Class of 2020

After a month, I've decided that this moment is an essential part of my life, it marks the end of an era, and soon-to-begin of a new one. In acknowldgement of this important part of my life(well, it IS 3 tough years), I felt the need to record it before I lost touch of my feeble memories. I realize it's really important for me to blog now, because I do have very poor memory.

After 3 years of my Masters studies as an orthodontic student, last month marked the peak of this journey. It was time to showcase the results of my hardwork in this past 3 years. Apart from the usual assignments and exams we were to take, we also had to publish a paper, write a thesis, and present 5 outstanding clinic cases that was done by oneself.

25th May 2020

Case Report Exam

In the past years, the exam was held in a clinic where each students prepare and showcase 5 clinical cases they deemed the most outstanding, 10 teachers will go around each students' cubicle in turns to grade them. Usually they'd ask questions to make sure you know what you did, and give comments and suggestions on how to do better.

This year, however, due to the pandemic and a lot of changes in policy, the school has decided to change it into an online conference presentation.

The meeting begun at 1:30pm, and each person was given 30 minutes including presentation time and Q&A. As I was the last to present, so it was 5.30pm by the time it was my turn. It was an excruciating 3 hours

Thankfully, my presentation went really well. The panel of judges that day was 赵青，周力（My mentor), 李娟

Maybe I was the last one and they were running out of questions to ask(The cases were quite repetitive and redundant), or maybe they were cutting me some slack since I was the foreigner, the supposed 10 minutes questioning was just a short 3 minutes?

Prof Zhao was so strict and detailed towards the other students, but she was extremely kind to me, I'm so grateful for that. I'll never forget it.

Prof Li didn't even ask any, she merely said "I have no questions."

It was too easy for me.

Nevertheless, I'm grateful. And everything went smoothly, that's what matters.

And for the next two days, we prepared for the proper thesis defence.

28th May 2020

Thesis Defence

The most important day, the most anxious I've ever been, was this day.

As usual, I was the last to present, and as usual it was an excruciating 3 hours to wait till my turn. Note to my juniors to pick mentors with names starting with that alphabeth that starts earlier in the list. Mine was Z. A slightly difference was the rest of the students who were in chengdu has to do the presentation live, so it was only two of us who had to do an online presentation.

How drastic the difference on the two sides of the conference isn't it? Anyway, the teachers were very kind to me as well. I'm very grateful.

However, it's still very sad that I didn't get to take the usual photos with the teachers, with my batchmates, and receive the bouquet. It just felt like... a very poor ending to my 3 year journey, no matter how glad I am this is over.

To make things worse, there are no school graduation ceremony, so no 全体照 either. I wasn't able to attend the MBBS' graduation ceremony either, which is the worst. Who would have known that he day that I left Chengdu, will be the last chance for me to see those who would be leaving. Not being able to see Pravina off, and congratulate her in person will be one of the biggest regrets I will have this year.

The closest thing to a "ceremony" that I will have, that everyone in my school will be having this year, is just a live broadcast of a small scaled university ceremony in which a few handpicked students are allowed to attend to represent each school.

It's still so pathetic because no names were called out, and everyone took pictures with a mask on, which was pointless.

It was indeed quite depressing. I was always looking forward to being done with my studies and start my working life, so this is quite important to me. I guess I'm very ceremonial like that.

Looking back at some of the memories made in the past 3 years: