It's Time to Make a Career Change: Pursuing My Passion To Become a Dentist

You're listening toThe Dr. Phil Klein Dental Podcast Thanks for joining us. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. In the United States in 2022, there were about 11,000 dental school applicants, and of those, 6,300 enrolled as a freshman dental student. So essentially last year, 57% of applicants ended up going to a U.S. dental school. For most of them, their path was pretty predictable. Finish college and go straight to dental school. But for some, their decision to apply to dental school happened years later, and only after realizing that their current career, completely different from dentistry, was not what they wanted to do for the rest of their working life. Today we'll be talking to one such dental school applicant, hoping to start in 2024. Her name is Adrienne Frachtman, a young lady who already has a career in the health science field and is determined to pursue her dream of becoming a dentist. And I might add that among the 450 episodes that we've produced on this show since 2018, this will be the first time we've talked with a dental school applicant. Adrienne, thanks for joining us on today's podcast. Dr. Klein, thanks for having me. Yeah. So I read your resume before this show and you've done quite a lot of stuff. So if you could share with us what you've done in the past that led you to where you're going now, which is applying to dental school, because typically that's not the path that most pre-dental students take. They finish college. They have their prerequisites for dental school. They know they want to go to dental school for the most part, and then they apply. But your story is a little bit different. So tell us about that. Yeah, so my story began at Washington University in St. Louis, where I majored in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology. I focused in linguistics. Some other students focus in neuroscience, and they kind of pair that with a pre-med outcome. I also majored in Spanish, and then I minored in speech and hearing with the intention of going to graduate school for speech therapy. So after I graduated from Wash U, I took a little gap year. During that time, I spent time as an inclusion camp counselor for a special needs camper, and I volunteered at Austin Speech Labs. And then I had the privilege of spending three months in South America where I got to practice my Spanish, do some traveling, and spend about a month on a sheep ranch owned by the Nature Conservancy. So after that, like I said, I went to... grad school at the University of Texas at Dallas. I graduated in 2017 with a Master of Science in Communication Disorders and began pretty quickly after that working as a speech-language pathologist. How did you find your speech -language pathologist career? I mean, was it fulfilling? Was it what you expected with the training you had? So a lot of graduate schools and communication disorders are either really heavy on the research or will give you a lot of experience in the field. And University of Texas at Dallas was really, really great about getting us out in the field as much as possible. And speech therapy is one of those careers where you can really go a bunch of different directions. You can go more of the public school way. You can go more of the medical route and work in hospitals. And so it's... somewhat open-ended education that you can really cater to your own interests. And so I did feel prepared out in the working world. You ended up going to San Francisco, right? And you worked as a speech-language pathologist at Pacific Autism Center for Education. What did you do there? Yeah, so I was one of three speech-language pathologists at that non -public, non-profit school in Santa Clara, the South Bay. And we also had three occupational therapists full time on our staff. And we were really a school for students ages five through 21, a school for students with an autism diagnosis, but they could also have other diagnoses. And we were kind of the last resort in terms of providing these students with a meaningful education that was suitable for their learning needs. We worked really hard. The teachers worked really hard. The teachers' aides worked really hard. And we had a lot of challenging cases, but kind of what united all of us is our care and passion for giving these students the best possible outcomes that they could get. With all that training that you had and the expertise that you developed in this field, which is fairly specialized, and the satisfaction that you can glean from helping these patients, what made you deviate from that career path and even think of dental school? Well, that kind of takes us forward a couple years where I moved to Denver, Colorado. I was working at two Title I charter schools, and it is... hard to say really the state of public education these days. Denver Public Schools is a great school district, but we are so underfunded. And there are also, working in special education, a lot of barriers to success, both for the educators and for the students. So the summer of 2020, I was thinking about my life, as a lot of people probably were in 2020, and thinking about what I wanted to do for the next 40 years and dentistry popped into my mind and I really gave it some thought and thought about the fact that I kind of on more of a surface level, I had always really enjoyed going to the dentist myself. I had always been very interested and maybe up to a certain point anal about my own oral hygiene. And then that combined with my experience as a speech therapist and ways that I can explain kind of made me think, wow, yeah, this could be it for me. And I can totally go into how those two careers kind of have certain similarities or common interests. When you decided that you wanted to change career path and you started to think about dentistry, at that time, did you have the prerequisites to apply to a dental school? I did not. Funnily enough, I actually opened an application in June of 2020 thinking, all right, here I go. Time to apply. And then immediately ran into some obstacles. Even with a bachelor's degree, even with a master of science, I had none of the prerequisites. So it was the beginning of a long journey. So what did you do next? So I had already told my school that I was working at that I was returning for the next school year and began working and taking a general chemistry class at night after work. And I did that for my fall and spring semester of the school year 2020 to 2021. And at that point, I had given my employers plenty of notice that I was leaving. And at that point. After a summer of taking some more classes in Denver, I returned to Austin, which is where I'm from, to begin continuing my education. So where are you taking the prerequisite courses currently, or are you finished? As of a few weeks ago, I am officially done. I did my prerequisite courses at St. Edward's University in Austin, and it was just an amazing experience. There is definitely something to be said about smaller universities. they the professors are really invested in student success at St. Edward's so really really couldn't have enough good things to say about that university. Was it up to you to find out which classes you needed to take to be eligible to apply to dental school, or did they have something at St. Edwards that put you on track? At that point, I was already pretty familiar with what was expected for a dental school application, just, you know, doing my own research online and seeing what was needed. So I did meet with a pre -health advisor. when I first began my classes in fall of 2021. And just to just to ensure that I was on the right path, but had a pretty good sense, like I said, of what I should take. So did you get to experience any hands on treatment during your journey on your way to applying to a dental school? I'm right. at the precipice of being able to say yes to that question. I spent the last 12 weeks having finished in mid-April doing a dental assistant training program where I got to do a lot of work on Dexter, the dummy, got to take lots of x-rays on him and got to do some impressions just on other classmates. But as of Monday, I'll be starting work as an actual dental assistant where I'm excited to, you know, get my hands dirty so to speak and why are you doing dental assisting just to get a better idea of what dentistry is like or is it just something you want to have under your belt definitely a little bit of both i feel like having shadowed um for many hours at this point i have a decent sense of a day in the life of a dentist but Because I'm applying for the 2024 cycle, I have some time to kill, and what better way to pass my time than to spend it in a dentist's office, learning more, becoming more familiar with the instruments, building relationships, and being able to have experience. Being 31 and having already worked in my life, it's nice to make some money again. So it's fantastic what you've done, but it seems like a huge investment of time and money leaving your career that you've worked so hard for and you've learned so much. Did you speak to some dentists out there before making this move? Yeah. As I mentioned before, I grew up genuinely enjoying going to the dentist. And my entire family really has a really positive relationship. and still goes to Dr. Sweeney at Austin Dental Spa. He was kind enough early on to let me ask him some questions along with his associate, Dr. Slaughter, Jordan Slaughter. And I don't remember the exact quote, but he said, Dr. Sweeney said something like, it's pretty great to be paid to do what you love or something like that along those lines. And just anecdotally throughout this process, you know, that was my initial. kind of conversation that you were asking about. But throughout this process, just pretty much every dentist that I've spoken to, that I've shadowed, has just spoken so highly of the career and has been really happy with their choice. So it's comforting to hear. Yeah, I know. That's great to hear. What is your recommendation to other young folks out there that may not be particularly thrilled with their current career path and looking to make a change? Yeah, I mean... It's not always easy. It doesn't always make sense financially in a given moment. But figure out a way to do it and do it because it's worth it. Because if you're waking up every day going to work in a career that's not fulfilling, that says a lot. And not to be all millennial about it, but, you know, you should want to. go to work in the morning. You should want to show up every day excited to be there. And, you know, that's something that I'm really excited about the prospect of having in a future career in dentistry. I think it's very, very admirable, Adrienne, that you made that change in your career. You had a tremendous amount of education. You got a master's degree. You were doing things that were greatly valued by your patients, I'm sure. But for some reason, you felt like... wanted to make a change and you went for it. And you'll find out soon whether you get accepted. And as I mentioned in the introduction, about 57% of the applicants ended up going to dental school in 2022. It sounds like with your kind of diligence and passion for dentistry, I'm sure you're going to be able to have a great interview. Are they still giving interviews for dental school? Oh, yes. I believe the fall is when you start hearing back about interviews and getting those on the calendar. So I think that last... cycle. Some programs were still doing remote interviews, some were doing in person. But I imagine with COVID as being a variable that that will no longer really be in the way of in person interviews. In closing, as we wrap up this podcast, did you ever think that someday you'll combine the knowledge that you have for treating special needs patients, especially with speech, autism, etc. with dentistry? Is that something that's crossed your mind? Certainly. And as I mentioned before, speech pathology and dentistry, they have a lot of common wants, right? In skilled nursing facilities, for example, speech pathologists are responsible for ensuring oral care of the residents because if a patient's immune system is compromised and they have a disordered swallow, then, well, their mouth should be clean so that... don't bring any infection into their lungs. With my work in special needs, I actually had the opportunity to shadow a pediatric surgeon a couple of months ago. And little ones, you know, as young as infants, as old as toddlers, correcting tongue ties or working on cleft palate, cleft lip and palate. There's just, I think, you know, as a former speech therapist, so many things that you could do to unite the two. fields and to bring them closer together for better outcomes for children especially. Yeah, very well said, Adrienne. We wish you the best of luck with your acceptance to dental school and keep us informed. We'll have a follow-up podcast on your first year of dental school and we'll see if we can do some stuff as you get your dental degree. It's an exciting journey that you're on and really admirable, again, for you to take the time and the work involved to get up to speed, to get into dental school. which we all hope you do. And you'll be a great asset to the profession as a whole. There's no doubt in my mind. So you take care of yourself. Good luck. And thank you so much for your time today, Adrienne. Thank you so much, Dr. Klein, for having me. I really appreciate it.