Dr. Alvin had not always known that dentistry was in his future. As a child, he was smart but did not take school seriously; it was only until a mentor urged him into going to college that Alvin saw various opportunities. Alvin chose dentistry because of the promising chance be his own boss and work with his hands while maintaining a respectable income. According to Alvin, dentistry school is competitive and one must earn high marks in their science classes to be considered. His final advice states that no matter what career one chooses, to envision their own destiny and take charge.
Transcript
>> What I love about being a dentist is, you know, you kind of got-- you kind of have to like working with your hands. And what I also like is working for myself. A big part of the reason I went into dentistry is because the majority-- you know it used to be stats like 85, 90 percent of general dentists work for themselves, are in private practice. It's not like medical doctors where you might be affiliated with a hospital or working through a big group. I kind of wanted to work for myself. I like working with my hands. I kind of like kind of controlling being able to come and go. The biggest thing working with my hands and being able to work for myself, the entrepreneurial aspect, yeah. The challenges are like the fact that you're in private practice and you're working for yourself, you know, a lot of people think it's a freedom to kind of do whatever you want. But then, that's a big responsibility because everything at the end of the day falls on you. So that's kind of the challenge, you know, from anything to we have a big storm and the power goes out, you know, like a lot of people might be like, oh, great we don't have to go to work, but you know, you're like, damn, I can't work. You know what I mean because you can't, you know, you can't make any money, you can't see any patients, but the bills continue to be there. So from a business side, that's probably one of the biggest challenges is that everything falls on you if something breaks. You know, at the end of the day, it's going to come to you, you know, so that's one of the biggest challenges. Clinically, from the day to day, you know, dealing with patients is-- I guess with any customer service driven profession where you have to deal with people every day. So, you know, you're going to have the people that you don't want to talk to that day. Like, you know, you can't really have a bad day where you don't want to talk to anybody. You know, you've got to, you've got to suck it up like if you had a bad day, you had a bad night, nobody really cares, you know, when you get to work that day. So that can be the challenge, you know, so you've got to deal with people on a day to day basis so there's challenges on different sides so.
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