by Andrew Martinez ’16

I attended a dental internship at Texas A&M Baylor College of Dentistry, where I experienced actual dental techniques, and courses and taught to first year dental students. The program was called Summer Pre-Enrichment Program Collegiate II (SPEPII). SPEP was centered around the Dental Admissions Test (DAT), the instructors wanted students to perform well on the difficult exam. Courses taught were Head and Neck Anatomy, Respiratory Anatomy, Cardiology, and Oral Histology. The course load was huge, on top of studying for the DAT.

Andrew (fourth from the right) with the intern class at the Texas A&M/Baylor College of Dentistry

BUT! I had fun along the way. I made 29 new friends interested my end goal—dentistry. The intern class of 30 tugged along for six long weeks and completed the program grateful and ready to tackle the DAT. During the program we had the opportunity to prep and fill a tooth model (typodont) with amalgam and composite fillings. We also got the chance to construct a gold grown from scratch, starting with gold pieces of metal and melting them down to fill a model, which each intern made. Overall the experience was amazing, and I had a blast studying/torturing myself for 6 weeks. We kept ourselves going and motivated by telling ourselves. “Don’t Worry I’m Almost a Dentist!”

Like I said…..Don’t worry!!