It is what it is.

I can't say more than that.  Last night at 5:45, my mock board patient canceled and I was left scrambling to find someone to fill his place.  I realize that he had a legitimate reason for not being able to come, but it still sucked.  The first person I called off of my list was willing to come.  He is such a sweet, old man!  I was so grateful for his willingness to come in within 14 hours of me calling him.  The unfortunate thing was that I hadn't looked to see if he had enough calculus to qualify for the board.  So, I was basically going into to it not knowing if my patient would qualify.  Prof. Alexander told me that the most important thing was to have a patient in my chair.  If they didn't qualify, then I would get 10 points below the lowest score in my group of students.  I was sure praying that everyone would do well, so that my score didn't go too low.  So, needless to say, he didn't qualify.  He was a class III with deep pockets and lots of supragingival calculus, but the subgingival calculus wasn't distinctive enough.  I had cleaned half of his mouth last week, and so I just cleaned the other 2 quadrants today.  I finished him in plenty of time before my check out time.  I had two small areas that I missed.  Prof. Alexander told me that I may have had my instrument too far into the interproximal area.  She came and watched me use more of the toe of the instrument to pop it off.   I got him finished up, he paid for the appointment, and I was free to clean up my room.  It is what it is because I couldn't change the fact that my other patient canceled and that my other one didn't qualify.  If this had been real boards, I would have been screwed royally.  But it was just for the experience and it was a good one.

The one thing that made me feel a little better, was Prof. Alexander came over and showed me what my score would have been had the calculus been more substantial.  I would have passed.  Like I said, that made me feel a LITTLE better.

While I was the student examiner, my group took a mock written LA exam.  I realized something that I needed to study was the brand names of the generic LAs.  I was really pleased with my score.  I got 45 out of 50.  I was able to (finally) schedule my written LA exam at Pearson VUE.  I am taking it this Monday at 6:45 pm.  I can't wait to have one of my exams out of the way.  I will have the next several days filled with studying and getting prepared.  I will take it and then start preparing for the national board.  It will give a little more than 2 weeks to prepare for that one.  Then 10 days later I take Process of Care.  It will be such a relief to have all of the exams that I have to study for over with by February 21st.  That will be a glorious day!