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It’s been almost a year since we started making our first gold crown. Although sometimes it feels like it has been twenty years since we were prepping our first crowns on ivorine teeth and waxing up a mediocre replacement, the time has gone by very quickly. In fact, we were assigned our first patients yesterday - more on that later. So to celebrate, please enjoy one of the funnier moments on DMDstudent.com, this story first ran June 18, 2007.

“The polishing steps for a gold crown entail about seven jaw clenching steps from start to finish. The steps were enough for any sane man to wear down several acrylic mouth guards in the process. After so much work with impressions, models, waxing, investing, and castings you don’t want to screw up the crown while polishing it. The sweat equity, tears, and sometimes blood devoted to this project would have been enough to kill any undergraduate student. Why do you think they make AADSAS so hard? It weeds out the weak and the timid, the faint of heart, and those with high blood pressure. Applicants like that couldn’t handle this type of stress. If you fail this crown you have to repeat the year. Needless to say the tension in the pre-clinic was thick. After finishing the first 6 steps I’ll admit I was disappointed. My crown looked as dull as a slab of granite. I felt like someone had painted it gray and then stabbed a knife into my back. It hurt that much. So the crown and the knife sat there, festering. I was a beaten man.’

“I had no one to reach out to, my classmates had their own crowns to worry about, my teacher had that glossed over look in his eyes that said “If another student comes up here for advice I will go postal”, and I couldn’t see an upperclassman anywhere wherewith to seek advice. Besides, I am sure the upperclassman had enough problems anyway. They didn’t want to deal with a mere ‘D1′. What did I know anyway? After all, I wear scrub pants and don’t even work on real patients. I would be scoffed at. With no one to turn to I looked at my work area and saw Red Rouge. It sounds odd, but it seemed to look at me longingly.

“PLEASE!”, it seemed to say, “Pick me up and rub me on your gold crown with your low speed hand piece and a polishing wheel!”

“Caught up in the moment I replied, ‘Okay’, as my classmates glanced at me, clearly annoyed that I was talking to myself again.

“I picked up the Rouge and started to rub it into my polishing wheel softly but with great purpose, like I had done it before. It felt right. The quiet, slow ‘whirrrrrr’ of my hand piece drowned out the moans and wailings of the classroom. I was alone. I began to gain confidence in the skills I had learned over the past 6 months. The feeling of complete and utter belonging overwhelmed me, and a tear fled from my eye and floated onto my polishing brush as if to calm the raging sea of red that had enveloped the polishing wheel. I lifted the hand piece to my gold crown, which was seated firmly to my stone die. The red bristles began to dance off the gold like sparks in the wind. Everything was moving in slow motion now. Some of my classmates looked up to watch the magnificence that was unfolding before their eyes like spring blossoms. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I were to say I saw tears of wonderment well up in their eyes. The dull gold, which had once been a nagging wound in my back, slowly subsided as the gold began to sparkle like the salmon of Capistrano. As I looked at my reflection in the gold crown I no longer saw a beaten man. I saw the chiseled face of a student who had been whittled and pruned by instructors. It was this moment that I realized my true calling was to be a dentist.”