T Diddy :: Your Friendly Black Dentist

This year for the 4th of July is the first time since I moved to the East Coast or maybe even all of my life that I have no plans. I am not sure as to why. It may be because it is in the middle of the week. Or it may be the fact that it just sort of suck up on me and I was not prepared for the holiday. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that I will not be doing much.

One thing is for certain. I will take a break from studying for the boards today. This will result in some quality time with Tracy. This morning we will start off with yoga and then eat a nice breakfast. I assume I will have to take a nap since I woke up so damn early. After the nap, I guess we will go to the mall to look at the wonderful stuff that we want and will not buy. I suppose it will be a nice teaser. Afterwards, maybe a movie will be in store. Regardless, I just look forward to spending the time with Tracy.

The one thing that will be missing are the fireworks. This is not a big deal because I missed them last year and in 2003 when I was living in Spain. Frankly, I have only been impressed with fireworks maybe once or twice in my lifetime. Usually, I am quite disappointed from the feeble attempt to make me say "Whoa!" I can do with out these.

Time for me now to go downstairs, turn on the TV and take my 7:30 am nap.

Yesterday, I finished studying for my part 1 of my Dental Board Exam. This exam tests my knowledge I have gathered from the past 2 years. The subjects include Anatomy, Pathology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, and any other 'ology' you basically can think of. During the 2 years, I have studied for every exam to actually learn the material. The focus was to insure the fact that when my time came to study for this test, my life would be easy because I would only have to recall. For the most part, it was all recall, but I still had to learn things. There is just too much information to know. The difficult part is you do not know exactly what topics they will ask about. I can only pray that I get a test that holds questions that suit my strengths. My strengths are pathology, anatomy, and physiology. Biochem gets the boot for sure. Calcium seems to have a new function in the body everyday I study.

Today is my rest day. I am gonna let all the knowledge soak into the brain. I have been studying everyday since June 1 for this exam. I am mentally fatigued at this point. One day off should do me good. Tomorrow, I will walk into the 8 hour exam and kill this exam. I am ready to take it and move on. After I pass this test, the majority of my studying life will be over. I thank God for that. Now, let me rest for tomorrow when I go and score off the charts.

I am free at last. Today I took the exam. First off, the exam was not as bad I thought it would be. It seemed much easier than the past exams that the ADA publishes. After the test, I came to the conclusion that I may have studied too much. This still holds true although I took the test 1 week earlier than planned. There were some curve balls, but for the most part I could narrow the answers down to two choices. If statistics would hold true I should get 1/2 correct and I will be alright. Out of 300 questions, I would say 15, I had no clue. Then about 30, I narrowed down to 2 answers. That may sound like a lot to get wrong, but one has to remember that this test is curved. It I were miss all those questions, I would be in the 95th percentile.

I bet you are wondering what happened to the other 100 question to make the 400 total. This is explained in my second point.

Second, the dental anatomy questions were crap. I had about 25 primary, or children, teeth question. The issue is that I do not get the material until this year and from all the literature and past exams, I was expecting 6 at most. Most of these, I had no clue. They came out of nowhere. I am hoping that I did not miss more than 35 total. I think that may be safe because the rest of the questions, I felt the rest of the question may be correct. If I fail that section, then I will have to take the test completely over again. I will be highly upset.

Overall, I fell that I did well and killed it. However, the primary teeth questions really have me worried. Again, it could be that fact that I remember the hard questions and not the easy ones. It just seemed like a lot of questions.

I should find out my results next week. I would die if I scored in the 90s in all subjects except for Dental Anatomy where I scored 74 and not pass. I would be heart broken that I have to take it again in 3 months. God, please let me be free. I will let you know when I hear about the results.

I received my results. I have passed. The past 2 years are officially completed and now I can rest my mind knowing that I have the next two years to learn the trade and pass the next obstacles.

I had a goal of not missing more than 20 questions out of 100 in each section. This is considered excellent as most people get between 55-70 questions correct. I achieved this in every subject except for one. In my strongest subject, I missed the goal by one question. However, if you average my scores, I achieved the goal. I will take the later and move on.

The interesting note about the score is the fact that the adjusted score values have changed. They changed because the format of the test has changed. This is the first year of the new format. However, the questions remained the same. With my scores, on the old format, I would have been in the 95th percentile in all of the subjects. However, with the new scoring system, I scored in the 89th percentile. I will just add the 6 points on and assume that I scored exceptional.

I am just happy that all of my studying the past 2 years has paid off. It was worth it. Now, let me go learn to be a dentist.