Practically Making It
Every time I think I’ve got the dental school thing down, I just get crushed flat by something going wrong. Lately, it’s been these practicals. We’re trained to cut teeth to very stringent guidelines — previously, we were simply graded on the degree to which we met these guidelines. NOW, we only pass if every single aspect of our tooth cutting meets a clinically acceptable standard. Otherwise, we fail: one failure requires a make-up… two failures and, well, I’m not sure.
I sit there during the practical… and everything I practiced, all the skills I developed, fly right out the window. Somewhere on SE Washington Avenue, my tooth cutting skills are getting run over by a Metro Transit bus. Meanwhile, I’m flailing away like some moron with a glorified Dremel tool. It’s outrageously frustrating, not being able to show what I’m capable of during these practicals. I know I can do it; it’s just that I’m not proving it when it counts.
It doesn’t matter how many hours you spent on an empty court shooting free-throws, they only count if you make them during the game.