 Hello, everybody. Andrea Tresley here with dental little tutoring. Sorry for the mess behind me. We had just moved so we're still reorganizing. I am going to talk to you guys today about what it's like to be a dental assisting student. So you might have heard me talk a lot about dental hygiene students, but dental assisting also, you know, that's something that not everybody takes and you may have heard that it's very very hard. But let me kind of shed some light on that a little bit. So I took dental assisting when I was 18. So I was right out of high school. Actually, I took health sciences in college first for about a year because I did need to improve my marks. But I took dental assisting after that. I went to a private college that was I'm just trying to think now I believe about 11 months. So at the time it was 11 months. That's it. Now it's typically 18 months to about two years or it could be a year depending on the program that you go to. But the thing about dental assisting school is it is hard. It's not so hard that you can't manage it. Like I find dental assisting and dental hygiene are two very, very different things because, you know, for dental hygiene, I just remember it being so much harder than dental assisting. But then when I took dental assisting, I remember thinking this is very, very different from high school. Oh my gosh, like I have a test every week, sometimes twice a week. I have to study for test assignments, projects. But the thing about dental assisting, at least for me, was that everything that I was learning, I was new at it. At least in dental hygiene school, which I still found hygiene school a lot harder. But in hygiene school, I had my dental assisting already. So a lot of the classes I was a little bit familiar with, such as when they were teaching the tooth numbers, the tooth surfaces, you know, basic anatomy, things like that. But when I was a dental assisting student, I was learning everything new. You know, even learning anatomy was completely new because we would focus on the head and neck anatomy. Whereas in high school, you know, it's a little bit about everything like head and neck, legs, arms, you know, everything, right? So in assisting, it was a lot at once because typically you are coming out of high school and taking assisting and it's not the same as high school. Like when I was in assisting school, we had a test I remember every Friday and sometimes twice a week depending on how much we had to study for. And I found out when I was in dental assisting school that it was easier for me to study for test at least a week in advance. If I tried to do it the night before, I would fail, I would not be able to pass. So I had to study for tests a week before. There are a lot of people out there that don't need to do that. They're okay to study a couple of days before, but I needed to study a week before. Otherwise, I just simply didn't understand it. So I was always studying, you know, I found that I was always, always studying. I didn't have a life because I pretty much said to my friends, to my family, sorry, I can't eat out tonight. I have to study for a test that I have in a couple of days. Or sorry, I can't do anything tonight because I have homework to do or I have projects, you know, to do. And you are learning everything new. So it takes time. I remember learning the tooth numbers for the first time and thinking, how am I going to understand this? This is impossible. I remember learning all of the different instruments that we have to learn what they are, what they do. So when we help out the dentist, we know what to set up for. I remember learning that and thinking, oh my God, how am I ever going to remember this? So dental assisting school is hard, but it's more manageable. But it's going to be harder for you if you don't have good study habits in place. I remember the first day of school, and I think I've even said this before in a previous video, where we were literally handed a stack of papers like this. Like, okay, this. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. If I still had them, I would show you. And I remember, you know, passing them along thinking, okay, what's this for? You know, like, because I was just the first one sitting in the row and the teacher said, oh no, like those are for you. I am handing these out to every single student. And I was kind of like, oh, is this for the year? And she said, no, this is for the module. And a module is one month. So I was looking at this like, oh my God, how am I going to learn all of this in one month? It was insane. It took me by surprise. I was nervous as heck. And then as we started talking, the teacher was telling us that we had a test in two days. And then we had another test a day later of everything that we have learned since we started. And this is like, what, four days in. So I'm thinking, oh my God. So I have to start studying for a test tonight. This is the first day of school. And she pretty much said, yes, like you all need to start studying tonight because you have a test in a couple of days. And we were all just kind of looking at each other like, wow, we're not in high school anymore. This is crazy. But you know what, you guys, it is manageable. I loved it. I loved learning everything. And that is when I truly knew that I wanted to work in the dental field because I loved it. When we were in lab, I was like, oh, wow, I can take impressions of people's teeth. Oh, I can actually trim the models. I can pour up models into stone. This is neat. You know, just every little thing I found so exciting. But I'm not saying again that it's not hard because it was hard. Like I specifically remembered having a partner that didn't ever study for anything. She didn't know how to do anything. She was the worst partner ever because I would have to pick up her slack. Yet we would always get a good mark because I had to work twice as hard for both of us. When she would do, you know, hands-on things on me, she would hurt me half the time because she didn't know what she was doing. I remember her taking impressions, elegant impressions on me because when I was in class, we had to take 11 on the top and 11 on the bottom. That's how we were trained. So now I am excellent at taking them. But she would just shove it in there. She didn't care. She would hurt me. And then pretty much my instructors would say, OK, leave Andrea alone. Let's not have her be with this person because they would start to realize that she was useless. I'm sorry, but she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't care. You know, it's one thing to not know what you're doing and need health. But to not care, that's the worst thing ever, and that was not fair to me. But typically I was put with other people who needed the help because I just caught on quickly in hygiene school. I did not. I was one of those people that learned very, very slowly. I don't know why. But in assisting, I just seemed to catch on. I think because I just loved it so much, but assisting is quite different from hygiene. If you don't know yet, if you want to make dental your career choice and take assisting first because it's typically only a year to maybe 18 months. Well, hygiene is usually 18 months to two years, but assisting is less expensive. It's not as long for your program and it's much easier to get a job as an assistant because they always need assistance, you know, because offices are being opened up all the time. They need assistance because every doctor typically has three assistants. Yeah, three assistants, not just one, but three. So if you're not sure, take assisting first. I loved it. It's just I always knew that I wanted to be a dental hygienist. So I took hygiene eventually, but it was awesome. So if you guys have any questions about the dental assisting program or what it's like being a student, let me know. And I am more than happy to help you guys. Thank you so much for watching.