Drowning in dental school

[dental_k]

Hi everyone, I'm about a month into dental school and currently drowning. It's a flipped classroom which I am not used to in any capacity and find myself never having enough time to finish prepping for classes. We have required videos and reading but I can barely make it through the videos for each day that I don't even get to the readings, and I haven't had time to review any of the concepts we have already covered. When it comes to my first exam in November, I have no clue when I'll find the time to review everything.

On the DAT I got a 25AA/TS and perfect bio score (although to this day I don't really know how). While I struggled (a lot) in undergrad, I definitely gained a bit of confidence from those test scores but have been quickly humbled by the insane workload thus far. We're not even in any dental classes yet as it is a med-integrated school. I also want to add that we are P/F, and I know I really shouldn't be stressing this much but after years of grinding to try and get A's I feel like if I don't know most of the information, I am essentially lost. We've had some quizzes and I've had quizzes where I only get 1 right and some where my highest grade is around an 85% to give an idea as to how I'm scoring on assessments.

I've tried asking people for advice, and they either tell me not to do the videos/prep or to just watch them but not take notes. I personally feel like not taking notes would cause me to lose my attention or forget what has already been said. I'm really open to any and all advice, though, because I have already had a few breakdowns and this is supposed to be the easiest part of dental school before our schedules get filled up even more. Oh, and not to mention I live about 30-40 minutes away from school so I spend about 2 hours each day going to and from class accounting for parking and walking time. Also, my biggest struggle seems to be anatomy. I absolutely hated it in undergrad as I hated memorizing all the different structures, so I'm really all ears in terms of finding new ways to learn the information or actually remember it and enjoy the class (at least somewhat). Really hoping for some sort of epiphany, or winning lottery numbers so I can drop out

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[Ryxndek]

Dental school has definitely been an eye opener for me too, the courseload is tough, but when there's a will there's a way. I've had to change my study habits. I truthfully don't take many notes anymore, I pretty much study anki or watch youtube videos for how to wax teeth (understand anatomy) and use anki for memorizing my classes. Somtimes I'll annotate slides during class to go back if I get stuck, but I grind anki most of the time. That seems to be the name of the game for now in terms of biomedical courses and intro to dental classes. Normally I would have taken notes like you, or watched the intro videos, but if you're finding you don't have enough time in the day to do this, you've gotta try to find something that works for you. Even if it sounds ridiculous you never know, it might just work for you. Soley doing anki for me has been a tremendous time saver, my retention rate for information has been increased 10x vs my typical "try to study off the slides and notes", which worked in undergrad but there's not enough time to sit and go through 150+ slides for one week of content.

I will say for pre-dents, your DAT score doesn't correlate to success in dental school. It's just another metric. But enough of that. @dental_k have you tried reaching out to upper classmen about what they did? For anatomy you could try writing things out, or drawing out structures and naming them. My professor does flash cards for us and tries to teach in ways that we don't have to "memorize" but think critically about things. Trying to picture a muscle or bone and where it attaches and how might it move is one way to think about it's action without having to "memorize". But in all honestly, anatomy is one of those classes where you really just have to memorize things. Anki has been a life saver, it truly is something where if you haven't tried it yet you really should.

In regards to your traveling, I can understand the frustration of having to spend a lot of time commuting back and forth. I guess that's why they really recommend us D1s to be close to campus, but for financial reasons I can truly understand why some would be opposed. It's expensive to live close to campus.


TLDR: definitely try to change up your study habits, and try to change the way you do your prep, watch videos in 1.5-2x if you can. Try to see if you can condense material and if it will still be retained, try anki if you haven't. Maybe see if you can use Google Bard/ChatGPT to analyze your readings to condense it down into a shorter to understand format. There's so much tech out there to use if you can take advantage of it and if it doesn't violate any academic policies. Talk to upperclassmen to see how they studied or if they can provide premade anki decks for class. My school gives us premade decks from upperclassmen that have been passed down....quite literally a time and life saver.

Things will get better over time, you just have to find your rhythm. We're all going through this together, make sure to lean on to any friends you've made and never be afraid to ask for help. I've learned in the short period of my D1 year that just bc someone seems "fine" they might not be. Asking for help or trying to work through concepts together has helped me and my classmates tremendously. Keep grinding and don't be afraid to ask others for help, even faculty. You're there to learn and grow, and they know this. Stay strong!

 

[dental_k]

Thank you so much for all the advice! I definitely agree with you on having to lean a lot more on Anki. Again, though, being a person that needs to understand to remember things, I can't rely solely on the Anki. For example, seeing how one biochemical process increases or decreases in the fasting or fed state - I'd like to understand the "why" behind it instead of just remembering one pathway increases while another decreases. I do agree that Anatomy will just have to be a lot of brute memorization, though. I'm thinking of using Complete Anatomy or another resource to see things in 3D without having to be in the cadaver lab since I can't always just hop in my car and drive there. A lot of the Anki decks I use that are premade by upperclassmen have pictures of cadavers with structures labeled, but I would like to understand where things are connecting and what is being innervated as there's a good chance I won't see the same picture on the exam.

The upperclassmen have recommended to not do the videos and readings, and instead look at a study guide that was provided by an upperclassmen as our main preparation. They recommended various board exam prep companies such as Boards & Beyond, but that also requires more time to fish for the material that is covered in our topics for the week. At the end of the day that would just be more videos given by a different person, and may include material beyond the scope of what the professors want us to know. That's why if I were to do any videos, I'd rather suffer through the dry ones they provide because I know that material is what they are going to use to test us.

I couldn't agree more that the DAT score really doesn't mean anything once you're actually in dental school. I think I just figured after being in so many undergraduate science classes like neuroanatomy, biochemistry, microbio, and more, I'd have some sort of advantage and feel more comfortable reviewing certain topics, but that is definitely not the case. It's hard to not compare myself to others who seem to have all this free time and who vocalize finishing the course prep work days before the actual class while I chaotically grind it out the night before. I do hope that as time goes on I figure out the most efficient method of studying in a way that still allows me to actually retain what I am studying.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

OP:
Everyone struggles with anatomy unless you have had it drilled into you before. If you are a med/dent preclinical curriculum, find help from your student services folks, upperclassmen, your library staff, and resources you can muster with your peers.

Look at your schedule and find other ways to maximize your transit time. It stinks you have the commute, but you had to consider this when you set yourself up at orientation with housing. I don't know if study sleepovers are still a thing or allowed, but having 24 hour access to library carrels is helpful. One school I worked for had a place for napping.

This is where you need to get help from your student dean sooner than later.

 

[NVDENT]

I saw this same post on Reddit- another UCONN student and myself posted replies on there. The rlly long comment someone posted is basically everything you need to succeed with MDELTA. Talk to your upperclassmen here at UCONN- we're actually helpful and happy to talk to you. I myself had to modify how I studied because I had burnout from my inefficient study style and was on avg failing the RATs in the first half of the block. Email Dr. Grimm and get a tutor here at UCONN- they're often helpful and completely free!