If you’ve ever done a class II prep (which, unless you’re in fall semester of D1, you already have), then you know what the dreaded experience of “dropping a box” feels like. It’s a bit unconventional and complex, but a necessary foundation for what will ultimately become a restoration. The final work boasts a literal step design that separates a proximal half of a tooth into 2 floors. The transitioning step from first to second year has been like dropping a box. As a first-year dental student, from August until May, and even the summer session—which in all honesty is pseudo-D1 even though it is “officially” the start of D2—the vast majority of your school life is spent in preparation for one thing: NBDE Part I. You can refine & define your study habits & behaviors, just like grinding away at that mesial or distal aspect of the occlusal side of a typodont tooth. It can be a slow, tedious process, but your burr goes deeper and deeper. August turns to December, December to March, March to July. Gross anatomy becomes physiology, physiology becomes microbiology. The next thing you know, you find yourself in an isolated Prometric cubicle answering that last question for boards, and then it’s all done. Your gingival floor is made, your axial wall is rounded, your proximal walls are convergent and voila, you dropped your box, you’re now a D2. You look back and realize that the job that seemed so daunting at first wasn’t really so bad in the end. Yeah, you may have chipped your gingival floor, made your box too wide, or didn’t perfectly round your axial wall, but in the end you got through and created a foundation that you can now build upon.
-contributed by Walter Nwaokolo
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