Count on me

It's official--I've finished my first two years of dental school!

Reaching this milestone must feel a lot like reaching an end zone--because I sure feel like doing some of these Terrell Owens dances!

Here's a run-down of the last two years of school by the numbers...

161 quizzes

96 written exams

39 practical exams

129 projects

5 final grades of 89.5 that rounded to an A

2 final grades of 89.5 that didn't get rounded to an A

1 teacher's pants fell off

99 classmates

110 registered hours

0 classes missed due to sickness (isn't that amazing?)

umm...several classes missed due to "sickness of school-itis"

32 permanent teeth

20 baby teeth

2 cadavers

300,000,000,000,000 pages of reading

1 supportive husband

1 supportive family (and 1 supportive family in law)

2 many friends to count

I'm very proud of the work I've done over the last two years, and proud to stand next to the other 98 students in my class who have done the same. It feels so wonderful to look back at all the things we've learned over the last two years and then to look forward to the next two years of school in which we will apply that knowledge to patient cases. As I left school today the line from Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities popped into my mind.

"'Tis is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known."

Granted, Sidney Carton, the speaker of that line, said those words as he waited for his turn on the guillotine, but if you change the words a bit, it fits perfectly with how my class is feeling right now. (With the word "rest" referring to actual rest in our case--not death, as with poor Sidney.)

As always, no one says it better than Jon Bon Jovi...

"Oh, we're halfway there
Oh, livin' on a prayer
Take my hand and we'll make it, I swear
Oh, living on a prayer"