with one degree (eliminating either the DDS or the DMD). This topic will likely become a major player at future meetings. #1profession1degree

-The continual battle to remodel the licensure exam continues. The new Executive Counsel intends to make great strides in coming up with a system that benefits both the students and is mindful of the patients.

-Dr. Christian Piers (Colorado '16) concluded his influential and devoted service to ASDA with his role as this year's Immediate Past President. I'm sure we haven't seen or heard the last from Dr. Piers (and we certainly hope not).

-Nothing keeps Colorado from going to the beach. Even if it's hurricane-like rain. Worth it? Absolutely.

-Some of our members had the (mis)fortune of being stuck on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. They were rewarded with an extended stay in the park and free rides. I don't think they were too upset...

Thank you to everyone who contributed to The Colorado Quickset over the past year. Colorado truly knows how to make the magic happen.

Cheers!

This past weekend I went to California for a college friend’s reunion. After graduating, my four college roommates and I decided that we would get together every year. While this is no small feat, it is extremely high on my priority list. Just as a great romantic relationship requires equal effort, this idea would require equal priority and value amongst all members. The Plan: Back in November, I started a group message to see when the best time would be to meet up. Timing can always be difficult, whether as a student or out in the workforce, but some compromises can go a long way. When deciding on the location, let’s just say that graduates, two years out of college, were not in the financial situation to jet off to Hawaii. We decided we would settle with a weekend in the Sierra Nevada’s at a family member’s cabin.

The Commitment: The two students had to commit to the idea and arrange flights so that we landed in San Francisco at the same time and decided one vehicle would suffice. The next step was to figure out what I would miss in school. I personally have always had a difficult time skipping class, because I often felt that it took about twice as long to catch up. I knew, however, that the value of seeing old friends would be worth the hectic week that lurked upon my return. The final and most important step to having a reunion was the act of getting on the plane or in the car to travel to the meeting spot. This was where one of my friends struggled this year. I texted him at DIA and asked if his flight was on time. His response was, “What?” I reminded him, “Your flight to CA?” Unfortunately, I was a bit too late, as he replied, “I’m at school. I thought the reunion was next weekend!” Needless to say, we were all devastated that this year would be 4 of the 5, but I’m sure this would not be the last time that all five would be able to attend.

The Value: In the few weeks leading up to our trip, I began to struggle focusing on my schoolwork. This was partly because I was getting excited to see friends. One had been in Santiago, Chile for 8 months, and I would be seeing him the day after his return, but also because there was a lot going on in my life. College friends have a special insight to your life. They are the ones that meet you as that semi-awkward and mostly lost 18-year-old. They get to share in your growth as your frontal lobe continues to develop and you become the person that is closer to your 50-year-old self than you might want to imagine. I believe that there is way more to college than a degree. The person that walks away from that institution can be exponentially different than the one that walked into it. Having people in my life that know and have shared in my self-growth can always provide a level of comfort no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other. On a macro level, dental school can be a hedge maze, and as the days go on, the walls grow taller and taller. What is crucial for my pursuit to navigate (and sometimes crawl) my way through the maze is to every now and then get a birds-eye view of what I’m up against. Catching up with old friends and giving my elevator speech as to what dental school is like puts everything back into perspective. When I’m surrounded by other problems independent of how difficult a test was I feel like I am an executive in Westworld watching from above, and I can finally see the small confines of my own hedge maze.

Whether it’s commiserating about dating apps, swapping exciting stories about South America, playing board games while having a beer or two, or simply being able to shred sledding hills, there is some part of my wellbeing that can only be filled with time spent with old friends. They remind me who I really am and why I’m even where I am today. For myself, at no cost, financial, time or otherwise, is dental school and the busyness of a day or month worth the friendship of those that truly understand me.

The dental profession is combination of a great many things—science, medicine, art, psychology, and business. The list goes on and on. But it is also the center of a paramount struggle between subjectivity and objectivity. And no place is this more abundantly clear than in dental school. From the very early wax labs of first year, it became clear to me that dental school would not be nearly as cut and dry as any previous learning experience. One wax-up or sim lab crown prep could be deemed perfectly acceptable by one faculty member yet found to be perfectly horrific by another. Anyone who has weathered the many labs of dental school knows the familiar sting of rejected projects and grades all because they may have fallen upon the wrong eyes on the wrong day. Evaluations attempt to become standardized with grading rubrics and faculty calibration, but that only goes so far. When it comes down to it, each faculty member (and dentist) has a slightly biased opinion on what they find favorable and what they think works. That’s a completely natural and understandable phenomenon—they have multiple years actually practicing dentistry and have witnessed what is and isn’t clinically favorable in their hands. Not to mention there are multiple studies and research literature to help back their clinical actions and thought processes.

And, to you underclassmen, unfortunately this trend continues well into the clinic chairs during third and fourth year. A treatment plan can be created under one faculty, changed by a different faculty three appointments later and turned inside out again until you’re ready to consider a career change to professional badminton. It can be immeasurably frustrating. Part of that frustration is that most of the time, no one is really wrong. You can restore a tooth one way or six. The prognosis can be good with any path you take; it just comes down to picking a path.

This proves to be both a blessing and curse for dentistry. On one hand, it is insanely awesome that we have multiple options for caring for a patient’s oral health. Patients nowadays can choose from a variety of treatment options (favorability for that individual pending). Take for example a necrotic tooth. That tooth could receive endodontic therapy, be extracted and replaced with an implant, extracted for fabrication of a fixed dental prosthesis, etc. Dentistry does not always operate on a strict binary. This is something strikingly different from more physician-led medicine where many times an ailment comes with a diagnosis, and that diagnosis comes with a black and white regiment of certain medications or a rigid treatment plan. Dentists, more times than not, have the luxury of being flexible in treatment plans to cater them individually to a patient’s needs, whether those are medical or financial.

This is a notion that seems strange to the healthcare setting. Shouldn’t a patient’s health issues call for an exact and standardized course of treatment? Yes and no. Sure, there are standards of care in dentistry, but in many cases there is more than one way to achieve that acceptable level of care. And this is not without its issues. It’s no great secret that dental professionals disagree on a variety of treatment mindsets. Centric relation, ceramic material science, and timing for orthodontic interventions come briefly to mind. These are just the tip of the iceberg.

Matters only become more intricate when each dental discipline attempts to outmuscle each other. Perio becomes annoyed with restorative. Prosth scoffs at perio. Endo argues with oral surgery. And ortho just smiles and ignores everyone else. Therein lies a problem related to subjectivity in dentistry. No longer are the disciplines as strictly divided by an objective dental role. With in-office technology, it is now possible for an oral surgeon to cement a crown or for a general practitioner to place implants. The lines have become blurred. Dentists and specialists have been given the opportunity to subjectively decide what kind of care they should perform as opposed to adhering to a more tightly bound scope of practice. While there still are standards of care that every dental professional must meet regardless of standing or specialty, it has become more difficult to make those designations. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a single provider offering a variety of treatments, but we must be cautious, as one insightful professor stated, that the dental realm does not “turn into Wal-Mart.” We are here to provide excellent patient care. We are not here to cherry-pick sub-standard procedures out of convenience.

There are days when practicing dentistry can feel like opening Pandora’s box. Treatment plans, patients, and faculty all snap and snarl around your head making an organized train of thought nearly impossible. But it is important to also embrace the unique subjectivity that dentistry has to offer. We have the ability to explore various avenues in treating patients and benefit from the eclectic mix of guidance and experience that our mentors—whether faculty members or other practicing dentists—have to offer. Accordingly, we must understand and appreciate each dental discipline in order to allow them to exist symbiotically so that refined and effective comprehensive care is created.

*Image credit to Karen Mooneyhan--Colorado's finest post-modern artist.

As someone who volunteers at the local DAWN Clinic, I wanted to sit down with two of the student leaders and really layout the facility, its mission, and what it's striving to do for the community. Emily Malihi and Kim Engols, both third year dental students and masters behind the magic of DAWN, were kind enough to oblige me and offered some considerable insight into the clinic:  

Can you give me an overview of DAWN? Who's involved? What services are provided?

Emily & Kim: "DAWN (Dedicated to Aurora’s Wellness Needs) is IPE [inter-professional education] in action! There are students from every graduate program at Anschutz. In addition, there are behavioral health and undergraduate students from DU and UCD who are also active volunteers within the clinic. DAWN provides primary care services (including phlebotomy!!!) for the underserved population of Aurora every Tuesday. Specialty care, such as optometry, dermatology, and pulmonary health is provided on the third Tuesday of every month. Dental screenings are provided every week except the third Tuesday of every month to allow space for the specialty clinics. Instead, dental services are provided on the third Wednesday of the month to provide definitive dental care for previously screened patients."

Tell me about your roles.

Emily & Kim: "As dental workgroup leaders, we are responsible for recruiting and training faculty and student volunteers. Each week we alternate attending clinic nights to ensure dental clinic flow is smooth and volunteers are prepared for clinic night. We serve as the liaison between DAWN and the dental school, and advocate for our profession within the clinic. Once a month we meet with DAWN workgroup leaders from all professions, and discuss ways to improve clinic flow."

What does a typical night at DAWN look like? 

Emily & Kim: "On a typical Tuesday evening, 8-10 patients are scheduled with room for another few walk-in patients. Once patients are checked in, they are taken to triage to discuss chief complaints and take vitals. From triage, patients are taken to their respective exam room to meet with a team of inter-professional students to discuss and address health care needs. At the end of the evening, all patients will finish with Care Coordination to discuss treatment plan needs and plan for follow up care. As you can imagine, this makes for a very busy clinic! Managing the patients to and from registration, triage, exam rooms, and care coordination are three managers and a clinic director."

In what direction is the DAWN Clinic headed and what is its personal mission in the dental world?

Emily and Kim: "The DAWN Clinic is continuously working on expanding the services they provide for patients. The clinic will be hosting a large fundraising Gala in January to raise funds for our patients. Within the dental clinic, we recently partnered with Dental Lifeline to provide free definitive dental care for our patients. This has been our greatest accomplishment to date! We are also working on updating our dental chair to a more comfortable and functional one. In addition to providing screenings, our mission is to improve our impact on inter-professional education by involving more dental students in all aspects of patient care to include helping with registration, translation services, care coordination, and supply procurement. Furthermore, we seek to improve inter-professional knowledge of oral health care and knowledge of when a dental referral is indicated."

Is there anything else you two would like to add?

Emily: "I participated in many student organizations during my time in undergraduate and graduate school, but my involvement within the DAWN Clinic has been the most rewarding, most meaningful experience. I hope that more students get that chance to become involved within the clinic at some point during their educational experience at Anschutz."

Kim: "A few weeks ago, I had a new patient, Ms. A., assigned to me within the dental school. It had been 12 years since her last visit and I was curious to know what prompted her to make an appointment with us after so many years. Ms. A., mentioned she has been seeing an endocrinologist, Dr. J., to manager her type 2 diabetes, and at her last appointment he asked to look inside her mouth. Dr. J. told Ms. A., she needs to make an appointment with her dentist ASAP, and he expects this to be completed before the next time he sees her! Prior to this, Ms. A., mentioned no other health professional had asked about her dental health. This is the perfect example of what we should strive for with inter-professional education. The DAWN clinic fosters this attitude and I am confident this experience will make us all better and more well-rounded practitioners."

It is no surprise that the DAWN Clinic is having quite the impact on healthcare in the Aurora community. Patients who may not be privy to their health deficits can now find themselves with a wealth of information that can help them make decisions about treatments and future referrals. I am proud to be a member of the dental team, and I look forward to continuing to integrate oral healthcare into the primary health plans for the patients of DAWN.

*Many thanks to Kim and Emily for their time and insightful words. If you have any questions about the DAWN Clinic, please feel free to leave a comment and we will be in touch.

The other day I went on a run for the first time in a long time. When my hands stopped tingling due to a lack of oxygen and I finally caught my breath, I stopped focusing on the simple act of running and, instead, on letting my mind clear. That is my goal with running. I’m not particularly good at it, which is evident by the scar on my knee from falling on dry pavement not once, not twice, but three times. And, unfortunately, I do not have steel-cut abs from it (I like ice cream and beer too much for that). However, in spite of those things I still love to run. It helps me to clear my mind and accomplish new perspectives by seeing past the tunnel vision of dental school. Once I let the thoughts go that were occupying my mind, I took notice of the environment around me. I ran past a house with about 15 feet of sidewalk in front of it, and thought, “What is the point of that?” The sidewalk was not continuous, which basically rendered it useless. The only purpose that sidewalk served was to be stood on when the house owners checked the mail or for a short game of hopscotch for the kids that lived in the house. While those things do serve a small, individualized purpose, they do not serve the purpose for the goal of a sidewalk—to make a continuous path for pedestrians.

The more I thought about it, the more I saw the reflection of my dental school education in that oddly configured sidewalk. My classmates and I establish squares of concrete and temporarily learn as much information as we can about a certain subject. The newfound knowledge is then promptly “brain dumped” after a final. We learn essential details to get us through our most recent assignment in lab, but we fail to understand the big picture. While these segments of sidewalk serve a great and noble purpose for the task at hand, they will not be very useful when it comes to walking around the block.

As we slowly (and I’d like to think gracefully) crawl towards the graduation finish line, we must keep this in mind. Our snippets of knowledge will only get us so far; it is the segments that connect those pieces of knowledge into a contiguous and fluid path that will allow us to smoothly navigate to our endgames. No matter where we are in our dental careers, we need to be sure to construct our sidewalks so the stroll around the block can be as seamless as possible. After all, you can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you can’t see the forest through the trees, then that knowledge simply becomes facts rolling around in your head.

My thought process wouldn't be complete without including this popular and all-too-relevant poem from Shel Silverstein(1.):

1. Silverstein, Shel. Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems & Drawings of Shel Silverstein. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.