After years of working hard and finally deciding on my professional career, I packed my bags and moved across the country to San Antonio, TX to start dental school. I was ready to experience a new part of the country and I was excited for the challenges ahead.

The first two years of dental school are largely didactic with lab courses mixed in. You start taking general classes such as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biomaterials, histology, and pathology. Additionally dental courses are mixed in where you discover the foundations of the tooth structure and form, proper occlusion (how the teeth should bite together), and what happens when disease processes take place and dentists are required to step in and solve issues of cavities, missing teeth, TMD, root canals, implants, and much more.

During this time, I would often study 14+ hours per day and then often have to follow that up by carving a wax tooth to the perfect shape or drilling a plastic tooth to prepare for a filling. It can be a very exhausting and anxiety inducing time, but thankfully I had my good friends Jake and Chase to study with. We would often meet up and create clever ways to memorize our material and actually enjoy the process of learning and quizzing one another. I was also very grateful for a great community of friends with whom I went on adventures, served on mission trips, played intramurals sports, had good conversation, and helped strengthen my faith.

Third and fourth year of dental school is where everything becomes real. You are now seeing patients every day in clinic and translating the long hours of practice in the lab to real fillings, crowns, dentures, extractions, and root canals. I had some fantastic faculty members in clinic who were encouraging, experienced, and great at teaching. Here I learned the joys of taking people out of pain, restoring their teeth so they felt comfortable smiling, and giving people back their teeth that had lost them. It was rewarding! However, as dental school progressed, I had considered whether I might be interested in specializing. Stay tuned for why I chose orthodontics and the path that led me to where I am today!