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So, I'm determined to keep going with this blog thing, even if I only manage on average one post every 6 months. I thought it was time for an update since I have now completed my first year of Dentistry school. The utter cliché is of course to marvel at how time has flown. My, how time has flown!! It seems only yesterday etc etc, but it really does. What have I learnt this year? I feel a list coming on.

The What Have I Learnt In My First Year Of Dentistry School List

1. Life is not about love, happiness or procreation. It's about phosphates being added to or removed from molecular compounds.

2. Never underestimate the party abilities of mature students with kids.

3. A growing embryo can be likened to a biscuit, loaf, hamburger, ciabatta or pancake. And they're terribly good at folding.

4. I'm not too shabby with a scalpel

5. Stockholm is insanely beautiful all year round. I didn't expect to fall in love with it, but I have.

6. Your brain is pretty good at bypassing your conscious will if you're trying to do something stupid. I find this quite comforting. Unfortunately, evolution hasn't quite caught up with the concept of "planking".

7. A cross section of a penis looks a lot like a monkey's face.

8. Dabbing Tiger Balm on the outside of your surgical mask can help you endure smelly situations

9. You cannot survive a Stockholm winter without curling boots

10. Letting people help you can be a lot harder than it should be.

I'm now looking forward to a long and hopefully sunny summer filled with BBQs, friends, night time swims, music and other elements of beer commercials. I'll be working quite a bit at my local supermarket to fund the summer frolics, but there should be time to steal some summery moments inbetween the shifts. First up is Midsummer's later this month, which will be spent out in the archipelago with mates. Fantabulous.

Me and Monkey face here wish you an amazing summer. Come join me for the Stockholm Half in September, why don't you?

xx

Whoa Nelly Furtado! It's been a while since my last confession. Well I am pleased to announce I passed everything I needed to pass in my first term, and I am now 10% dentist, wohoo! Term 2 is well underway and we are frolicking in the delights of anatomy, physiology and histology. So term 1 was about atoms and molecules, then we moved on to cells, now we're taking a peak at tissues and organs, and one day, eventually, in a couple of years perhaps, we'll actually approach the mouth and teeth. I find it slightly worrying that when looking at the exams we took just a month ago I don't remember half of it - so clearly my brain is like a post-it, sticks for a bit and then falls down behind the desk. As long as it's more post-it than teflon I suppose I should be grateful.

Since I've managed to plan 2 holidays this month (well the trip to London strictly speaking wasn't planned, I decided 24h before the plane departed) I'm now desperately trying to cram as much as possible before the "dugga" at the end of this month. I can't find a good English word for dugga, but it's basically a mini-exam which tests what we've covered in the course so far. I say mini, it's actually fairly demanding and includes a lot of looking at stuff in microscopes and determining what's what. My problem is that it all looks like bacon to me. You say connective tissue of some sort, I say breakfast.

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If you're at all insterested in that kind of stuff, I recommend this TEDtalks video of a brain researcher called Jill Bolte Taylor who had a stroke. It's pretty amazing to hear her description of what it felt like and how she was analyzing what was happening in her brain, as it happened.

Breaking out the crayons today. Sounds about right for a Friday.

Took the exam, now waiting for the results. I should know early next week. If I find out I've failed, I shall tweet thusly "if at first you don't succeed, try and try again", whereas if I pass, it will say "WHICH ONE OF YOU BITCHES WANTS TO DANCE!!".

The exam itself was exhausting and tedious and for most of it felt like ice floe jumping in the dark. I sat for 5,5 hours of the 7 we had available. I really REALLY hope I don't have to do it all over again. I have no idea what my chances of passing are. I need 50%, 50%!

I'm a bit annoyed I didn't really get any use from my hand crafted mnemnnmnmnmnmnonics. For instance, if you ever need to recall the non-polar amino acids you simply say "Alan Trypped over the Fence. Probably Glad he Met Leuk. IsoLeuk has Valium.*" Catchy huh?

A new course started today - Embryology. The course is short and sweet and the exam is one week from today, and it covers the  development from fertilization to approx week 10 in the life of the embryo. Super interesting stuff, but the energy is lacking somewhat. Need to kick back in to cramming mode somehow, but thoughts of the chemistry exam and Christmas plans are distracting. I just want to go out and play in the snow to be honest.

*In Swedish, can't be arsed look up the English translations - Alanin, Tryptofan, Fenylalanin, Prolin, Glycin, Metionin, Leucin, Isoleucin, Valin

Not a lot of action on the blog lately. Delays caused by sleet and chemistry. The wrong type of molecules on the track. The exam is now less than 2 weeks away and I really wonder how I'm going to cram all this knowledge in to my head AND make sense of it. Memorizing amino acids is one thing, understanding how all the metabolic processes fit together is quite another. It IS desperately interesting though, I only wish we had twice the amount of time to spend on it, as now we have to rush on to the next thing as soon as what we're looking at is starting to make sense.

The only thing I really have no interest in is calculating acids, bases and sodding buffers. Honestly - am I going to be working in a lab? No. If I was going to work in a lab, would I have a lab assistant to do all the calculations for me? Yes. Apparently we are being made to take more chemistry than other dentist schools in Sweden due to the research profile of the university (which is quite annoying considering that time has to be taken from other subjects, such as PRACTICAL TRAINING). Yay! I hope it doesn't end up being too much of a stumbling block for me. My strategy is to make flash cards of the whole course, below is a photo of the work in progress. Colour coded of course (a fine way to procrastinate).

A while ago I had to go to the dentist myself, for a checkup. As I was a new patient at the clinic they asked all the usual background questions, like what I did, so I told them. I got some funny reactions, some that I liked and some which troubled me slightly. One of the dentists instantly got more technical and started saying things like "we'll ex your 2 8"  instead of "we'll extract the wisdom tooth on the upper left side", despite me stressing that I had only done a month of training and didn't really know anything about anything. She just assumed I would know all implications of "exing the 2 8", whether it would be a difficult or easy tooth to remove, how long it would take, why it was even necessary etc.

The other dentist (I had to come back for another x-ray a few days later) was very jolly and encouraging and showed me everything in detail on the scans, and explained exactly what they were doing and why. Interestingly the first dentist also committed two of the major sins in dentistry - asking me questions while my mouth was full of metal, and sitting far behind me when talking to me about the x-rays so I had to twist round in the chair to be able to make eye contact. The second dentist managed to steer clear of these behaviors (well mostly, it seems quite difficult not to make any conversation with the patient at all, no matter how many instruments you've put in their mouth - a human social compulsion?) - he also managed the common courtesy of shaking my hand and remembering my name. It's not that hard is it?

To break up the chemistry studies we've now also been allowed to assist older students in the university clinic on a couple of occasions. On the first occasion I was so overwhelmed I forgot how to act like a human being. I wasn't able to make small talk, I forgot how to put on a pair of latex gloves, I got in the way, I was terrified of assisting with anything and caught myself with my mouth wide open on several occasions (good thing I was wearing a surgical mask), staring at the calm, professional 5th year student who was just there, a dentist already, radiating confidence and competence - how on earth am I ever going to get there? That day I went home from uni and pretty much straight to bed, exhausted and with a blinding headache. The second occasion luckily went a lot better, the initial shock of crashing in to my own future had subsided somewhat and I was able to relax, participate and enjoy it a lot more.

Forgive the not so exciting photos, my world is mostly library and flash cards these days so that's what I take pictures of.

In other news, I have a new flatmate. She's really cool :)

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The honeymoon is definitely over! By that I don't mean I've fallen out of love with the dental dream. But since chemistry started a few weeks ago I've had frequent bouts of internal aggression towards the lecturers, other students who seem to understand what the lecturers are talking about, and just towards molecules in general. It really is like learning a new language for me, and it turns out I can speak only very basic chemistry with a heavy accent and only with the help of a phrase book.  Oddly enough, I still enjoy it. It makes my brain hurt and itch and it frustrates the life out of me on a daily basis but I can't forget that it's such an enormous luxury to get to do what I'm doing. I hope I can keep this attitude for another 5 years. I still haven't totally lost hope that I will pass the exam at the end of November. But IF I should fail there is a re-exam  on the 20th of December. I've booked my ticket home for Christmas for the 21st just in case...

Some days we get a little break from the formulas and phosphates. The other day we were given a lump of clay and a whole morning to create a model of a tooth.

Other than chemistry, the big topic of discussion is thermoses. Brands, sizes, and heat half-lives.  Bringing a small thermos of coffee to lectures etc is pretty standard, a lot of students do this. The coffee available for purchase in the cafeteria isn't very expensive, but it's also not very nice. Your best bet is to make your own coffee in the mornings and bring with you. Tip: Don't use a normal filter coffee maker, the coffee doesn't come out hot enough to last throughout the day (or even the morning). A cafetiere or even instant coffee is better. She said without a hint of irony.

To avoid the ridiculously long queues to the micro waves at lunch time (expect a waiting time of 20 mins or so, in your 1 hour lunch break), I've also invested in a food thermos. Yeah. Check out this bad boy.

Ok it's a tad large. I've gone for the 1,2l one (the smallest they had) which in all honesty probably could hold 3 servings. But it keeps the heat really well and I imagine it would come in handy for that mountain trekking trip I will never go on.

Don't tell me I could just bring sandwiches. It's COLD here! (Needless to say there is no way I am spending any of my meager student budget on the cafeteria food.) It's extremely satisfying to serve up a nice hot stew straight from my backpack. Yes I know it makes me look like a geek. But this is what I've discovered is so wonderful about being a mature student: I DON'T CARE.

So I've now done my first month at uni - it really has flown by! I have loved almost every second of it so far, but I am aware these first few weeks are a bit more playful than can be expected of the rest of the term. We've had some lectures, we've had some group assignments and even a short essay to write, but a lot of it's been playtime I have to admit. Play time with a purpose of course, but nonetheless.

By playtime I mean being allowed to play dentist, nurse, technician or hygienist in the university clinic. As everyone knows the most important part of play time is dressing up, and we've been given our very own scrubs to look the part. The basic scrub outfit as pictured below is completed with a white coat, visor, mouth mask, plastic single use apron and latex gloves.

We've also given each other a professional teeth polish, which meant taking a drill-like instrument to someone else's mouth (thankfully with a rubber attachment and polishing paste at the end instead of an actual drill). I really enjoyed this little exercise as it gave an idea of how enormously fiddly it is to handle an instrument in such a tiny work space as the mouth. There was so much to think about - the angle of the instrument, how to grip it, how to stabilize it against the patient's chin, how the hell to reach the back of the wisdom teeth without causing too much discomfort, is it better to sit to the right or the left of the patient if you're right handed and want to reach the outside of the patient's left jaw, how to sit to avoid chronic neck pain (apparently very common in dentists), the speed of which to run the instrument, blow some air, no, blow some water, rinse, repeat. I know all of this will come naturally and without too much thought with practice but I really enjoyed noticing it all now! It makes it feel like it's really a craft I'm learning and that is what I love about it. We've been told that in the old days it took 2-3 years before the students were allowed to practice anything on another person, which in my opinion is way too late. I'm so glad they throw us straight in to it now with some easy stuff, to get us over the first hesitation of actually physically dealing with a patient. There were definitely nerves involved in the first session, I could feel the heart quickening a bit and I noticed it in the other students as well -  flushed cheeks all round.

On Monday I expect things will get a bit more serious, as the chemistry course starts. I've had a look at some old tests and it actually hurts my eyes and brain looking at them. As of Monday and 9 weeks onwards we will have 3 full days of chemistry lectures a week, interspersed with dental anatomy and some light drilling (in plastic teeth, don't worry). It feels like this is when it actually starts for real, and I know it will take a lot of work to get through the chemistry course, as this subject doesn't come easy or naturally to me. I loved chemistry when the atoms still had rings where the electrons sat neatly and contently - when that changed to p-orbitals and s-orbitals and what not, chemistry was lost to me. I hope the love can be rekindled or that we can at least agree to disagree and that I can pass the exam at the end of November.

I've actually been to the dentist myself this week, and to a hygienist. It was quite amusing outing myself as a dentist-to-be to a member of my future profession, and it certainly had some interesting effects on the treatment I got, but I will save that for another post as I've alreadly rambled on for too long. Thanks for reading this far if you have :)

The past couple of weeks have been so action packed, confusing, exciting and heartbreaking I can't remember when I last went through anything similar. I don't really know where to start in describing any of what's happened but I want to write at least something down to try and prevent it from all melting in to oblivion. Skipping over the heartbreaking stuff, and on to the exciting; I've started at uni.

The registration was last Friday, but that was little more than filling out a couple of forms and getting photographed for the student ID (I got the result today - imagine a troll in changing room lighting - yikes). The (sort of) real deal started yesterday, with the official roll call for all of the 98 first year dentist students and an introduction of the people in charge of the program.  I was swiftly transformed to an insecure 12-year old convinced that EVERYONE already knew someone, and was unable to strike up a conversation with anyone for the first half of the day. Surprisingly (to me) the majority was female, rather more unsurprising was the average age which I estimate to be around 23-24. Several of the people I did end up speaking to were born in 1991, so I think it's safe to say I was among the oldest of the students there. I heard someone say (with a hint of disbelief and possibly disgust) that there was a THIRTY-FOUR year old in the class so at least I'm not that horrificly ancient in comparison.

We were then taken round on a tour of the campuses - there are two, on opposite sides of the city, with a free shuttle bus connecting them. Not that I am capable of really judging the quality of the facilities, but the workshops, training clinic, lecture rooms, automatic scrubs dispenser (!) and libraries that we were shown really impressed me - it's obvious that the hospital has ample funding and puts a great deal of it in to the university. My last uni experience in a run down former high school in Malmo didn't quite measure up. 

The first day ended with a simple BBQ in Vasaparken on the grass. A trip to Systembolaget to buy a couple of luke warm beers (it's against the law for the official state run monopoly bottle shops to sell chilled drinks as it encourages drinking) and we were set for a small session of timid hand shakes and idle chit-chat in the afternoon sun.

What's really encouraging is that all of the teachers and older students that we've met and talked to so far are SO enthousiastic about what they are doing. They literally beam with joy and that excitement is contagious! I really can't wait to get started.

Tomorrow we are whisked off to a 2-night teambuilding trip on an island in the Stockholm archipelago. It's organized by the student union, and although we've been sent a semi-serious looking agenda, I have a feeling it's probably all an excuse for singing silly drinking songs and starting to get to know each other by making complete arses of ourselves, playing ridiculous games. It's the Swedish way I suppose, as any participant at a midsummer's party will testify.

I suppose I'd better get packing.