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My name is Shahrzad Dashti, I’m a fifth year final year student at Manchester. I was
torn between Manchester and the other universities I’d had offers from. I was really lucky,
I had a choice of four to pick from. I really chose Manchester because I’d done a degree
before in another university, in Cardiff, and this time round I wanted to be a little
bit closer to home. The other reason was Manchester had an excellent reputation – having spoken
to a few local dentists in the area, they recommended it highly so that’s why I made
my decision. The academic content of the course is fairly intense. There is quite a heavy
workload but having said that, everyone really pulls together and we all have a lot of support
from the university itself so you never feel that you’re overburdened in any way. Towards
the fourth and fifth year it becomes more clinical. You tend to be on clinics most days,
so you’re getting a really broad base of experience in a lot of different areas. The
facilities are great – we were the first year to go into the new phantom head room,
which is brand new, it’s got all top of the range equipment and there’s no better
place to learn to do things before you go and do it for real. Outreach teaching starts,
generally, in your fourth year. There are two different types of outreach teaching – there’s
restorative and there’s paediatric. Generally you’re in restorative one day a week and
you’re in paediatrics for a full day every other week. It’s really great fun. You get
a really good mix of patients so you get to see some really interesting things you perhaps
wouldn’t see on a day to day basis anywhere else and also you’re getting really good
experience of real life dentistry, exactly how things will go when you go into practice,
so it’s a really good learning experience as well. At Manchester we have a really really
great system where the students can interact with the school as often and as easily as
they want. Manchester also has the Manchester Dental Student Society, which is run for students
by students so they organise events such as the ball, fresher’s initiation. They also
have a large involvement in any problems some of the student’s may have as well. So, apart
from the student rep, you can always talk to your student society as well. The plan
at the moment, after I graduate, is to apply for a vocational training year – it’s
currently called the Dental Foundation Training Year 1. It’s a one year scheme where you
go into practice and you get a really broad base of experience. Most of the fifth years
will be going into vocational training next year. I want to stay in the Northwest/Merseyside
area. The jobs are currently being released at the moment, so I’m in the process of
applying at the moment. Having done a degree before I knew that coming back to do dentistry
would be a really hard task. My first degree was three years and I had a gap year in between
– so five years seemed like a really hard long journey, but if anybody is thinking about
it, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. I really enjoyed my five years and I can’t
believe how quickly it has gone and I know I’ve got a great career ahead of me so I’m
really pleased that I did it.