CHAPTER 1
DENTAL SCHOOL
September 1957: orientation program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. The setting was a large lecture hall filled with 120 young, eager, very impressionable neophytes, who had only a vague idea of the task ahead. The composite (a pun in today's dental nomenclature) picture was that of a somber-faced group of men (plus two women!) awaiting the first official interchange between faculty and my new classmates. We were to be indoctrinated in the meaning of the exalted word professional, along with all its incumbent obligations, such as being a continual student throughout life, always dressing properly, and exhibiting personal behavior reflective of our new status in the esteemed world of respectable professions. The dean did introduce a moment of levity, saying that dental students were "the apple of every single girl's eye in Philadelphia," because unlike the medical and veterinary students, our lives would be enhanced by a work schedule that had us home in time for dinner every day, and that we would rarely be interrupted by house calls or late-hour hospital visits. In addition, we would have the ability to provide an excellent income plus gain instant social status wherever we went.
The lecture was well received, and I recall walking out of the building toward my rooming house dorm feeling more than a little bit inflated. I was a professional student, and my life is now taking me to high place of self respect. I was a member of an elite group. I had made a giant leap from my four undergraduate years at Tufts College (now University), where, as a commuting student, I spent three hours of every school day traveling between my home in Roxbury and the campus in Medford Massachusetts ... one street car, two subway trains, and one trackless trolley ... each way. Now the dean's message was eagerly received, especially the "apple" part.
That first weekend I went with a group of new friends to downtown Philadelphia to have a brew or two and just get to know each other, exchanging thoughts about the coming year as well as diminishing any anxiety about the difficult program which we all faced. As a few young woman passed by we would remember the "apple" and in a not too quiet voice bandy about a few dental terms that might serve as verbal bait to get us noticed, and perhaps even spark a bit of interest. I remember distinctly throwing out the word "prosthetics" which I saw in the first semester's schedule, realizing that it sounded impressive, even though I had no idea what a prosthesis was. That moment was an epiphany. I suddenly realized that I would be able to fit a bit of light-heartedness into the implementation of my professional career, and yet still remain a continual student. Although our attempt to impress any of the Philly lassies was unsuccessful, we had a fun evening, and were ready for our first lecture on Monday morning. We would survive.
The tone of the first few weeks of my freshman year was one of muted self-assurance. We were neophytes in a professional school, one that would enable us to achieve a highly respected as well as a comfortable financial status in life. We would be part of a medical community that, pre-governmental regulations and pre-insurance dependency, was held in very high esteem. I was so aware of my new place on the cusp (pun intended) of a wonderful life that I worked very hard and, as a result, received the best grades of my life in my first semester, studying longer and more focused than I ever thought possible. I was going to make it! Serious, serious, serious. By the middle of the second semester, with the increasing belief that a sophomore year lay clearly ahead, we all began to feel a bit more at ease. Translated: fun time could be interspersed. In a lab class where our task was to carve teeth to a perfect scale from wax blocks, I kept my finished products in an empty Bufferin jar (which was part of my supplies and equipment inventory). At the end of one lab session I showed the bottle to the instructor, and without hesitation stated that I used this storage method because, "the course gave me a headache." I was doing well at the time, which energized me. The instructor managed a slow smile and even a bit of a laugh. Success! There was hope for a smile or even a chuckle in that starched-white environment!
The laboratory technique classes were designed to acquaint us with dental materials and their eventual application in treating real people. Pre-clinical courses allowed us to become acquainted with methodology and then to begin to hone our skills In one of our first prosthetic exercises our objective was to learn to take a wax impression of an object, and then create a duplicate in dental stone. The Benjamin Franklin 50 cent piece was chosen for both its size and its crisp carving on the obverse side. Our exercise consisted if wrapping the edge of the coin in wax and then flowing the properly mixed water and powder slurry onto the coin. When the stone had set, we removed the wax border and examined the cast for consistency and clarity. I remember saying to my nearby classmates that here we were into our second week of dental school, and they were already teaching us to make money!
One popular dental material produced an ironic situation. The cost of gold was approximately 36 dollars an ounce, and we were allowed to keep any scraps of the metal that remained after we had cast our crowns and inlays. Since our dental casting gold was 18 carats, in today's market the value of those remnants has increased forty-fold. Many dental students in that era fashioned the scrap gold into charms for use as gifts for friends and family or to create a bracelet for their ladies, and almost every student carved a molar in wax and then cast a gold tooth as a reminder of their early clinical skills. We had precious little money, but plenty of gold!
During our first two years some of the courses, such as anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, and cytology were taught at the medical school, which was located just a few blocks away. Some of that school's faculty considered the dental students to be a step or two beneath their own students, and subsequently treated us with more than just a small bit of condescension. The professor who was in charge of the Human Anatomy class was unashamedly the leader of the pack. Gross anatomy is a difficult enough subject without being taught by a person who sneered at almost every question asked by an anxious student. We had a preview of the year ahead when on the first day he ambled to the blackboard and wrote the word LABORATORY, and with a smile on his face doctored (pun intended) it to read LABOR/ORATORY, saying that he wanted a lot of the first part, and none of the second. His dislike of us was so evident, that he concocted a scheme at the end of the first semester which was designed to unnerve everyone. The final exam involved identification of parts of the entire body. Throughout the course we had worked in dissection teams of four students per cadaver, in a lab with thirty tables. Before the test day each student was charged with placing a numbered paper tag on one body part. Thus, although each group of four would know what structure their tags represented, the other 116 in the lab were unknown. The exam would consist of each student moving from table to table, and writing down the names of the structures on the exam sheet. Since Penn operated on an honor system (one transgression and if caught you are gone!), the labels of the rest of the class would not be revealed. There would certainly be no discussion among ourselves before exam day. Supposedly that was a good way of administering a test. The class did the tagging, and the quiz format was both rational and valid.
The next day we gathered in the lab at our own tables. With exam sheets in hand, and were told to undrape the cadavers, to identify and write down the name of the tagged structures, and move on to the next table on signal. This would continue until the entire lab had been traversed. At least we knew what our table held, so we would begin by being a bit relaxed because we knew that we had at least four correct answers. As we lifted off the carbolic-acid soaked sheet we could hear a collective gasp in the room. The instructors had changed all the tags, and replaced them with totally different labels. Macabre humor of the finest kind!
The only moment of comic relief during the entire year in that class occurred one very warm and extremely humid spring afternoon (a Philadelphia special) when the dissection was intense and the air a bit foul, when the silence was broken by a soft, mournful voice that was heard saying, "I'm dropping this and taking a lit course." Even the physiology professor struck fear in the class by announcing that studying for his final exam is always extremely difficult. "I give the same exam every year, but the answers keep changing." Were our lecture notes and textbooks up to the minute? And that was decades before the explosion of information technology.
With this authoritarian background ever-present we soon developed a strong sense of camaraderie. We were not in competition with each other. We all had the same ticket for the same ride, and a spirit of co-operation pervaded. We were able to create light-hearted moments in both our pre-clinical and lecture courses. When a professor in the biochemistry class diagramed a complex hexagonal-shaped molecule on the blackboard and asked that it be identified, one pundit exclaimed, "tri-nitro chicken wire." That brought a welcome smile from the lecturer and a moment of relief for all of us.
One favorite prank consisted of starting a rumor about a surprise exam or an upcoming difficult lab procedure, and then watching it make the rounds over the next day or two. I must confess that my roommate and I once shared "inside information" about an extremely difficult pre-clinical exam that would consist of duplicating in wax the relationship of teeth in a specific biting movement, a most formidable undertaking. The news moved around slowly, and by the time it reached us a few days later it had been altered enough and became believable enough to generate within both of us a mild state of panic. An upperclassman who knew what was happening laughed, and said that we had learned the fine distinction between "bullshit" and "horseshit" ... the former being when you tell it, and the latter happens when you tell it so much that you yourself believe it.
With so much external pressure on us we had developed a willing attitude of helpfulness. Study notes were voluntarily shared, and tips for improving our lab exercises were exchanged. Everyone was willing to function as a neophyte tutor. But as a group we did not tolerate anyone who sought to gain personal advantage by pandering to or befriending the faculty, a term known then (and probably still identifiable now) as brown-nosing. However one of my classmates was so skilled in that practice and did it so often that the majority of the class soon became angry with him. Rather than confront him and show our displeasure, we devised a scheme that we knew would cure him of his disturbing addiction for good. We took an impression of a fellow classmate's very large nose, poured a model of this sizable proboscis in dental stone, and painted it brown. We sent it to the victim, at the dental school address. Outside the office of the dean was a bulletin board, where the his secretary would, on a daily basis, post notices of interest and/or importance. Any student mail addressed in care of the school was delivered to the dean's office so that notification could be posted, and the student could then pick up his mail from the secretary. Word spread quickly that the package had arrived, and a small crowd of fellow pranksters gathered at the bulletin board, seemingly to scan the notices, but actually waiting for the trap to spring. When the brown-noser retrieved his package we watched as he opened it. The laughter that echoed down the hall was loud enough to cure him of his habit. His figurative brown nose was eclipsed by his obvious red face.
Just as light chases dark, humor helped soften our stern environment. The ultimate fear of flunking out of school presented itself on occasion, but there were many mini-fears along the way. The Guidance Committee was the greatest heart-beat accelerator. It was a cluster of faculty members who were involved in each class's curriculum, and met periodically to evaluate each student group. At their meeting they would call in any student who might be having difficulty, real or perceived, and interview (interrogate?) them, suggesting remedial action if necessary or simply issuing a warning about the dangers and consequences of underperforming. The student would then be told that re-evaluation would occur in the future. The committee's meeting schedule was not posted, but everyone quickly knew when an inquisition was being held. The pattern was always the same. In the middle of a morning clinic session one would hear a name announced over the speaker system directing that student to report to the dean's office. Since the names were always called in alphabetical order, we knew when our danger moment for investigation had passed.
One morning, as I was heading for the lavatory, I asked a classmate to stand outside the door as I went inside and to listen to the clinic loudspeakers to hear if my name was called while I was in the bathroom. When I emerged I stood at my post by the door while he then went in to relieve himself. What a pleasant memory. We were even able to laugh at it then. At no other moment in my four years at Penn was I able to comfort myself more by recalling the words of James Boswell in his biography of Samuel Johnson, when he stated that one should "consider how unimportant all this will seem a twelve-month hence." Again, being an English major does help facilitate dental education.
With that in the background, both literally and figuratively, I must confess to an indiscretion to which I had been a party oh so long ago. However, I was the facilitator, but not the beneficiary. In our histology class, which was taught at the medical school in the second semester of our freshman year, we had weekly spot quizzes. They were short and precise. We were given a glass slide that contained an embedded specimen, and by using the microscope had to identify that slice of human tissue. The slide-de-jour was a specimen cut from a section of mammary gland. I wrote down my answer quickly, and while idly glancing around, noticed that my friend who was sitting on my right was staring off into space. He appeared to be stymied by the object under examination. The look of bewilderment on his face tempted me to help him. Whispering or jotting down the answer in a note would have gotten us both into a heap of trouble. Struck with a thought, I quietly hummed the tune of a then-current Dean Martin hit. A smile slowly moved across his face, and he quickly wrote down the correct answer. The song was "Memories Are Made Of This."
Having been born and raised in Boston (Roxbury) I did not realize, as a youngster, that I had an accent of any kind. My name was Benahd Pahk, and I lived on a third floh. I drove a cah, and on Saturdays took a bahth. As grating and unmelodious the oft-mimicked Boston accent was to others, the Philadelphia (Baltimore-Jersey) nasal twang sounded strange to me. I was often asked to say certain words, such as hahf (half) and lasah (laser). Once when I needed change I asked if anybody had "fowah quatahs for a dollah." The joshing was good natured, and when a close friend dubbed me "Boston Bernie" the nick-name stuck, and I no longer had to perform diction exercises. Thank Gawd. But now that accent is long gone. Having lived in Pennsylvania, Louisiana and then in Connecticut for the remainder of my life, any remnant of that flavorful linguistic aberration has long been deleted from my vocal computer memory. However, hearing it spoken brings back a flood of pleasant memories. And it is not musical. I can describe the discordant sound that I now hear as being akin to the melody that would be produced by a musician trying to play Mozart on a tuba. Or, as fellow Bostonian President John Kennedy might have said, a tuber.
