Here Comes Your Man

Let me esplain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up:

All done for now. The rough two weeks are over. I've got one more interview at U of Pacific on the 29th, next Wednesday. Loma Linda went well. I drove down, got a tour (the student giving the tour went to BYU as an undergrad, man LDS dental students are EVERYWHERE, I met like 20 of them at USC) and then spent an hour one-on-one with a woman in the admissions office. She wanted a mini life's story and just asked questions about me as a person. I feel like it went well. I hope I made a good impression. It was nice to be able to give credit to Heavenly Father for his help so openly to someone about this whole process and how much he has helped me. Loma Linda is a Seventh Day Adventist school, and they have similar standards of conduct to BYU. It was a nice campus, the dental school had nice facilities and equipment (all digital x-rays and records software, VERY nice). The student giving the tour said his big complaint as a student is that you don't get as much experience doing the specialty stuff as he'd like, since the clinic has its own specialty residents who do most of the cool stuff.

I wouldn't mind going to Loma Linda at all, I'd probably enjoy it.

USC was nice, but I still have mixed feelings about it. Their curriculum is a Problem Based Learning curriculum. The sciences are all taught through case or problem solving and personal research. Students are in groups of eight with a faculty advisor for each group. A problem is presented, all facts are stated. All possible solutions are thought of, and then research is done by the students to solve the problem. The goal is to get the students to be more resourceful, scientific, and to internalize the information more thoroughly than if they were taught it in a lecture. According to the student who let me stay at his place, the tests and midterm exams are full of practice Board Test questions, so you get them right as you can and the averages are usually around 40% (and curved, of course), and when you take the first part of the boards, you've seen all of the material before.

USC has a nice dental school, it's in LA, lots of LDS students, a strong clinical experience, and large class sizes. Not sure I like the large class size or the PBL curriculum. I'm sure it'd be fine, just different.

In Philadelphia, the guy who picked me up made the comment that he felt like he was called by the Lord to be a dental student in Philadelphia. Their ward had 175 baptisms last year, and with all the new members, if it hadn't been for so many dental students in the ward, things would be even more rough on the leaders and members there. I felt a little bit like a missionary while I was at Loma Linda yesterday. I'm sure that people in all professions and lifestyles feel that way as well, when sent to new areas and wards. This will probably happen more often as I get out and about, wherever I go.

As for now, I'm living the California Dream for the next few days: Driving a bright red classic mustang with a surfboard on top, going to the beach with my beach bunnies, eating In-N-Out, and loving the foggy mornings we've been getting. It's awesome. Today I tried surfing blind. Almost blind. I don't have any contacts anymore so while in the water without glasses I just have to do the best I can. It's not hard to see the waves and didn't feel hampered by that at all, but I got to talking to this guy from Kentucky stationed at Port Hueneme who's learning to surf on his own. We spent 20 minutes together in the water and I have no idea what he looks like because I was never close enough to see his face or distinguish his features.