How To Become A Successful Dentist: Introduction

Today I want to introduce a series that will span my entire career here on Steemit. It will offer value to people who want to pursue a similar path and who are just interested in this topic. I will also share insight knowledge, as well as scientific opinions that you can apply to your everyday life. In this series I will write about becoming a dentist in the United Kingdom. Since I will be a dentist one day, I will not use any pictures of myself. I am sorry for keeping this anonymous.

By oswaldoruiz under CC0 - Source

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Why Do I Want To Become A Dentist?

This is one of the most difficult questions to answer. However, if you want to become a dentist, you will have to think about this extensively, as you will base a page-long essay on this question. I will dedicate an entire post to the application process.
My motivation to becoming a dentist stems from the underestimated role of teeth in health and our acceptence in our social environments. I saw a BBC documentary about dentistry in the UK. In this documentary they did an interesting, non-representative experiment. They took a headshot of a young lady. They then edited the teeth digitally. Changes included darkending of the teeth and digitally changing the position of the teeth, making them appear unaligned. After this step, they went out and asked people the following questions:

• Do you think this person is educated?
• Do you think this person is nice?
• Do you think this person is pretty?

I was very surprised to learn that people with just slightly misalinged teeth were perceived less educated and less friendly compared to people with "perfect" teeth.
Another curious case of how teeth influence our self-perception is Freddy Mercury. During a documentary I learned that the lead singer of the band "Queen" was ashamed of his front teeth. Because he was so self-conscious he decided to grow that mustache, which became his brand. However, this icon, this artist who was seemingly feeding on attention and people staring and screaming at him was limited by his teeth.
Dentistry is a complex field with many sub-specialties. Knowledge in chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, anatomy, physiology as well as material science is taught during a five years course. In addition to being required to acquire a gigantic amount of knowledge, dentists are alo challenged to learn and perfect clinical skills, as well as procedural knowledge and abilities. This combination of theoretical and practical knowledge drew me towards dentistry. This career requires theoretical and practical training and is really appealing to me because I like to work with my hands.
I want to work in a field that challenges me to constantly learn something new and work on my practical skills. Obviously, I also want to help people. I want to help them to not worry about their teeth and oral health.

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What You Can Expect From This Series

I will write a guide about how I managed to get into one of the best dental schools in the world. Everything, from how to apply to how to prepare will be in this guide. I will introduce the application system, talk about some of the requirements and tests you will have to take. Furthermore, I will tell you how to write a succesfull personal statement, and how to ace interviews.

In addition to this, I will write weekly updates about life as a dental student in the UK. This will include descriptions of my day, what we talked about in school and the practical work we have done. I will also write about what I am doing extra to become the best dentist I can be.
I am also planning to write posts related to dental science. There are some issues people are discussing like fluoridation of water that I want to write about. I enjoy science and reading scientific articles. So you can expect a few posts like this in this series.
Well, I have not been living in my native country for a few years now. Thus I believe that I have a perspective on "living abroad". This will also be a topic in this series. I will write about the challenges of being a foreigner, and a foreign health care provider.

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Thank you for reading the introductory post for this series. You can expect the first post next week, when I will write about how you can figure out if you are made to become a dentist. I hope to welcome you back next week!
Here is a link to the documentary I mentioned. It is pretty interesting!

• BBC: The Truth About Teeth - Link