The Monkey on Your Back/Why you Want Out of Hygiene

 You were accepted to dental hygiene school because you had good grades, good work ethic and excelled in most things you tried...right!  I believe my experience is typical of most hygiene students. Spring quarter of my senior year I finished my prophy and got the clinic instructor to check my patient and I would be done. She checked my patient and told me I had missed some calculus on the mesial of 14.  I could not feel the calculus I missed so just scaled the whole mesial surface and had her check again.  The calculus was still there!  Again, I tried to find the calculus with my explorer...couldn't find it...scaled the mesial surface again....got my instructor again....yes it was gone!  I graduated that spring knowing I should do a perfect prophy every time...I had never done a perfect prophy....I didn't know how to find all the calculus...I now had one hour to do a prophy not the three hours I had in school....the dentist doing the exam was the instructor.  I believe many young hygienists  leave the profession within a couple years for this reason.  I had been practicing 10 years when I got a part-time job as a clinic instructor at a dental hygiene school. I was finding missed calculus when I did the exams....WHEN HAD I LEARNED TO FIND CALCULUS!  The last ten years when I was checking if I missed anything, I had learned to find calculus.  That's the year the monkey came off my back and I have since found profound pleasure in my work.  Every prophy you do is better then the one before.. every day you get better and better!  I'm 66 years old now and will work in my beloved and fascinating profession til I 'stick the fork in the wall'.