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Everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Dotsu Dental Podcast with your host
myself, Sriracha.
The focus of this podcast is your undergraduate and dental school experiences from dental
students and dental professionals through valuable discussions.
Through sharing the journeys and stories of current dental students and dental professionals,
our goals to help you find answers or guidance for your own pre-dental journeys.
We are super excited to have Sonny Brook Dental School alum and current NYU Bellevue Hospital
OMSF resident Brandon Gallagher joining us today.
Brandon graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in
chemical biology.
He then completed dental school at Sonny Brook and is now an OMSF resident at NYU.
During his undergraduate years, Brandon played D3 basketball, connected to research, and
was a tutor for the organic chemistry, along with being part of many clubs and even started
a few businesses during dental school.
Brandon, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for making the time to join us today.
Have you been?
I've been great, man.
Thanks for having me.
No, first, really, I appreciate you reaching out and helping me schedule this.
Dude, I really appreciate this.
I hope we can kind of collab like some chop ups, some posts between students of dentistry,
dentists, my page, your page.
I mean, this is huge.
I'm a huge supporter of what you're doing.
We need more of this out there.
I mean, we really do.
I know what you're doing and what you want.
I think so too, because even during, when I decided to go to pre-dental, I was originally
met, but I went to the dental.
There was no resources out there for me.
I feel like those are Instagram pages, but there was no direct contacts with dental students
and professionals like yourself to really understand what dentistry is like and what
the pre-dental process could be for many different people.
I think that's one of the motivations of starting this thing up.
Once you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, where you like to do fun,
stuff like that.
Yeah, man.
Well, first off, had to wrap, since we're coming back to the Stony, coming back in-house.
Nice.
There we go.
Nice.
Yeah, I got a couple things.
I always got to wrap Stony and broke around, but I don't know where your roots.
I mean, as far as me, just actually, I was kind of pre-med, pre-health.
I didn't know what I wanted to do at first.
I started out at NYU Polytechnic Institute of Technology.
NYU Poly actually transitioned to NYU Tandon School of Engineering now.
I went there.
I was recruited for basketball.
They got rid of the team there after my second year, and it was going well.
I had a great group of friends there, great guys.
So I transferred to Stevens, and then I finished up there.
I actually didn't play my final year of college because I started to transition into, I was
shadowing over that last summer, I was starting to hone in on what I wanted to do.
I realized I wanted to go dentistry.
I was shadowing dentists or surgeons, and that was really it after I saw those two guys.
Dr. Nick Castro, actually, believe it or not, he's a Stony Brook fact team member.
I hope you got to meet him.
No, I haven't met him yet, but I know of him.
No?
You will.
I'll introduce you if we have to.
Absolutely.
Let's do it.
I'm a pre-doctoral surgeon from Suffolk County.
Yeah, nice.
But yeah, you've got plenty of time, man.
So Brennan, let's start at the beginning.
Why dentistry?
What gave you that spark?
What's keeping you lit to this day?
What got me started, it was, well, I always wanted to help people go into healthcare,
right?
And then I met Dr. Nick Castro, Dr. Capilano at the gym, believe it or not.
I was, I used to get up.
So they would go to the gym at four o'clock, five o'clock when it opened in the morning.
In high school, I used to get up and go there and do a quick basketball workout before school.
And I saw them in the distance.
They had a, they had Dr. Capilano's office manager who was kind of like a heavier set
guy, friendly fellow, and he used to just rip on him the whole workout.
Other people in the gym would start chiming in like, yeah, we'll be cracking up.
So I was like, I like these guys.
I like these guys.
Turns it out in college, I actually got to meet them.
I thought they were construction workers.
They would come to the gym in these big pickup trucks, you know, Lincoln navigators, Jeeps,
trucks, right?
Yeah.
They would come in an all black.
So the gym community called them the men in black.
And then when I was studying for organic chemistry, one of my friends' moms was a nurse said,
oh no, they're dentists.
Like that guy's a normal surgeon.
They got A's and Orgog.
I'll go ask them.
So I met them, shot with them, and I switched from going medicine to dentistry.
And here we are in our surgery.
What year was that of college?
That was like your name?
That was that was after first year, starting second year.
So it was the beginning of summer before my second year of college.
Gotcha.
I think I see Dr. like Nicraste, Nicraste was the name, Nicraste?
Yeah.
You know, I think I looked at his Instagram page.
This man's like pumping hundreds, you know, on the bed.
Yeah, crazy.
Dude's huge.
That's nice.
Yeah.
You gotta meet him.
He's a stud.
He's in Long Island?
Yeah.
He's a station area?
Yeah, maybe.
All right.
I'm down to meet him.
So like, you know, many, many pre-dentals find their why's in the dentistry, like towards
the end of their college years, you know, people that are lucky, I guess they realize it earlier,
like sophomore, you know, freshman year.
So how'd you approach like undergrad knowing that you wanted to pursue your degree in school?
Like after you realized, you know, you want to go dental route instead of med school?
Well, that's a great question.
First thing was that I knew I'd have to take a gap year, but I used it to my advantage
because I was switching from studying for the MCAT at that point to studying for the
DAT, right?
So I was like, okay, I'm just going to have to take a step back, figure it out.
But I knew I could work in the gap year.
I could learn how to read books, learn stocks.
I consume a lot of Garrett Vaynerchuk's content.
I actually produced some music for that year.
I was working three different jobs.
I was working two lifeguard jobs, one weekends, one week nights.
And during the day, I was actually a dental assistant, a surgical assistant for Dr. Capuano.
So I was working at the oral surgery's offices, the two offices I was going between.
You figure it out, right?
Like, you know, you can't always tell what the next turn in the road is going to be.
You can see the destination, sometimes that destination might mold a little bit, but you
have to be adaptable.
You have to be self-aware, know that you're going to make the most of it.
You have to be adaptable to say, this is how I'm going to adapt and make it into something
worthwhile.
And I must say, I'm the biggest advocate for gap years because that gap year, I got to
learn where I was in the scope of the grand scheme of the world, right?
I'm not out of the world, but on like the real world basis.
If you go through life only being in school, you really only know how to study for that
next test, how to interact on a classroom basis, not literally, but figuratively, right?
You need to know what's bigger than the classroom.
Yeah, I think it's totally huge.
And, you know, for people that, you know, might realize they want to go dentistry, like
junior year senior, I mean, gap year is like something they should really probably consider.
I know some people that have just gone straight through, but I feel like, you know, if you
have time and you want to get more experience and you want to like learn your gap year,
I think it's perfect, honestly.
So how'd you, you know, you understand you want to go dental?
So how did you set up your experiences throughout undergrad to kind of set up that success and
make sure you're on track?
In undergrad?
Yeah.
In undergrad, let's see.
I mean, it's really just trying to get the best grades you can.
It's molding your application towards the school you're studying more.
I say the same thing when applying to residencies, you know, you got to kind of see what those
people do.
So if you're an undergrad, you got to see what dentists do.
And then the next step is, well, there are different types of dentists.
Have you seen a variety of what those dentists have done?
What did you like?
What did you not like?
How do you see yourself fitting to the big picture?
And when you figure all these things out, you literally just made your interview scenario,
your interview conversation.
Yeah, for sure.
So let's go to undergrad now.
So you're in undergrad.
I know you did some research in there.
So can you talk a little bit about your research experience and kind of, you know, what kind
of role did that play into, you know, applying to dental school and just, you know, how'd
you get the opportunity?
We're hitting all the academic points.
Let's do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Research, it was great.
I worked for Dr. Glave and Dr. Kadeviana at Stevens.
And basically I was like assisting a PhD student on all the research she did.
She was a foreign exchange student from China who was now pursuing her PhD after finishing
her master's.
And it was in a lab.
We were doing gene amplification of the, oh, the Warner, the Warner's Helicase Gene.
The Warner's Gene basically, I mean, long story short, we were putting gene amplification
on it.
So it would light up to see if it made it through the nuclear pore complex into the nucleus
of the cell.
Turns out it did.
And this is a gene involved in aging.
And then if you know, Warner's disease, Warner's syndrome, I forget the exact, it has accelerated
aging.
So kind of whether that protein made it into the nucleus or not kind of showed how the
disease panned out.
And what relation did it have to dental school?
Absolutely nothing.
It showed that I got involved.
When I stopped playing basketball, that's when I picked up the research project and
I really got into that.
I had to stay there like four days a week over the summer.
Not bad, but like early in the summer.
So I don't know, it was just involvement.
All right.
I actually got an award for it, which was super nice.
And I was super appreciative to win the award.
Just I mean, I don't know if I'm being modest or not.
I mean, I don't think I earned that award anymore than anyone next to me.
It was just, I was really appreciative to win it.
But there were so many people doing research.
How do you pick someone to win, you know?
But so yeah.
Nice.
So how about shadowing and assisting?
Did you, you know, how'd you get involved there?
Dr. Caster, Dr. Capuano, they had a third guy back then, another Nick.
Dr. Caster's first name is Nick.
There was another Nick, Giannuzzi, who I, so I shadowed those three guys throughout that
summer actually when I was working on research.
So I would work four days a week in research.
I would come home, I would shadow on Friday and then Saturday, Sunday, I would work in
Lifeguard.
Yeah.
Do you think like, you know, shadow really just opened your eyes to the different kind
of things that you could do like in dentistry?
Because you were pre-med before, so, you know, did that just kind of like submit your, your
choice going this route?
100%.
Yeah.
You know, you gotta, you gotta surround yourself with mentors that you, you admire, that you
want to be like, that you, you look up to and mentors that are going to mentor you,
you know?
And then another thing that doesn't always pan out, but does, and, and it did.
And that's, you know, that's what I recommend because you gotta find a mentor that, that's
willing to stick through the course with you.
And I feel like once you find one, like, you know, then you start branching out to more
people and more people and more people, like the doctor I work for, work for right now,
he knows Dr. Puthi, which, you know, too.
And, you know, I've been going to him like a couple of weeks, a couple of, like maybe
five times total now.
And like, you know, every time I go, I'm just so impressed with how we like can handle
patients and how he just, like, it feels like the job he's doing right now is like
his side hustle because the man, the man's in like the OR, he's doing, he's teaching
us Tonya Brooke.
He's doing so many different things and it just, it's like inspiring.
Every time I go there, it just rejuvenates my like, my motivation for doing this, you
know?
And you need to keep doing that.
He's phenomenal.
Dr. Puthi, he wrote my letter of recommendation for surgery programs.
Great.
I'm going to more Fridays for my WISNT, I think.
Are you really?
For the consult, yeah.
Oh, for the consult?
Yeah, just for a consult.
And then we'll see what happens after.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm excited.
I've seen, I've shared it a couple of times where he took out wisdom teeth and I want
him doing it.
I'm going to have to do the job.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So what were your like major obstacles that you faced like during undergrad?
I know obviously you said that you had to transfer into Stevens.
So, you know, once you got it, got into Stevens, like what major hurdles did you have to overcome
just to, you know, set yourself up for down school?
Oh, sure.
So actually this is, this is a loaded question.
There were a lot of hurdles in that transfer, especially having done two years already and
now transferring in as a junior.
Like, I want to ask you a quick question.
Yeah, for sure.
Let's just bring the audience, you know, whoever's listening in, how we met, right?
Because we met before.
I was going to touch on this.
Yeah.
So, in ninth grade, I believe, so I just moved, I lived in Jersey in eighth grade.
So I moved to Smithtown ninth grade, which is in Long Island, and there was a gym over
there called NYSC.
I think they shut it down now.
I think it's gone.
New York Sports Club, man.
They shut it down.
It went down, but that's where I met them, by the way.
Dr. McCash, yeah, I'm assuming at that gym.
Yeah.
So, you know, ninth grade, I was on the, I was a training for basketball essentially
at my school.
And then, you know, I'm in the gym there and I see this man right here, Brandon, Brandon.
I don't know, I feel like he looked really familiar for something, but I don't remember.
And then like we just started playing and it was a good time.
And I think we probably played a couple of times there.
And then, you know, fast forward to college now.
My first like pre-dental meeting, when I switch into pre-dental, I see Brandon, like
he comes and presents for us.
I think with Sean, I believe.
Yeah.
He's an Ortho resident, I believe, second year?
Yeah.
Second year Ortho resident, Stony Brook.
Yeah.
Cool.
And then in the, in the meeting, I'm like, and then I text him after, I'm like, wait
a minute, are you the guy from like four years ago when you played in the gym?
And he's like, yeah, that's him.
And that's, it's just like a small room.
It was like a small room moment right there.
And you know, that's when I just kind of realized like, I would never suspect this man is in
like dentistry or like doing anything.
And I feel like that's how you felt with Dr. Castro.
And yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, I guess the moral of the story right there is like, you never know who you're
going to talk to and you never know who, what kind of connections they might have.
So it's important to just keep, keep everyone in the back of your mind, you know, if they
catch your eye and just kind of, you know, you never know what life will take you.
I guess that's like the moral of the story right there.
Yeah.
And follow the heart.
Yeah.
All the people you connect with, you know, because we connected through basketball and
the dentistry.
And now we're connecting on, I mean, you're doing a lot with social media.
I have a big history with social media.
We could talk more about that later because I have some ideas, but oh, and then the fact
that just you're realizing that there's a lot more to a person than just their career.
Or like we're saying in undergrad, and I also, I looked into the last meeting that you had
with the last student, just like you said, there's a lot more to your resume when you're
applying to dental school resume, just everything, your whole being your portfolio than just
academics.
Exactly.
And we had Dr. Kim on.
She's a general practice resident.
I think she works in Philadelphia now, but she, you know, Dr. Diana Kim, you're my network.
Yeah.
I don't know.
So, you know, she told us that like, you know, you got to be more than a more than just a
bookie because dentistry is such a social, such a social like practice, depending on
like, I guess where you go, but either way, you're dealing with people.
And at the end of the day, if you can deal, if you can deal with paper better than people,
there's going to be kind of an issue there, you know, just a credibility connections with
your patients, stuff like that.
So and, you know, I even see that when I work in my job too, like when I, I find myself,
you know, when I'm stuck in the books studying for an exam or something, I'm not this, I'm
not as social to other people like patients as I would be if I, you know, or I was actively,
you know, being more than my, my academics.
So I think it's a really big part of, and I'm sure you're going to test that too.
Oh, absolutely.
You got to be a social person.
It doesn't even have to do with, with talking necessarily.
It has to do with the appreciation of connecting with another person.
Exactly.
And it's, it's so true.
If you really think about it, it's so true because I started out at the beginning of
residency, just not, not, it's not about me, but it's the fact that like you want to connect
with people probably 50% or more of my patients here, especially in the Bellview clinic.
There's, they're 100% Spanish speaking.
And so look, I'm going to figure out how to speak Spanish.
And yes, my girlfriend speaks Spanish, you know, and we're learning.
So a little bit of cheats here and there.
But the fact is, is like, no, no, no, like every conversation you're just trying a little
more and you're connecting with that patient and they appreciate it so much.
Exactly.
And I went on a mission trip to Guatemala.
You might have, you might have heard.
And you know, I took Spanish for maybe six, seven years, like throughout school, no, like
through middle school, high school.
And like, honestly, I didn't learn at all as much as I did that first week I was there
because over there, it's just like, we lived with the host family, right?
So the host family only spoke Spanish.
So we had to speak and like my Spanish got so much better just in that one, one or two
weeks that we were there.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah.
And then, you know, when I come back, our office, we had a couple, you know, Spanish
speaking patients and my doctor, Dr. Vinoy, like he knows how to speak Spanish and.
Fenoi?
Yeah.
He knows a little bit.
Yeah.
Dan?
Yeah.
I know Dan too.
Yeah, nice.
He's just a ball, it's your mural.
I know.
I'm taking him, I'm taking him to come to the wreck and we play a little bit sometimes.
Oh dude, I got to get out there to Stony Brook.
I'll get Sean out, we go play some ball.
Oh yeah, I'm done.
He should be around, right?
Yeah, Stony Brook.
He's in the area too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, he, so Dr. Vinoy, he was able to speak to the patient, make her understand
the whole procedure in Spanish and like that probably led him to getting the, getting
the treatment, you know what I mean?
Like that's probably what convinced her to trust this guy and like do the treatment.
So I feel like, you know, that's just a quick example of, you know, how long, how, you know,
how connecting with your patients can go, I guess.
Right, right.
You got to, you got to, and I wouldn't phrase it as gaining the trust of your patient.
It's really connecting with your patient to, to give them the treatment they need.
Yeah.
You know, and I, most of the time I do end up having to get a Spanish translator, especially
early on, because you need to make sure that they understand fully.
And then there's the case where some interpreters don't know how to translate the medical terms.
Did it, but regardless, yeah, actually just to touch on that point, you said, and go out
a mile, you learned more in one week.
I think it's because you were speaking it.
Yeah.
One of the things I found is I started with Duolingo like a year and about two years ago.
It's great up to a certain point, but then it has you like rewriting things and no, no,
I'm not trying to read and write.
I just want to speak and listen, you know, and we got to make an app to do that.
That's, I mean, it's so fundamental.
If you actually want to speak Spanish, you got to stop writing and reading and writing
it.
And then you got to be able to understand, you know, like, so high school, like vocab
exams, like just spelling, like that stuff doesn't translate to speaking and converting
and understanding because they're native tongue.
The native tongue is so different from like Ola, Coma, Stas, like, you know what I mean?
So you got to, you got to, it's got to be deeper than that.
It's back to be more conversational.
So, um, no, and then you got the dialects, right?
Cause there's different.
Exactly.
Speaking of, yeah, when we were there, there was like an interstation and stuff.
So, you know, patients come, we think, Oh, it's just Spanish.
We got it.
No, there's like over a hundred different dial or maybe third, like different dialects
within.
It's crazy.
It's just, it blows my mind, but, um, let's get back to, you know, obstacles and, uh,
undergrad.
Yeah.
What'd you got going on over there?
Oh, okay.
So obstacles.
Okay.
So imagine yourself in high school and you just made your friend group after your first
and second year, all these, your buddies that you came into high school with, you got
two more years together, you're going to apply the colleges together.
I know you switched to another school because athletics, you know, external factors contributing
to family, friends, sports, the future.
Um, so that's kind of, of what happened.
But when I switched being on the basketball team, wasn't what I thought, you know, I thought
I was going to, I had a really good time on the basketball team.
The coach was super understanding where they would, you know, if you're an exam, they let
you out of practice early or the coach, you would just say, don't come tonight.
You have to file tomorrow.
We get it.
You know what I mean?
Like, um, when I switched to Stevens, it wasn't like that.
I was actually, uh, there was a biochemical bio, biochemical, you know, engineer, biomedical
engineering guy on the team, but I was chemical biology, basically, pre-med.
I was the only one on the team.
Everyone else was business.
There were a couple engineers.
Um, no, but, but there wasn't, there wasn't that understanding.
And then hour and a half, two hour practices turned into three, three and a half hour practice.
I think I got to study.
And, you know, I'm not going to be a professional basketball player.
I'm not going to be a basketball coach.
You know, hopefully one day maybe I will, I'd love to give back, but the fact is, is
what, you know, your career route is different.
And we have to differentiate hobbies and kind of, you know, where they are in terms of your
life.
I love the basketball growing up.
I still do.
I don't have time to play anymore, but you know, it's, it, it's, I don't know, it's crazy
how some, some things can, can turn from a hobby and like, like your, your love passion
and just kind of get suffocated a little bit.
You know, there's like a term for that.
I forgot what it's called, but I felt the same way coming out of high school.
Um, you know, played like three years of RC basketball and like when I came here, obviously
you're going to be a little bit better than everyone else, but there's not that same,
like you lose your kind of sense of purpose.
You're not like on a team anymore.
You're just kind of playing it recreationally.
And then you have to do, you know, your pre-dental requirements or whatever you gotta do just
to get in, you know, so sometimes I feel like that, but honestly basketball is something
that keeps me like engaged in school.
Honestly, like I feel like I do better in school when I'm, you know, I get that fix,
you know, escapeism.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I just kind of resets, you know, your mind, you don't, you get out of it, you know, exactly.
I gotta reset once so on for sure.
For sure.
Um, so we're just going to go right back, right back into it.
So, um, can you review your dental dental school application, like the process?
How'd you kind of take it on?
Oh, the, okay, the application.
So I told you I took the gap year.
I finished.
So we have to kind of picture this.
I studied for the DAT right when I graduated.
So when we were really partying, you know, graduating college and whatnot, I'd go out
one night and I would miss the next night kind of thing.
You know, I'd go to the beer, um, the Brooklyn brewery tour, for example, but I didn't go
out after that.
Like, do I regret it?
You know, these are, those are experiences I missed out on.
And, you know, we missed out a lot on this route of pre-health, but, um, no, it's, it's
what I had to do because I had less than two months to study for the DAT.
The way I structured it though, this, this would really help undergrads was I broke it
up.
So what's one, let me ask you, what's the one subject on the DAT exam that you don't
learn anything about in dental school?
Probably just PAT.
PAT.
So I actually studied the PAT during winter break.
So I just focused in on the PAT winter break, knocked it out in like two and a half weeks,
cracked it that pack.
That's what I used for that.
Starting the summer, I went right into biochem, went right into general chem, orgo, right,
reading, math, and basically just round the clock just went between those subjects.
However, I did it.
You knock off one by one and you go DAT boot camp tests and then I took the test and it
was all her true from there.
But yeah, less than two months, unfortunately, but you know, you get the score you need and
you get into school.
Nice.
Yeah.
No, I think, uh, many people like try to cram stuff within like six weeks or something,
but it just, I guess it just depends on how different you are as a person.
Like if you can do that, hey, dude, I'm no one stopping you.
But like, you know, if you got, if you put your, if you set aside, like that's what I'm
going to do during winter break, I'm standing aside like a solid two or three months and
just kind of grind it, grind it out, get it done.
You know, there's no, there's no like immediate rush.
I want to make sure I have enough time to just kind of do it.
Yeah.
You know, and I feel like that's where a gap year might come in where some people will
feel like they have to rush to the DAT when, you know, they got to finish their courses
or they got to do whatever they got to do, you know, life hits you.
So, you know, people put themselves under pressure to finish like right away in four
years.
That's what you're supposed to do.
Right.
You know, that's a huge, huge thing.
I think everyone that I've talked to on this podcast, they've probably half of them have
taken one or two gap years.
So like, yeah, not like, and the average matriculation, what is it?
Like a 26 or something, 20s, like it's high there.
It's high 20s.
Except for dental school.
I hope not.
Yeah.
But, um, yeah.
I don't know.
So, so you took your DAT, uh, you know, you got your extra feel-gooders together.
You know, your shadowing, whatever.
That's a high DAT score, man.
Is it still at a 30?
Um, yeah.
I think it's at 30.
And people are, like, there were, there were 20, 26 is 28s.
Oh, no, no, no.
I mean, like the age of matriculation into dental school.
Like how does that work?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not, it's not, yeah, it's not 20.
26, again.
I wouldn't have gotten in.
I think, I think Tony Burke is like a 21 or something.
20, around there.
A little higher.
Yeah.
I think it's like a 22.
I would have 22 or something like that.
Actually, I mean, not an advertisement, but we, we put together, Sean and I, and we put
together pre-dent mentor maps.
So we kind of organized, um, statistics for each dental school.
It's a little higher for Tony, bro, from what I remember.
But yeah, just the pre-dent mentor map is, is a good help to tool for that.
Nice.
We'll get, we'll get into all that.
I want to get into all that stuff, honestly.
Like what are you doing?
Yeah.
No street deleted.
We'll get into that.
Um, so, so, uh, you know, now you got your DAT, you got all your scores together.
So how'd you go on choosing which dental school you wanted to apply to and how'd you
kind of narrow it down to Stony Grave?
Okay.
Great, great question.
Um, this was the kind of the first point in my life where I was a plant, you know, like
my parents helped me with school.
You want to apply to guidance.
We all have guidance counselors in high school.
Oh, at school, you want to go to what do you think you want to do, blah, blah, blah, and
playing basketball in college really kind of influenced that around athletics and around
having a strong academic school.
Cause I knew I kind of wanted to be pre-health along the way, but, um, for dental school,
it was like, well, I don't know how many do you apply to?
There's no, and that's kind of why we're creating this that we'll go into in a bit, but it's
like there's no guidance in undergrad for this.
It's like word of mouth from anyone at your college that might have gone or is going into
dentistry above you.
Other than that, maybe you know a dentist.
A lot of people have parents that are dentists that go into dental school.
We learn that.
But otherwise there's no guidance, there's no guidance counselors going into dentistry
in college.
So we're kind of trying to create that and more, which we'll get going to.
But the fact is, so I was looking in the area, I was like, well, I mean, I'm not going to
go to Utah.
I'm not going to go to Washington.
I mean, I know Starbucks was founded up there other than that.
I don't know.
It rains a lot, I think.
So let's stick in the area.
Let's stick with something we know.
I have family in Florida.
So I applied to UF, Stony Brook, Columbia, Toro, Buffalo, Rutgers, and NYU, of course.
So that's seven.
I got interviews at Everyone But Florida because Florida is like 98% in state that they take.
So fine, whatever.
Interviewed at the rest.
And then I kind of looked at what kind of attention are these students getting.
And for me, after having shouted Dr. Cappuano, having the interest prior to starting dental
school, had somewhat of an interest going into oral surgery.
Didn't know.
I was open-minded, but I was like, this looks pretty sweet.
And I was like, which school is going to give me the best opportunity to get into specialty?
Right?
And I was told you really kind of have to specialize for whatever reason.
That's what the dentist had told me.
And that really came down to, oh no.
Columbia I didn't apply to.
Columbia I didn't apply.
I applied late like November and they already sent out all their applicants.
So I just wasted 80 bucks or whatever it was at the time.
But I applied to every other New York school and Rutgers.
So that's how it would have been.
Columbia or Stony Brook that has the best placement into specialties.
That's really kind of why I picked Stony Brook.
And the reason being is because Stony Brook is such a small school.
If you're going to be a general dentist, you probably want to go to school, small school
and get the best hands on experience with your attendings.
But Cumbulano now, your experience at dental school is actually super important too.
You got to be happy.
You really have to be happy.
So yeah.
So you got those interviews.
Can you just run us through your interview process?
What kind of questions were you prepared for?
Were you not prepared for?
What should the pre-dentals expect going into those interviews?
Yeah, I had some stupid flashcards of like some kind of someone told me like, oh, know
these dental questions.
I wasn't asked any dental questions.
Toro was great.
The attending sat me down.
He's like, you want to go here?
And we started talking about basketball for a half hour.
His son played basketball.
I played basketball.
We're talking about basketball.
It was awesome.
We didn't even talk dentistry.
Stony Brook was great.
The attending is not there anymore.
He's Dr. Schwartz.
But we were talking about, I told him like, dad fly fishes, he fly fish in New Hampshire,
blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Sieber there.
He's still there.
We were talking about his son, who's a professional poker player, believe it or not.
Interesting.
NYU was cool because I knew the Dean there kind of helps, right?
Yeah, yeah, always.
Rutgers was awesome because I knew someone was on the board there, who actually ended
up being the person interviewing me.
So and he had a side company at the time, and I just wanted to pick his brain about the
side company.
So we talked about that.
Yeah.
So I mean, I like talking about people with people about things other than that.
When we get to it, of course, I mean, you got to load up your resume.
The research was in team atmospheres.
Mentored was an organic chemistry tutor.
You know, like I hit all the bases, but I didn't want to talk about that.
Just like we said earlier, talk about the people outside of the career.
No, for sure.
I think that's again, just down in the point again, perfect.
So now you're in dental school, you chose Stony Brook.
Like what was your experience with D1, D4?
How did you kind of see yourself involved as a person and really start honing in on
what you want to do after dental school?
Dental school is such a stressful environment.
Not going to lie, a lot of it is kind of allowed by the teachers.
The teachers could really kind of prevent that by, I mean, I haven't given a lot of
thought in a while about how to kind of prevent what's going on.
Well, first of all, teachers should change their chest from the year before.
Second of all, I think we should actually get some applicable knowledge in some of these
courses.
Like, let's actually work on our hand skills.
Like, when you get into the sim lab, let's do more in the sim lab.
Let's build a bigger sim lab, right?
And let's get less learning about the paradigm is super important, right?
But you could talk about it with the patient a little bit, but for the most part, they
want to know terms that they can understand.
They're not going to know what the biological width at 0.86 millimeter.
We need more applicable stuff.
I mean, that's just my, that's just my, you know, we need to be talking about like, how
do you actually run a practice?
What about this management, like dealing with problems in the workplace?
Do you want to be an employee versus being owner?
This is very important because it's going to play the, it's going to play into the environment
and the actual attitudes of the environment.
It's going to play a big on the, on how you treat, not how you treat patients, but what
patients think of the atmosphere.
Are they, you're just a money mill trying to get them out or you're trying to sit them
down and get to know them.
Maybe they'll have, you know, if it's grandma Margaret put implants in grandma, you know,
once great grandma put the denture in and then have little Sydney have her wisdom teeth taken
out.
It's just, I don't know.
I love community dentistry.
That's, that's kind of what I want to get into.
Yeah.
So, I think I was, I was actually one of the questions I was going to ask you, like how
applicable is that information towards, you know, towards SimLab?
And I think the same thing at undergrad, like I feel like some of the information is kind
of, I mean, obviously undergrad, everyone's doing different things.
So, I understand like the curriculum might not be super applicable.
So, you know, what you're going to do in the future.
But I think that's a major change at like our education system needs to make, you know,
I don't know.
I feel that just benefit everyone much more, to be honest.
Yeah.
Oh, it would, it would benefit everyone.
Patients, doctors, you'd actually be happier with, because you're going to know that this
isn't about just becoming dentists about being happy with being a dentist every single
day that you wake up.
And also we need to kind of push more in the curriculums at these dental schools.
But now that we have dental schools that are being opened up by DSOs and a lot of influential
money being pushed in, who knows the direction it could go.
It could go in a great direction.
It could go in another direction.
Yeah.
Power of influence is very strong when money gets put into play.
But you know, anything can be done.
You know, the world is changing with the internet, social media, blockchain, NFTs.
We'll see where it goes.
All right.
So can you just kind of walk us through like what you had to experience, you know, in each
year of dental school?
What was the, you know, when you start touching handpieces, when you start getting like the
clinical based part of dental school, yeah, so pre-dental is going to get a good idea
of, you know, what to expect.
Yeah.
We started touching handpieces a couple of weeks in, you know, in dental morphology at
Stony Brook, at least when we started getting that we were started with waxing handpieces
came in like a few months in.
That was that.
And then we were taking the medical school courses until March, the first year, you know,
D1 year.
Second year, we started to get more involved with Prost being fixed Prost and removable
Prost after January, February, we started in the clinic once every two weeks, I think,
because they switch groups on Wednesdays.
Third year, you're in clinic, I think four days a week.
No, maybe a little, about like two to four days a week, I think third year, fourth year,
you're in every day basically.
Yeah.
You know, fourth year, so I mean, gearing this towards the CBAC, I always recommend,
you got to learn how to balance studying for dental school, right?
You got to get through dental school and then managing clinic work, which comes later on,
and on top of all that studying for the CBAC, it's a lot to take on, but it's all about
self-awareness, knowing how much time it takes you to study versus how much time you need
in clinic.
I mean, personally, I was always so stressed because I knew I wasn't as book smart as everyone
else, but I could get the grades that I needed.
You know, I stuck with just A's and B's, you know, but I knew I didn't have to practice
as much for practicals and such, and knowing that actually played huge to my advantage.
So I want to ask this question, like, how did it feel, you know, going from a tie for
a donor like a mannequin to actual people in dental school, like, what was that transition
like for you?
Oh, the first time it's getting a patient numb is the biggest thing, because that's
what you start with.
But also when you're getting someone numb, it's all feeling, right?
They tell you the technique, you know, you put it over the opposite premolars you inject,
you know, a lot out to the turgum, the raffy, but when you're doing it, it's like, well,
the needle's gone.
I can't see anything now.
I don't know where this is going, but you know, for your first time, it could be a thing,
and then all of a sudden they're numb and you're like, all right, Dr. Castro, let's
go.
It's going.
Exactly.
Yeah, so that's how it goes.
So like, were there any, you know, what kind of struggles did you face throughout dental
school?
Was there academic struggles or was it just kind of manual dexterity struggles?
No manual dexterity struggles.
No.
There weren't.
There wasn't academic struggles.
There was more of academic like understanding that I'm going to get there and just focus
on how you learn rather than focusing.
I'd be studying so much and you study so much, you're just like reading, reading, reading
and not absorbing.
Yeah.
I could have just taken a step back and relaxed and said, let's put all this in Quizlet, studied
a couple of times using figures.
I'm a lot of people, visual learners.
If I figured out how to do that with Quizlet earlier, I would have studied, it would have
taken like a 10 to the time study.
Yeah.
It would have, but it's self-awareness.
So you know, wait, hold on.
I think the Zoom meeting is about to end.
So that's a common struggle to all dental students.
You know, you're stressing so much and then everyone else is stressing around you and
then boom, boom, boom, it just rises up.
I think the biggest takeaway to say is, is like, you're going to get to where you want
to go, right?
Learn the material, take your time.
Whatever goes wrong, you're going to have an opportunity to correct it.
For example, test scores and everything will turn out just fine in the end.
You need to enjoy the little pieces of dental score where you can.
Yeah.
I feel like, you know, the small class at Stony Brook, like the faculty student ratio might
help a lot, to be honest.
Is that something that's true?
Yeah.
For being a dentist?
Yeah.
Just for learning, honestly.
Yeah.
For sure.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, now you're, you know, getting through dental school.
Something I really wanted to get to you is, how did you decide to go the LMSF route?
Um, I was kind of aiming, so, so very simple.
If you aimed for it in the beginning, I had an open mind, but I was aiming for oral surgery.
What other residency requires a test to get into?
No idea.
Ortho.
Right.
So, GMAT, GRE, GMAT, it's, like, it's not as strict as an application requirement as
the CVSE is.
You know what I mean?
So, it's like, if you aim for oral surgery, it's like, you could quickly mold and go into
endo, go into ortho, go into Peds.
It's very manageable to go from oral surgery to other specialties.
And a lot of people are interested in oral surgery.
More than half our class was in the first few months of dental school.
And then, I don't know what happened.
I'm still waiting for it.
So, you know, how'd you decide to, you know, again, apply to residency, right?
How'd you list your schools?
And did you kind of have, did you like visit programs beforehand?
Did you kind of just get a better understanding of which, you know, each one had to offer?
Yeah, of course.
The biggest thing is, I wasn't, I didn't want to be overbearing, but I did want to express
that I was interested in oral surgery from an early stage of D1 year, because then you
get to see which D4s when your D1 match, right?
Every year you get to see, okay, Andrew Lolley is interested in oral surgery.
Dan Bistardi, Ethan, I got to see all these guys match in oral surgery.
So I got the best advice from them on specific programs.
They would tell you, oh, you like this, you should check out this program.
You should extern there.
And externship is when you spend a week at the program, shadowing, observing, assisting,
helping out in surgeries, you got to get to see what a program's like.
They get to see what you're like.
I scheduled mine first at Montefiore, second here at NYU, third at VCU.
So I got to see those programs.
I was very interested in going to any one of those three and others, but I also planned
out my externship trail very strategically because I wanted to go to powerhouse programs.
So when you applied, you know, reach schools, I didn't expect me to get into NYU, Monti,
or VCU.
But I'm extern there because you have a shot.
I don't expect getting in there.
If I do really well, now I get myself an interview.
If I don't, well, you know, I didn't expect it anyway.
Two, on the application, it's known internationally that those are strong programs.
So it's going to look good when you apply to other programs in other areas of the country.
We got you.
So you just like put yourself in the best position, honestly, just in case you were to
get it.
Exactly.
You always want to put yourself in the best case.
I'm sure.
So, you know, you're in the four year program, right?
Oh, yeah.
Thank God.
So what's like that main difference?
Is it just the difference between the six and four, just two years?
Is that all it is?
Or does it more to, you know, what you learn and how much you get to see and do?
It's not a difference in what you get to see and do.
And yes and no, you do those two years you're spent in medical school, right?
And you're getting your MD.
That's what differentiates the four and six.
But guess what, 99% of oral surgeons do the same oral surgery.
There's that rare one guy, you know, that gets his MD and then he goes into doing BBLs,
breast surgery, tummy tucks.
Dr. Tolomeo is who graduated from NYU here, young, young, awesome attending.
That's what he ended up doing.
But most don't end up doing that.
And I looked at it head on because Dr. Capuano told me very early, look, if you're interested
in oral surgery, unless you want to do breast implants, butt lifts, tummy tucks, you don't
need your MD.
Right.
You could get out sooner.
And on top of that, most like 99% of programs, you need to pay for those two years of medical
school.
Right.
At NYU, you don't luckily.
Right.
That's very important to keep in mind, right?
So why don't you spend an extra two years learning about boats when you're going to
be a karmic cat, for example?
Yeah, exactly.
What do they look like when it comes down to it?
Exactly.
So like what's life like in residency now?
This is your second year going into it?
Second year.
Yep.
So what kind of stuff did you have to go through your first year?
First year, I started five, six months on anesthesia rotation where you're a full on
anesthesia resident.
After that, I did six months at the Bellevue Clinic as the intern doing intern work, running
the clinic, setting up OR cases.
At that time, we didn't have a PA or coordinator.
We were short staffed in the clinic too for that time.
There was a lot of work to be done.
I'm talking 10 to 13 hour days, like nevertheless, usually 12 to 13 hour days, at least.
Wait, no, six, 12, 13, I'm sorry, 15, 15 hour days, working six days a week.
And oh no, but it was a great time because I was the guy in the clinic.
So I got to see every patient.
So that was good.
Now we transition to six months of rotation.
Rotations.
Rotations, you go off service.
So you're in surgical specialties on the medicine side, right?
General surgery rotations.
Here we do, my first was general surgery at the VA.
Second was trauma surgery.
Third, which I just got off two weeks ago, was hand and plastic surgery.
Yeah, plastic surgery also covers hand and they combine into one.
So when you're on call overnight or on a weekend day, yeah, you're covering both services,
hand and plastics, and it's a lot of work.
You're on 24 hour call every third day.
So you're on call 10 times that month that you're on.
It's a lot to take in.
Now I'm on bariatric surgery, which is cool because now I'm in the OR every day.
I'm assisting the bariatric attendings doing like gastric sleeves, liposuction sleeve, gastrectomies,
relish bypasses, high level hernia repairs when the stomach kind of goes up through the
sphincter.
So stuff like that.
Next I do one quick month back at Bellview on oral surgery and then two months of medicine
doing what medicine does.
Yeah, so what kind of different oral surgeries have you participated in and have you done?
Maybe the most memorable ones, I guess.
You must have had a few, right?
A few, not as many because when you're an intern, at least you're doing mostly like
intern work, not as much OR in the first year.
But I don't, you know, the OR, I'm super excited for it.
The OR doesn't turn me on as much as other.
When you're going into private practice, most oral surgeons, and when I want to get
clinic based, I want to be doing a lot of sedations, wisdom teeth, implants, like community dentistry.
When you're in the OR, that's hospital based.
Dr. Puthi does a lot in the OR and that's awesome and fascinating, but you know, there's
less OR time versus clinic time.
And I don't know, I just want to become an expert at clinical oral surgery.
In the OR, I'll get there too, but you know what I mean?
Like, so I'm not like, I'm not fretting anything because I wasn't in the OR every day my first
year.
But the biggest oral surgery procedure that I saw in the OR was at VCU.
It was a bicarbonate flat where they make a decision on the top of the ear over the
top of the skull to the top of the ear on the other side.
And essentially this was a 41 year old male.
He had a long history, like 20 plus years of cocaine used.
He did not have a nasal septum.
He blew holes in the lateral sides of his, you know, the, so the maxillary sinus on either
side, there was a hole.
He had a hole going downward through the top of his palate too.
So whenever he drank water, it went up to his nose.
So he presented the oral surgery clinic.
He wanted to have that paddle defect repaired.
So what they did was bicarbonate flap, they took a temporalis muscle on actually was the
left side.
The anterior portion they cut it went down underneath the zygomatic arch, bur, bur to
small hole in the posterior side of the max, of the maxilla and then patched it into the
superior aspect of the palate right into the max.
And, and did that.
So his whole head is whole.
That's crazy.
He's scalp was folded forward to here.
It was all the way down.
Nuts just nuts.
It was a 12 hour search, 12, 13 hour surgery.
There was blood all over the floor, blood tracking into the hallway.
It was nuts.
It was a great experience.
That's crazy.
So I mean, I guess that that's kind of what I don't know.
I feel like oral surgery is a different beast from like, you know, if you're doing a GPR
residency or if you're doing an ortho, I guess, you know, we should have Sean on here also
just to kind of give his perspective.
But like, you know, oral surgery is very, I feel like it's the closest thing to medicine
from dentistry you can get.
Ingo.
And it's just like, you can just, I don't know, it's just super appealing to me to
you.
It is, it's awesome.
It's awesome.
The thing is, in any residency, so your dentistry, specialties, any residency and
dentistry that takes call is already another beast.
I think, you know, a big part of healthcare is to know how to manage complications, whether
it's in the operator, whether it's in the OR in the ED, the emergency room, or it's
with your family at home.
When you want to be someone that you could be looked upon for just a basic but yet an
emergency that you can help out with, that was something that I always thought was interesting.
And GPR, pediatrics, and oral surgery take call.
It's a big part to these specialties that differentiates them from the other ones.
To call yourself a surgeon, like an actual surgeon, you really know how to manage surgical
complications.
You do.
So, you know, I mean, I'm not there yet.
I'm not a surgeon yet.
I still have almost, you know, almost three years to go.
But I think, you know, when we call ourselves surgeons, you really kind of have to take
into aspect like, you know, you put in the time to know how to manage complications.
Right.
So, what are your, you know, you mentioned it, what are your goals and, you know, plans
that you'd like to do after residency, you know, for the next two years?
What do you plan on doing?
Oh, a lot.
Through residency, working on.
It's funny.
It's like, I have a big passion for, I want to own, eventually, own like the oral surgery
office that I work at.
Right.
I think to get there, there's a lot of DSOs being, you know, going around these days,
buying other practices, which are fine, everything.
But I think for me, I kind of want to mold and adapt the atmosphere of my office to how
patients get comfortable.
Right.
And I think, you know, an atmosphere that they like, that they, that they look forward
to going to, most people don't go to the dentist.
Very fundamental, but it's true.
And I, you know, if you're not an owner, you can't really do that.
And then at the most fundamental aspect, when you're in dental school, you might not realize
this, but when you work for another dentist, you get to do all the procedures that that
dentist doesn't want to do.
You don't get to do the procedures you want to do.
Just commonly, there may be higher paid procedures.
You're not doing any of them.
That dentist is doing because he owns the practice.
So it's something like, if you want to own your practice, you got to market yourself
or you got to have the financials to open it up.
Right.
You have to have the financials though.
Yeah.
What are you going to do?
Yeah.
Right.
So I mean, I guess you have to work a little, you have to work a couple of years and then
you can probably get yourself in a position for that.
Work a couple of years or, you know, depending on how well your network, how will you market,
maybe you could buy into a practice, maybe you get to know dentist, work in and buy into
a practice.
You're marketing yourself really well.
You're starting this podcast.
You're implementing the visuals.
Yeah.
Actually, I want to ask you questions about it, how you're chopping up the videos and
whatnot.
Yeah.
It's something we don't understand.
Everyone thinks that they're going to graduate and then start marketing.
You're behind the eight ball.
I feel like you got to just have that mentality first while you're, while you have the time
to, you know what I mean?
Like, you can just get out and start doing that stuff later.
It's got to be now.
Yeah.
And you, you might, you don't have to make perfect videos.
You just got to try.
That's what, you know,
You got to get started, to be honest.
You just got to start, start doing stuff and then eventually you can fine tune it later.
But as long as you have like a foundation, like I feel like that's what I'm trying to
do.
Once you like a foundation, you know, in the future, you're starting to get yourself up
for, for like innovation, I guess.
Yeah.
And it doesn't even have to be dentistry.
I mean, look at Brandon Axelrod.
Yeah.
He's got the balloon thing that he does.
Right?
That's hilarious, but it's phenomenal.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Think about that.
He's got a client base in a pediatric population that by the time he's an oral surgeon, say
he's an oral orthodontist, he's only putting braces on their teeth or taking out the wisdom
teeth.
Like it's, it's nice.
It's nice to see, you know?
It's perfect.
So let's talk a little bit about your businesses now.
I know you run students of dentistry, elite dentists and top-down practices.
What was that?
Cool.
So that's what Sean's are, best friend from dental school.
He's on top dental practices.
And we started, we basically started all these together and more.
We could go into, he's on top dental practices.
I'm on elite dentists.
Brandon Axelrod is actually our, our manager of students of dentistry right now.
And then we act.
So that's our dentistry things.
And we have other things trending in the background that we just, we need to gain some capital
to afford a team that can manage them and build them.
We actually have a law.
Well, we have medicine, right?
So we have elite physicians, which we do get going again soon.
Hopefully PAs.
We have elite veterinarians for the veterinary space.
And then our other big sector is law.
We have top attorneys, top law firms and top law students.
Right.
Top attorneys is the biggest one there.
My mom's running it, believe it or not.
And she's a fantastic job.
Your mom, are your mom's an attorney?
No, she's not.
Nice.
She's a background in marketing.
I like to do some things.
She took it and ran with it.
So I feel like this is like a brand, right?
Elite.
It sounds like just a brand.
And then you just kind of branching off into these different things.
Yeah.
Top professionals.
So that's the name of the LLC.
So it's not just about, we feature everyone for free, right?
We try to promote.
But it's about connecting the community again.
That's really what it's about.
And it's different niches.
Dental students, dentists, dental practices.
But we're trying to bring bigger things to the space, right?
And social media is starting to change where there's TikTok now.
There's YouTube shorts.
Yeah.
Real.
Fan pages are getting back into it.
You got LinkedIn for the professional community and then your podcast, right?
There's so many sets.
It's very deep.
But what we're trying to do is kind of actually, so what I'm saying is like as Instagram is
starting to diffusing where a lot of the attention is going to other platforms, we're still trying
to bring a bigger side of the.
YouTube, essentially what we're trying to do right now is we created the pre-dental
mentor map and we have many other maps coming as we build.
But the pre-dental mentor map is to connect pre-dental students with current dental students
that sign up with the map to be mentors for their specific school.
So the pre-dental student can submit some questions that can be answered by the, hey,
you know, what do you like about the school?
What don't you like?
What would you recommend me doing an undergrad?
Like, what did you do an undergrad?
That's a good DAT study, so just simple questions, right?
But what we'd like to do now is partner and I don't want to reveal too much now because
the paragraph isn't sealed, but wouldn't it be pretty cool if a current dental student
can make a little bit of cash just from act, just literally helping the pre-dental student
incentive.
It's incentive for them to, right?
Yeah.
200 bucks a month.
Isn't it goes a long way as a dental student, right?
200 bucks, dude, that's almost groceries for a month.
Yeah.
Right?
Well, now with inflation, you know, you get it, right?
So that's kind of where we're looking to see.
We literally, so what I saw at this side topic, I saw a lot of students that started side companies
and whatnot through at dental school.
Right.
They were like charging pre-dental students to get their knowledge, you know, help them
get into dental school.
And I get that, but the way Sean and I saw it from the get-go was pre-dental students
are like the calves, right?
Don't you want to take down the cows?
And what I mean by that is we're not taking down anyone, but you have these big dental
marketing companies, Loops companies.
I don't want to mention any names, but these Loops companies have a lot of marketing dollars
and they don't want to spend it because figs, Medico and a lot of Loops companies, they're
getting away with free marketing from dental students, literally giving it away for a discount
code.
All right.
They're giving away free marketing to companies that 10 years ago would spend 50 million trying
to market to pre-dental students and whatnot.
Those are the people I think we should be trying to gain funds from because we've created
something that you see what I'm saying?
Yeah.
We're trying free, not treatment, right, but free help to pre-dental students and helping
the bigger companies connect with the pre-dental students as our customers, but in an organic
way where you're not ripping anyone off.
Like actual genuine information.
Genuine information, right?
Yeah.
So our initial pitch was like, we're connecting pre-dental students with current dental students.
We'd like to give a discount code for their next pair of Loops to the current dental students,
right?
And then you could sponsor the entire pre-dent mentor map.
And now every pre-dent that goes through this map knows, is aware of, or scoptic, Designs
for Vision, Qoptics, whoever it may be.
They didn't want to spend the money.
We like, look, we weren't asking for a ridiculous amount compared to what they put into marketing
year after year, but we're giving them an organic form of brand recognition.
Yeah.
So we're going to keep going at it, but pre-dents come first.
Are you kidding me?
Like, we're trying to build something.
So yeah, a lot of side topics there, but so this is kind of the actual going.
Don't get malicious and try to feed off the calves.
Is that, you know, go after the bucks, the people that are established, the companies
that have the money, you know?
Yeah, for sure.
That's a very deep conversation.
And I feel like, you know, that's, that's like the next level of what pre-dental advice
can become.
You know, there's a lot of kids that, you know, we'll ask in our group, our groupie group
chats, like our other pre-dentals, they'll just ask us questions and we might not be
able to answer.
And honestly, like you have this entire resource of dental students, you have these 69 dental
schools that got maybe freaking thousands of dental students ready to help you, but
they're not doing anything because they're just doing their own work, but they're not,
you know, passing this information down.
And so that's like the point of this podcast is, you know, one by one, you know, give a
little bit of information out, tell everyone their stories and give them the contact information
and just kind of, you know, let them do whatever they want with that, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Oh, and there's dimensions to this map too.
We want people to connect with the dental students and we make it easy for the dental
student where it just, it's literally just an email that pops into their email and they
could just send it back.
We've narrowed it down to, we try to make it just three questions.
It's super convenient for them.
We've also made, you use student doctor network.
I've heard of it.
I don't use it.
Right?
Yeah.
There's, like, there's questions about dental schools, Reds, on student doctor network,
but there's no student doctor network specifically for dental schools.
We've created discussion boards on the pre-dent map so people can leave comments about the
school here, what the DAT actually might be, whatever.
I don't know.
We're getting there.
Yeah.
We want it to be useful.
I think that's really important because there's not much pre-dental advising help.
And I feel like even if there was, there's no, it wouldn't be like a direct source.
It'd be like some male or female woman who's like in their sixties, probably never went
to dental school.
They don't have that first real experience.
So, you know, what you're doing is perfect.
You know, it's like first hand experience.
Yeah.
That's been important for people nowadays.
So yeah.
So everyone you could follow at Brandon at your Instagram.
I'll put it somewhere in the description later.
And there's other 25 businesses you've got going on.
I watched all of your reels that you put on and they're so entertaining.
Like case studies, questions, I might get the wrong.
I don't care.
I don't really care.
But yeah, just day in the life.
You're on like day 500 now or something like that.
I don't know.
But we're getting there.
Yeah.
I try to do a lot of different dimensions.
Like, you know, I tried to see, like not see, but I'm trying to connect with the community
by providing.
And that's what the questions of the day are.
You know, I want to learn a little topic.
You can learn a little topic.
And then you got the day through residency and then I repost Q&As.
I don't know.
I just try to make different content.
I'll do everything, you know.
Yeah.
What have I do?
So what's your next step?
You are, which year?
I'm a junior now.
So third year going.
Okay.
Probably going to start applying in June.
Good.
DAT the winter.
Get all the rec letters and stuff.
So I'm an Orgo 2TA now.
So I did Orgo 1 last year.
Last semester.
So I guess rec letters there, whatever.
I've been assisting since January 2021.
Okay.
Office.
A lot of great experience.
Honestly, like one of the best choices I could have made early in my freshman year.
So second semester freshman year started January.
Yeah.
That's perfect.
That honestly set me up for, you know, it's just been motivation every single time I go
into work.
You know, if I'm having a weird time, like I've talked to this in past podcasts, but
like, you know, if it's, if I'm stuck in the books for an exam or something and I go to
work, it reminds me like where I am, you know?
Yeah.
You know, getting to do an X hour root canal, all these different things, crowns, fillings,
all this stuff that you just kind of gets me back into it, you know, working with your
hands, making temps, doing night guard, stuff like that.
So honestly, it's a great experience.
And on the side, I'm shadowing all these great people, you know, shadowing what we don't
have in the office.
You know, we don't have any real world surgery, so and I'm just shadowing those specialties,
just kind of get a little taste of everything.
And just, you know, chugging along, enjoying life, just, you know, taking it day by day,
I guess.
And so what's, what's your next step, you think?
So you're in third year, you're going to take the DAT later this year, you're going to start
studying over the winter.
That's good.
That's really good.
What are you looking?
I mean, you're shadowing.
That's excellent.
You're going to have a lot of different things.
There's direct where you need in school as well as outside of school.
You're getting connections, great connections that you're going to need when you apply to
Stony Brook.
So that's fantastic.
As well as other schools.
What else?
What else can I help you?
What am I trying to think?
How can I help you while I'm on this call, you know?
Applying to like choosing which schools, you know, to go for.
And I feel like all the Northeast schools are definitely like what people do.
But if they go to Stony Brook, they kind of choose to stay somewhat close.
Yeah.
And then the whole conversation where I have to think about it and just kind of narrow
down schools.
And I feel like, I feel like that could come after the DAT is taken.
Then you understand where you are and you know, where you can apply and stuff.
So exactly.
Got it.
I think that's just the next step to be honest, getting out of the way.
And then after that, personal statement, rec letter, stuff like that, you know, all the
basics and then just go for it.
And then, you know, really just trying to get this going, get this podcast thing out
there and more popular and just, you know.
I don't even care if like two people listen to this, but those are two people.
I've had two people that texted me and like they, they listed the whole thing and they,
they've really been getting a lot from it.
We had Sayed from Columbia come on.
Yep.
We talked about interviews at Brandon talked about interviews.
One of my friends is going to Columbia.
He just had an interview there.
So he got some great tips from the interview process video, which we had.
So, you know, that just kind of makes, that's motivation to keep doing this and just keep
going.
So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.
You know, um, you know, trying to keep healthy, just helping happy, you know, that's the
kind of system.