The Evidence

Drum roll, please....

Dear Abby,

Congratulations!!!

Your offer letter is in the mail. If you have any questions, please email or call my office.

Happy Holidays!

--Dr. Barbara Miller

Baylor College of Dentistry

Texas A&M Health Science Center

Dallas, Texas

bmiller@bcd.tamhsc.edu

214-828-8231

Accepted to San Antonio!

The message on my answering machine says this:

"Abby, this is Dr. Thomas in San Antonio. I wanted to call and say congratulations! I've put something in the mail to you. The acceptance letter includes a scholarship offer. And I very much hope that you're thinking about coming to San Antonio for the next four years. Please call me back and let me know if you have any questions at all. Again, congratulations! Bye."

A scholarship offer! Those are hard to get! The Lord is good and making my decision complicated!!! ; ) I can't wait to see what the letter says and what the scholarship offer is for. I have NEVER received a scholarship from a SCHOOL. Oh my goodness. I'm on this really weird almost crying, overjoyed, stressed out, relieved high and I don't know what to do so I'm going to paint. And celebrate tonight when we go out to dinner with the Roeders and Moores! I guess Will's dad might be my professor after all!

Ugh.

2 Days! A guy in class tonight said that UTHSCSA sends out their letters at midnight 12/01, so maybe Saturday? Ok, 3 days. Baylor will probably be forever late - like the 8th. Who knows? Ugh.

Torture

I might have a letter or two one week from today. For now, I cower in the study at my in-laws avoiding Omi's constant rambling and my bad chess pie. I pray that tomorrow I can get out away from her most of the day. I really would be doing much better if we weren't living with her for three days. Ugh. Let me say it again...ugh. Once this marathon is over, Monday will bring the week of anticipation. At this point, it really is just torture. In every way imaginable. I join my fellow applicants in SDN as we experience what no one else understands and think about checking the mail on that fateful day. And then the next day, and then again on Monday, and then...

2 Weeks

Gosh! It's really starting to get close! Well, TMOM went very well. When I got there on Friday, no one from Mandy's office was there yet, and there wasn't anything for me to do, so they sent me off to have lunch and return for instructions. It was so busy and crazy and it looked like each doctor had an assistant, so I didn't know what I was in for. When I returned, I found Lisa standing in the hall by an xray machine and I said hello and smiled and asked if anyone else was here yet. She said it was just her and Amy. I asked if she had been told what to do/where to go and she said someone said they needed an xray, but she didn't know how to use it. We glanced at the really cool new portable xray and shrugged our shoulders. I told her I was going to go find the lady I talked to earlier and that I'd see her later. No Mandy, no Ramona. That wasn't so bad. Upon finding Dr. Zinser, I was taken over to Dr. Doerre's chair. He seemed really nice and I asked him to help me get acquainted with the equipment. We were mainly doing restorative, so I was set. He was really nice, and once I got used to the new materials and his way of doing things we were on a roll! We worked well past five, including a quadruple surgical extraction with the very fast and very demanding Dr. Smith and around 6:30 it was time for dinner. Since Erik was working late, I stayed and ate and chatted with Dr. Doerre, listened to his advice concerning a practice, insurance, getting patients, etc. He begged me to return in the morning and help him out, but I told him I just couldn't seeing I needed to clean the floor for Erik. See, I forgot that when Erik is gone, I can't sleep, so getting up at 6:30 was out of the question. When I arrived at noon, he had a very faithful predent from Houston there and I was out of luck considering that there were somewhere around 40 predents from Houston and San Antonio vying for an opportunity to assist. I roamed and observed for a while, and feeling pretty useless, starting looking for something to do. I found my fellow orchestra member, Sandy, filing, so I joined her. In the midst of alphabetizing charts, the data entry team needed someone with dental experience, so I learned the Patterson software and started charting away. When things died down, I went back to the clinic area and continued observing, chatting with the other predents and making runs for instruments/materials when necessary. Overall, it was a great two days.

I left that Sunday for Dallas to visit Baylor on Monday. The day went very well, and I got my questions answered. I feel good about it now. I hope I didn't put Dr. Miller out by asking to come, but it's like Dad says, they need to let people shadow like I did, and it's a good thing I maybe started something new there. Heck, I'll let people shadow me next year! So Erik and I have some talking to do in two weeks. Two weeks, that's all?

TMOM

Tomorrow is the 1st day of Texas Mission of Mercy in Round Rock. I went by today for orientation which turned out to just be t-shirt/ID pick up. My ID still has Mandy's name on it, so Erik and I decided that it would be best to sharpie it out so I don't have to explain anything. I can't wait to start fresh. The biggest deal is just picking up tomorrow and giving it everything I have and learning a lot and more importantly helping a lot of people. That's the whole reason for any of this. And honestly, it's the call I initially felt in Africa when I wanted to have an occupation that would meet the physical needs of people who desparately need help. I want to become a dentist and go to Romania and Mexico and the Dell Diamond and wherever they will take me.

My goal for tomorrow: I won't be the least bit hesitant to try anything they ask me to do. I will communicate any questions I might have. I will be alert and vigilant and thorough even though it seems that I'm going blind and losing my common sense all at the same time. I think I need to get back on my daily vitamins...Hmmm....

29 Days...

29 days and counting. I noticed today that I talk more about leaving Austin in my conversations which is making it a bit more of a reality. Erik took the rest of the week off to tile our...sorry "the" bathroom and finish up the last few big things. I'm sure the realtor will have more suggestions, but we have to give her some place to start. Still haven't talked to anyone up at the old office. Don't really want to. Can I send a key in the mail and feel ok about that? They can sure send my check in the mail. I still find myself rolling back into that self-pity mode when I get in bed at night. I roll around and think about what I would say if I saw any of them again...like at TMOM next week. After all this drama, it makes me nervous to volunteer. I'm going to have to "stack the bodies in the celler, lock it, leave quietly one at a time, and pretend like none of this ever happened" and give it 200% that day. I really don't know why I felt compelled to throw that quote in. I'm not that delusional, am I? : ) I'm waiting to hear back from Baylor about shadowing. Turns out that when Kevin called Dr. Miller, he asked her if Baylor had a shadowing program and she said "no" and acted like that was a crazy idea. He told her that San Antonio did, and he wanted to know why Baylor didn't since they need to be competitive for the best of the best. Aye, Kevin. So now, Dr. Miller is looking for a student for ME to shadow in light of this phone call. I don't want her to go out of her way because of Kevin, but don't get me wrong, I do want to see Baylor from that perspective. It's like Erik said, it's a good sign if she's going out of her way for me...eh?

My First Week is Over

I just finished my first week being jobless. It started off with me having to come up with a story. "I'm not working anymore. I'm getting the house ready to sell." Angela didn't buy it, so we had lunch on Friday. I rehashed the whole thing, tears and all, and still feel good about it. She had some supportive words and she prayed for me which was oh, soo good. At rehearsal on Wednesday, it boiled down to the fact that I wasn't in my scrubs and I had to explain myself. When I gave them my line, the reply was, "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" And I honestly replied with, "I haven't really decided yet." After a week of well, getting a lot done, I feel good. We'll knock it all out next week and the house should be market-ready. Next weekend, I'll assist at Texas Missions of Mercy at the Dell Diamond. I might run into the "robots" as they call themselves, but maybe not. Tuesday I get signed up with RRISD to sub, so I should be busy. Moving on.

Moving On

This is like a bad break up. Which I never really had. Those were just awkward. This is miserable. The sermon today was about suffering for doing good (1 Peter 3:15ish) and even though I feel like I did nothing wrong, I feel tortured about the whole thing. And I really think it's Satan. I can't help but feel like I could have done more, but in hindsight, I really think it was doomed from the beginning. She wanted 100% from me and that was practically impossible to give. At the beginning, I was running all over the place teaching and schooling and could not really focus. Once summer came, I was applying and really just focused on getting a letter and getting everything sent off. This doesn't mean I didn't do my job, but it was just really hard to have my mind all there. By the time I did have everything turned in, she had already written me off without talking to me about it. When she said she needed help in the fall, I should have left it at that and come to work in the fall. After applications. After interviews. After baby. After we were both ready to focus. Because neither of us really were. I think my problem is just knowing what they think about me. I equate that with my witness and it can really get to me. That's what I couldn't stop thinking about in church today. I honestly think they were misguided and acted irrationally and that doesn't mean I was a bad witness. I honestly feel like this was a bad roommate/good roommate clash all over again. Just like what's her face. Anyway, funny as it isn't, another pre-dent posted on SDN about his awful assisting experience that parallels mine 100%. To the letter. I am not alone. I wish him the best. Yeesh.

It is finished.

I just finished reading over my experience as a dental assistant. Amazingly, between the beginning of September and now, things went downhill really quickly. I would even venture to say that it was the last two - three weeks that really did it. If I had to do it all over again, I think I would. I would've waited until classes were over and teaching was over. I would have been better about sitting down with her and discussing my role and asking for help. I would've been more honest about my frustrations and I would have definitely stood up for myself if it ever got to that point. I wonder how different it would really be, though. Obviously, I can never know. If I had waited and gone to Acuna and gotten to know Dr. Smith....But at this point, I have a really good learning experience under my belt in lots of different ways. I really do pray that I never get so independent that I lose track of what really matters. I hope that I never get so confident that I won't admit when I need advice. I hope that I never get so "good", that I can't admit I make mistakes. I hope that my professional relationships are just that - professional - so that friends won't sway my emotions and business decisions. I hope that I will always stand up for myself, even when it makes people angry. And right now, I hope I get a really good night's sleep. I need some rest.