Orientation Thus Far!!!

So this week has definetely been a whirlwind for me. Between leaving the friends I made over the summer at URMC, to meeting new classmates, its all been an enlightening experience. I basically spent Monday and Tuesday moving in to UT Housing and buying/gathering the essentials for my place. Wednesday was the first day of orientation, which pleasantly included breakfast and lunch. We were welcomed with packets of necessary first year orientation materials/guides, a CD with syllabi for all the fall classes, and some other details. Dr. P and Dr.Valenza welcomed the students and talked about the vision, objectives of the curriculum. Although I was bothered to hear that the class after us, class of 2016, would be paying 20k in tuition alone, I was happy to hear that class of 2015 dodged that 4k increase...We were split into 3 groups, played some icebreaker games with the 2nd year students that led the groups, and given tours of the school's facilities. We were also assigned advisors and got to meet them, as well as the faculty that would be responsible for teaching the courses. Today, Wednesday was much more relaxed, as we heard from student health, financial aid, etc. I also purchased the first year instrument kit-at a whopping 5180 cost....I just keep telling myself its an investment, and what else would I be doing if not this? That usually calms me down...lol
In order to get a head start on organization, I've been looking through the syllabi and decided to make a calendar of all the class times, major exams and project due dates on Microsoft Works. When one has 23 credits a semester, its just not reasonable to try to remember when every assignment/paper is due. I'm pretty sure my first test is August 29, in immunology...just 2 weeks, 3 weeks or so? Time to get cracking...

While its such a hectic time getting adjusted, its also very refreshing and rewarding to finally be here. In a sense, I feel like I've been working towards this all of my educational career. Its interesting to note that there are many older students in our class, I'm talking high 20's 30's, some with kids-which brings a level of maturity and adds to the richness of the student body-wow, I'm really in professional school! Everyone seems so helpful and nice, and really family-like. While I know this will not be an easy journey by any means, I'm beginning to get my stamina back and the focus and motivation I need to give this first semestr my all...

White Coat on Saturday!!!

Summer is quickly coming to a close.....

I really can't believe I only have 17 days till the first day of class!!! I am completely emotionally conflicted about this-half of me wants to crack open that dental anatomy book and relearn every single thing about maxillary central/lateral incisors, while the other half of me wants to keep replaying the same Trey Songz's song I've been playing over and over the whole week. Summer has really been great this year. Graduation was amazing and very emotional-I met most of my current girlfriends in undergrad and we really saw each other through every test, DAT/MCAT, personal issues, you name it. Yet, we are all breaking up and taking different paths to reach our future goals, which is a great thing. I can't wait to see where we all are ten years from now! I truly enjoyed the summer research program I enrolled in. I was exposed to a lot of different research fields, and enjoyed being within an environment that catered to kids. Also loved seeing the Core Labs with the Electron and Flourescence Microscopes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm beginning to feel really positive about my poster and the presentation on Thursday.
In terms of getting ready for dental school, well, I'm still hoping my financial aid will come in on time for orientation. It's stressful enough just getting adjusted/acclimated to such a heavy courseload/high expectations/new environment/new people, and I guess I just wanted the financial aspect to be taken care of. Gladly, I'll be living on campus for the first year!! So, I'll get to experience Rice Village/Med center/Houston proper, during the few hours I'm not buried under tons of books in a corner of Univ. of Houston's library (its open 24 hrs so I plan on making that my study spot). If there is anything more crucial to my study success, it is the perfect study location. My friends from undergrad can attest to this. We loved studying in the grad schools- the PBL Rooms at Pitt Med, the Pitt Business School.-all these locations were open 24 hrs as well. I only got up for the occasional break, food and nap-very helpful for Finals week. But overall, I think my excitement trumps nerves at this point.God brought me this far, and I believe he will see me through. Wherever I end up at the conclusion of this 4 year journey is exactly where he wants me-I simply have to be at peace with that.