Although college builds a strong foundation for your future, nothing gives you better insight into your future career and the path to get there than learning from the experiences of others. For me, my future goal is to become a general dentist. Because of this, I chose to interview my own dentist to learn not only about his job currently, but what he did in order to get there. It’s no surprise that the road to becoming a dentist is not an easy one. In addition to surviving your undergraduate career, you must also go above and beyond in order to have the best chance at getting into a dental school. Even after getting accepted into dental school, the four years of dental school are tremendously difficult. By interviewing my dentist, I learned a lot of information on how to survive these three major challenges and more about the job itself.
My dentist was a great resource for me because he went to The Ohio State University for his undergraduate degree and The Ohio State University College of Dentistry for dental school, which is where I hope to continue my education after I finish my undergraduate degree here at Ohio State. Reflecting on his own journey, he explained to me how thankful he is that he chose dentistry and how the opportunity for females in the field is growing exponentially. He also gave me helpful information on how to achieve my goal of becoming a dentist. For me right now, the most prominent challenge is getting into dental school. In order to apply and make yourself appealing to dental schools, there are a lot of requirements. You must take the required prerequisite courses, take the Dental Admissions Test (DAT), have a competitive GPA, and have a certain amount of shadowing and volunteering hours. My dentist was able to give me a lot of helpful advice, especially concerning the DAT. He told me the list of resources he used in order to prepare for the academic sections, as well as how he prepared himself for the Perceptual Ability Test (PAT). This was extremely helpful, as I have had little experience with advancing my skills in this area. He also encouraged me to do as much as I can to develop my manual dexterity skills, as it is a big part of both dental school and actual dentistry. In addition to the recommendations on how to prepare for applying to dental school, he also gave me insight into “a day in the life of a dentist”. This was extremely helpful and made me excited for both the challenges and new experiences to come.
Through this interview, I gained a lot of helpful insight regarding applying to dental school, which is currently one of my biggest challenges. It also reaffirmed my passion for dentistry and made me more excited for my future. After speaking with my dentist, he also provided me with the opportunity to shadow him when I go home for summer break. This will hopefully give me an even better insight into the career I hope to pursue.