I Quit Dentistry and I DIDN’T Die: My Story of Leaving Dental School and Enjoying my New Path

It is time for me to tell you my story of leaving dentistry, a dream career for many people. Laura from Lolabees Career Coaching has just recorded a podcast episode interviewing me about my experience of leaving dental school. It is not possible to include all the details in one podcast episode, so I would like to write a blog post about my journey into and out of dental school. This will be a long post so be prepared.

A lovely hike to Mont Royal on my last day of my exchange tour in Montreal

As my exchange semester at McGill University in Montreal in Canada comes to an end now, it marks the two-year anniversary of me leaving dentistry. I was a dental student in The University of Hong Kong (HKU) Faculty of Dentistry. It was a 6-year Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) program. I was supposed to graduate in the year 2019, but I transferred to the Bachelor of Arts (BA) program halfway through my dental degree.

After three years of studying dentistry, I realized that I was not happy doing the work of a dentist. It took a lot of thinking, self-doubt, analysis and emotional turmoil for me to reach my decision of ending my journey in the world of dentistry.

Every day when I went to school, I was hit by the anxiety and stress from meeting patients and providing treatments for them under my clinical tutor’s supervision. It is normal to expect clinical work to be difficult, but I never knew I would feel so defeated and scared. My feeling of incompetence in treating patients arose from my lack of sufficient theoretical knowledge. I believe that it was partly due to my school’s teaching style.

Problem with my dental school’s curriculum

My school had a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum. Every two weeks, students engage in a small-group tutorial to discuss a new case of dental or medical patient scenario. Signs and symptoms experienced by a patient would be presented. We would then brainstorm the gaps of our knowledge and list the learning issues of that week’s problem. For example, when we see a problem talking about patient with diabetes mellitus, we would find out the causes, the signs and symptoms, the treatment options and the correlation of diabetes with oral health.

After the first tutorial, students are expected to learn the theories and find reference books on their own. Complementary lectures were a rarity. There were normally two to three lectures within every two weeks. The amount of lecture time reduces as the year goes by, and the clinical placement and simulation laboratory practice hours increase accordingly.

At the end of the two weeks, the group will gather together for a second tutorial to present what they learnt. This PBL curriculum has its pros and cons. Students are fully responsible for what they read and the things they learn, but the danger lies in this autonomy. The professors would not find out whether the students have learnt anything during the week.

I remember spending a lot of time trying to read all the relevant information, but it was too time-consuming and time as a dental student was the most expensive currency. I lost sleep over reading materials and ended up not being able to finish every learning issue I was supposed to research on. Eventually, I gave up trying to learn all the things that I was supposed to know and just read as much as I could to pass the exams so that I will have time to sleep and stay sane.

However, passing written exams is simply the first hoop to jump through in dentistry. Dental school is all about the clinical placement. We started to treat our own patients since the second semester of Year 2. By Year 3, I was working in the dental hospital’s clinic twice a week. I feel that dental students were not given enough support and resources to do the clinical work. The clinical tutor was very busy during each three-hour clinical session because he/she has to deal with eight to nine patients of ours besides listening to our case presentation and answering our questions. It was very demanding for our clinical tutor and we as dental students could not learn effectively. I had to do a lot of procedure that I had very little idea about on a real patient. Usually, I had only seen the tutor demonstrated once before performing it on a patient’s tooth. This was frightening because I always did not know what I was doing but I had to do it anyway. Asking the tutor for the rationale behind the procedure would mean I did not study hard enough because the tutors expect us to know the theories and to have read the relevant textbooks.

To be honest, most of my classmates did not read real textbooks. They only read concise notes passed down by senior students. The notes consisted of the facts and step-by-step procedure of treatments, but the theories behind are often missing. I thought that this practice of reading summary notes without referring to reliable reference book was being irresponsible to my patients. Therefore, I tried my best to read the books to understand the theories. However, time was just too short to study and know all the answers to the problems arisen from clinical work.

Struggling in dental school was like walking on a tight rope. Even though I was falling behind in my studies, I had to catch up while attending classes and seeing patients. I was doing the bare minimum so that I would do no harm to my patients and manage to pass the examinations. It was increasingly impossible and exhausting as my third year of dental school begins. I was bombarded by the thought that I was not worthy and incompetent to become a dentist daily. I was always anxious, irritable, depressed and had extremely low self-esteem. I even broke into tears several times and had to hide away in the washroom to wash my face and calm myself. My surgical mask and dental loupes helped conceal my swollen, puffy eyes and the uncontrollable tears that dropped while I was practising in the laboratory.

I hit my rock bottom. At the same time, I gained so much weight because I was chronically stressed, sleep-deprived, depressed and would drink sugary drinks to make myself happy temporarily and escape from the pain I felt when school was so overwhelming. I felt like a zombie every day when I commute to the dental hospital. The changing room and the simulation laboratory of the dental hospital became a living hell. Meeting patients and giving them treatments was the worst because I had to act confident on the outside but I felt absolutely anxious and horrified of doing harm to them. All I wanted to do when I was in the hospital was to escape from it. All of these were in my head while my legs were unable to move and walk out of the place since I felt tied down by my obligations to continue on being a dental student.

At the time, I could not imagine not becoming a dentist. As you will find out from the podcast interview at Lolabeees, becoming a medical professional to help cure diseases and relieve the pain of the patients had been my dream since I was 11 years old. My mother passed away due to lung cancer, and her death sparked my idea of becoming a doctor to help heal others who had to suffer like my mother.

Although I was one grade short of being admitted into the Faculty of Medicine of the two universities which provide the medicine programs, I got into dental surgery thinking that I would be helping patients and it would not be that big of a difference. I entered dental school mainly due to how the system of university admission works instead of by my choice. Looking back on my experience of entering dental school as a second choice because of my failure to enter medical school, I wish I knew that it was unwise because I did not have enough understanding and real-life experience of dentistry to invest 6 years of time and tuition into pursuing the career of a dentist.

If you are an 18-year-old from Hong Kong who is considering to enter the BDS program of HKU, which has been ranked as the best dental school in the world for several years by QS World University Rankings, please learn from my mistake, do more research and seek out dentist-shadowing opportunities before applying for it. You will be glad that you have done this.

By the way, although HKU is ranked as the best dental school in the world, there is no correlation between the quality of the teaching with its world ranking because the factors evaluated by QS World University Rankings do not include teaching quality, curriculum design or things of that matter. Please do not let the title fool you. In my opinion, you may be disappointed when you realize that the world’s best dental school is not as heavenly as it sounds.

Life after quitting dental school mid-way

When I was stuck in a rut and feeling like a zombie in dental school, I thought the world would end when I give up becoming a dentist. Guess what? It didn’t. Actually, it is much better and I can finally be happy with myself after quitting dental school.

Whilst being myself was never enough in dental school, I feel liberated and an increase in self-esteem and confidence when I transferred to study in the BA program. It was frowned upon to ask questions in dentistry because the professors often assume that you already know. I felt like I was teaching myself how to become a dentist instead of being guided.

However, in studying arts, I can freely raise questions, discuss my topic of interest and the teachers encourage that. The learning atmosphere in BA is much more vibrant and motivated than in dental school where people feel mostly trapped and antagonistic towards the school and the lessons they need to attend.

Currently, I am majoring in both English Studies and French. English Studies allow me to study literature and communication which have been my side hobbies and passion. I shoved them aside for many years to squeeze more time to pursue my medical career dream. I am also a foreign language and culture lover. Since I was 14 years old, I have learnt Japanese and French during summer holidays and I loved them.

The French saying “on revient toujours à ses premières amours” is very true. People always return to their first loves. My first loves are in fact English literature and foreign language. I just met another charming guy called Dentistry who is rich, charming but is incompatible with me.

Ending my dental career is like breaking up with a toxic boyfriend, healing and finding myself, and now having a new relationship with someone I love who makes me happy and feel free instead of trapped.

It is only normal that I share the same anxiety of many arts students. What should I do when I graduate? What job would I find ? Where would I like to work at ? To be honest, I have no idea.

Dentistry was such a set career path that I did not have to think about what to do after graduation. BA means I can do a large variety of jobs in the world. My communication skills and my expertise in English and French language and culture mean that I could work in any part of the world.

Recently, I am learning Norwegian alongside French as a hobbie because I met a wonderful girl from Norway in my French class who has become a very good friend of mine during my exchange semester at McGill Unviersity. I am open to all the opportunities in the world now. It is scary and exciting at the same time.

Despite the uncertainty of my future career path, I feel so much more hopeful about my future than when I was in dental school thinking how the miserable life of a dentist is going to be the rest of my life.

I will always be grateful that I had the chance to experiment with and study dentistry. Without it, I would not be as wise and as mature as I am today. It makes me cherish my current studies which are very enjoyable and challenging at times. The fact that I survived and passed all the exams in the three years of dental school gives me confidence in overcoming the difficulties I encounter now.

What do the other people think?

You maybe wondering what do the other people think about my decision to leave dental school. I will just be frank. It is tough.

My dad is still disappointed in me and always remind me that I failed to finish something that I started doing. He is also skeptical and pessimistic about the uncertainty of my future career and the much smaller average income of a BA graduate in comparison to that of a dentist. Many relatives and older people from church are judgmental about my career change.

My closest friends are supportive of me in choosing a new path which is healthier and more fulfilling for me, though they ask me sometimes whether I regret my choice.

Most of my classmates in dental school did not really talk to or contact me after I left. They have always been too occupied with dental training, and so school is probably the same without my presence.

Nevertheless, I am so grateful that I did find a few good friends in dental school who I still meet up with on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Their sharing of stories of struggling in dental school reminds me that I have made the right choice to quit after Year 3 instead of later when I would have been too invested to leave. When you leave a place, you will find out the difference between true friends and mere acquaintances.

One of the greatest lessons I learnt from leaving dental school is that regardless of what the other people think, you need to make your own choice in life because you are the one who lives your own life, not them. You need to face your own reality and decide what is best for you instead of being affected by the others’ opinions. It is way easier said than done. My counsellor helped me see through my tendency to be influenced by the others and led me to think clearly and make the right choice for myself.

All I want to say is…

There is no guarantee that life is easy. My life after quitting dental school has been full of new possibilities and self-doubts about uncertainties. It will never be perfectly smooth and I need to learn to take responsibility of my life, create my dream life, work hard, play hard and watch how the future unfolds for me.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or email me at justbeingmect@gmail.com. I will try my best to answer them and help as many people as possible who is struggling with dental school. You can also hear me share my story on Lolabees Career Coaching podcast. If you have a similar story, please share with me. You may also want to check out Lolabees Career Coaching’s blog which helped me so much when I was considering quitting dentistry.