Then \u2014 BZZZ! BZZZ!<\/strong> Your phone lights up.<\/p>\n WAKE UP!! They\u2019re calling your number!!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Your pulse spikes. You grab the mouse, unmute, and rasp, \u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d still half-asleep. You admit you don\u2019t know the answer. She sighs, moves on for the next victim. You mute again, lie back down, and wonder how many more years this will go on.<\/p>\n Months later, the air smells like Dettol in the hostel corridors. We\u2019re back. Our steps echo against the cold tile floor as we walk toward the clinic in our freshly ironed white coats. Our eyes dart around, hopeful for real cases.<\/p>\n Instead, we\u2019re told: scaling and checkups only<\/strong>. The lecture hall becomes our new clinic. There\u2019s that one<\/em> lecturer whose footsteps down the aisle make everyone sit up straighter. We huddle in the back row, notes sprawled across the desks. Year 4 hits fast. Suddenly, quotas aren\u2019t a distant worry \u2014 they\u2019re the<\/em> worry. Patients are scarce, and every single one counts. That\u2019s when we turn into dental salespeople without even meaning to.<\/p>\n You\u2019re in an Uber, watching the meter tick up, and casually drop, \u201cBy the way, have you ever had a dental checkup?\u201d We start seeing everyone<\/em> as a potential patient \u2014 friends of friends, random acquaintances, that aunty at the grocery store who only wanted bananas.<\/p>\n Year 5 doesn\u2019t stroll in \u2014 it sprints. We\u2019re cramming everything from year 3 to 5 into our brains for finals. Our schedules are chaos \u2014 one hour extracting a molar, the next frantically revising Grossman -Pathway to pulp. Some nights, you fall asleep on top of open textbook pages, hoping for some diffusion to happen overnight.<\/p>\n And then one day, it\u2019s over. We\u2019ve ticked every quota, survived every viva, and worn our gloves until our hands smelled permanently of latex. We line up for that final batch photo, coats pristine, faces tired but proud.<\/p>\n The road from Zoom naps to quota chases was long, messy, and full of Wi-Fi excuses \u2014 but we made it. And that, in itself, is the story I\u2019ll carry into every patient interaction for the rest of my career.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 6:59 AM.Your laptop is balanced on the edge of your bed. The hostel curtains are still drawn, filtering in that dim grey morning light. You\u2019ve already copied the Zoom link into your sticky notes \u2014 because there\u2019s no way you\u2019re fumbling through the group chat this early. 7:00 AM \u2014 click. Camera off. Mic muted. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dental-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/ChatGPT-Image-Aug-13-2025-at-10_53_33-AM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/smilewithdrmel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_9625-300x64.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Our seniors are drowning in incomplete quotas, and they need every patient who walks through the door. We wait in the cubicles, gloves on, masks fitted, listening to the muffled chatter of instruments clinking from their side of the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoll number 36?\u201d he calls.
Textbooks flip open so fast it\u2019s like shuffling cards. Fingers point to lines, whispers hiss answers across the row. Sometimes you save your friend. Sometimes you watch them take the fall.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re buying lunch, and as the canteen worker hands you change, you slip in, \u201cWe do free scaling at the college clinic.\u201d
Even at a police roadblock, you find yourself smiling under your mask: \u201cSir, you should come in for a dental check.\u201d<\/p>\n
The air smells like gloves and mouthwash in clinic. The sound of suction machines blends with the sharp snap of gloves as we move from one patient to the next. Between appointments, we\u2019re in the library, pages rustling, highlighters squeaking, the air stale from too many late nights.<\/p>\n