Y is for You

Has anyone ever sat in a room with one hundred and eight peers and been told that you are the best and the brightest? That the odds of you succeeding are 98%? That your intelligence is so far above average that you are in a different class now?

I have.

Getting into dental school was not that hard. It should have been nearly impossible. Most people who start on the predental track in undergrad don't finish because it is too hard. Most of those who do finish don't have a high enough GPA or score high enough on the DAT or have enough volunteer hours to compete with those few who do. The few who are invited for interviews stammer and don't give the correct answers. Very few applicants are accepted to dental school.

I was.

You think I'm bragging? Nope. I'm not proud, not even that I got into dental school TWICE. That's impossible, you say. What would even be the point of that? Because my divorce was finalized July 29, 2010, and school started ten days later. I was a mess. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't concentrate, couldn't pass the tests. All of my class grades were dismal. The only thing that barely saved me was my lab grades. I was good at that. My GPA didn't measure up for two semesters in a row, which means automatic dismissal from dental school. I appealed and they let me take a year off and start fresh.

I did.

Then I flunked out again. My GPA was something like 0.02 points lower than it needed to be. The Academic Standards committee decided I wasn't dental school material after all. I was not one of the best and the brightest. I was the two percent. My intelligence did not measure up. I was a failure.

I am.