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 them this year due to the sheer intensity of year 4, I’m so glad to have spent 2021 with them.
I also took part in Adelaide Uni’s Got Talent to try and win some prize money, and I did! If not for the 1 week lockdown Adelaide had, I don’t think I would have had the time to film and edit my submission for the competition. I’ve since bought myself a good pair of monitor headphones (ATH-M50x), a recording microphone (Rode NT1-A) and an audio interface (Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen). Mission accomplished 🙂
Year 3 exams were no joke and for the first time, I was quite concerned about having to do replacement exams because there were just so many questions that stumped me, but truly by God’s grace, I made it to BDS4.
I flew back to Singapore for 3 weeks, which turned into 4 weeks when Adelaide reduced its quarantine period from 14 to 7 days. So thankful I got to attend my brother’s wedding as well as my sister’s long overdue wedding dinner celebration! As Dorothy said, “there’s no place like home”. My departure at the airport was especially heart-wrenching this time. With COVID-19 lurking around, there was just no telling when we would all be able to gather again like that.
Very thankful to have met up with friends as well after having not seen them for so long. Not everything was pleasant though, as I had a big fight with my best friend and was taught the consequences of taking people for granted and poor communication. Many times during the disagreement, I just thought about how none of this would have happened if I were not studying overseas, and how being so far away has strained so many of my relationships. Sigh. But we learn and we grow through these things, and that’s a big part of “adulting” too, right?
2022, Hello you.
I flew back to Adelaide on Christmas day, in time for school to start on 4 of Jan, but not before a 7-day quarantine in Peppers Hotel on Waymouth Street. I stayed with 2 batch mates, Nadia and Mavis, which lowered our hotel fees immensely as compared to isolating individually. We FINISHED Overcooked 2, watched several movies, learnt the Boombayah dance chorus and had many good conversations over meals. They gave us so many buns and desserts too, which we kept and dropped off at a shelter after our hotel stay. The highlight was really watching the fireworks from our balcony. Man, that was a real treat. 🙂
“Then school comes along just to end it…”
After attending pre-clinical simulation lab sessions for 1 week, I got Omicron’d. 10 days in my room. It was really frustrating at first, because I knew there would be so much to catch up on during this intensive pre-clinical period. But the 10 days passed sooner than expected and I was back in action, AKA sitting down for 6 hours drilling plastic teeth 😄
Having finished my FIRST week of actual clinicals in the Adelaide Dental Hospital, I can easily say that this year is definitely a thrown-into-the-deep-end, sink or swim kind of year. I’m so embarrassingly clueless on all the dental codes and hospital processes and can’t wait for the part where it all becomes second nature. That’s when it gets fun 🙂 We’ve really come such a long way from year 1, where we would just examine each other and point out parts of the mouth. This year is when we get our hands dirty with root canal treatments, denture-making, crowns, extractions and little gremlins during our Paediatrics rotation 🙂
I have great expectations for the year, and there are so many areas of growth to look forward to. Buckle up! It’s gonna be a wild ride. 😉
Do you even dentist? 