Fear
The seniors at dental school are elated: boards results came in and most of them are past their last large hurdle of school. In the meantime, us third years are emerging from the trenches to start out charge toward graduation. In 60 days, we’ll be the oldest at the school.
Earlier this semester, there was a day at school when I finally stopped being afraid. I can’t point out the box on the calendar when it happened, but at the end of that day I realized something had clicked. Reminds me of this quote:
You’ll know what you’re doing when you stop asking for permission.
—rands
Finally, the fear of patients, the fear or being reprimanded by professors, the fear of a mis-step or mis-cut or perforation faded. These distracting feelings finally got out of the way, and I could learn. FINALLY, I could learn things!
And now, this past week, another stage: that of flow. One achieves flow state when the difficulty of the tasks at hand slightly exceed one’s abilities. It is as though you are being tugged along by a rubber band, there’s a constant tension that you are managing, and you are always making forward progress.
This causes 10 hour days to feel like they’re about 3 hours. It’s kind of exciting.