These past 6 months have been filled with long discussions and chats with friends, rapidly wavering between planting myself in Adelaide or moving back to Singapore. After much prayer, songwriting and reflection, I have decided that I will return to the little red dot in 2024. I had 2 significant chats with David Broxholme (Dave), […]

Man oh man, how time flies. Ladies and gentlemen, I am now in my 5th and final year of dental school. As I reflect on these past few years, I realised that I am different from the person I was when I first came to Adelaide. I’ve been stretched and crushed, encouraged and inspired. I’ve […]

From the 12th to the 16th of September 2022, I was on my second oral surgery rotation in the Adelaide Dental Hospital. Being in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) unit is such a different clinical experience from the rest our sessions, and I wanted to document it. Coming back the second time round, I […]

March is coming to an end, and year 4 has been nothing short of exciting, but that’s just me being optimistic. If I were a pessimist, I would describe the year thus far as incredibly challenging with an ever-renewed sense of cluelessness, like a blind man patting the wall for a doorknob. This is the […]

How fast time has flown by! In the blink of an eye, I’m starting my 4th year of dental school. But first, A RECAP: I ended up getting to know the students that I was tutoring and their families very well! Was so privileged so celebrate their birthdays with them. Although I won’t be teaching […]

Seeing as it’s halfway through the year, I thought it would be a good time to update some things on my journey in dental school here in Adelaide. We’ve started seeing patients – REAL patients from the public healthcare system. The first patient I had was from China and took great comfort in the fact […]

Never before has a year felt like eternity but also seemingly passing by in the blink of an eye to me. It has been a very challenging year, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, but I take comfort in the fact that I know I am now better because of it all. Physically I’ve put my […]

It has come to that part of the course where we practice administering local anaesthetics on one another, and my goodness, did I hate it. I had a really unpleasant experience during the extraction of my wisdom teeth one year ago. It would be the first dental surgery I would undergo. My mum had booked […]

For the whole of the second semester since simulation clinic resumed, I had been struggling with meeting the competencies required. I kept on damaging the adjacent teeth with my burs, I had so many unsealed margins, overhangs and poor contacts, and I had been receiving a barrage of ‘borderline’ and ‘unsatisfactory’ grades overall. I reached […]

This year has brought quite a lot of challenges and uncertainty. With Covid-19, all our lectures were taken online. For a good 7 weeks in Semester 1, Kishan, Joy and I were at home almost 24/7. There was much deliberation as to whether we should fly home, or stay in Adelaide, or whether school would […]

So I passed first year. Looking back, exam period really felt like studying the same things over and over again, but I’m glad to have gone through it with my friends. We passed, and I thoroughly enjoyed my Summer break back in Singapore with my family and friends. By the end of the break, it […]

We have these scenario-based learning activities as part of our curriculum, and our current one is on explaining radiograph safety to patients. A few weeks from now, some groups will be chosen to re-enact the dentist-patient interaction in front of the cohort. I told my group, “What if we made a video instead? Then we […]

In the past few weeks, we have been practicing this thing called ‘rubber dams’. It’s meant to be the ULTIMATE form of moisture control and prevention of accidental swallowing of objects by the patient. It was quite the sh*t show though. Despite practicing with the seniors, things could not go more wrong during the simulation […]

I uninstalled Instagram on the 19 of August 2019 upon seeing that I had spent 4 hours on my phone using that app the day before. Horrifying. Youtube had to go as well, as it contributed to another 3 hours of surfing. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Some days, I feel like a warrior […]

Week 2 of Semester 2, and it feels like I’m waist deep in quick sand. I think the biggest thing on my mind at this very moment is this: How should I be studying? I made beautiful, Carousell-worthy mind maps jam-packed with content, but was unable to score well. Having looked through my paper today, […]

I just received my exam results for the first semester. For both my Clinical and Written Exam components, I was given a ‘Satisfactory’ grade, which is equivalent to 60% – 69% score. I did leave my exams knowing that I probably won’t get an ‘Excellent’ grade, so I’m not too sure why I feel a […]

4 months have passed since I started the University of Adelaide Bachelor of Dental Surgery Course. The following are a list of things that I have done: Discovered that every tooth has it’s individual unique features Started flossing on Thursday nights to have a clean mouth for Friday clinic sessions Went surfing Brought bottles of […]