Start of 3rd Year

We're about a month into Robbie's 3rd year of Dental School and I just have to say... 3rd year rocks! It's still hard work, but what makes 3rd year so awesome is that you are in clinic the majority of the time. Robbie still has some classes this semester (oral surgery, pediatric dentisrty, and implant dentistry to name a few) but now he's getting to do actual dentistry on real patients between classes. The work load is definitely lighter than previous semesters. On our drive home the other day I asked him if he needed to study and he said something like, "I feel guilty like I should be studying, but I just don't need to right now. I only have one test and it's in two weeks." Sweet! Let's go home and play Mario on the WiiU.

While the stress of huge class loads has eased, new challenges are definitely coming up. I know a lot of schools have one treatment room assigned to each student and that's where they see all of their patients. Or other schools just have the students go through different rotations and they see whatever patient is scheduled that day. At CU, however, you manage all of your patient scheduling and you have to fight to get whatever chair is available. Sometimes a chair will open up and you'll call your patient to see if they can come in on that day/time but by the time they call you back someone else has already filled that chair. What's even more frustrating is when you are all ready to go and the patient doesn't show up. Entire. Afternoon. Wasted. Still, I feel like he is learning valuable lessons about patient management that will come in handy if/when he decides to open up a practice of his own someday.

That's all I have time to write about today. I'm throwing a friend a baby shower tomorrow and I've got lots to get done before then! I'll post some cute pictures of that as soon as I can.