Practicing to Perfection Strange looks were exchanged as we glanced at each other. I was one among a hundred students in the preclinical lab for crown preparation. The manikins were all set up, ready for our first class in the DDS program. The typodonts were securely screwed in, with a full complement of teeth, positioned […]
Statement of “Purpose” Dental School Admissions: A Journey of Choices and Challenges Number 75—the board flashed. My father and I were in a huge line of dental school applicants for two hours, waiting to be called. All of us had written a common entrance test, and each of us had a rank number based […]
Jehan leaned back into the embrace of her leather chair, letting the golden hues of the setting sun spill through the vast window of her South Mumbai clinic. Beyond the glass, the Arabian Sea whispered its eternal secrets, each wave a gentle metronome to her drifting thoughts. Nearly two decades had passed since she had […]
Hello, how are you? Mastering English as a Foreign-Trained Dentist in the U.S. English is widely spoken in India, but does that mean Indians are considered proficient in it? According to U.S. regulations, not quite. Every dentist trained outside the U.S. must take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) to prove proficiency—regardless […]
The Forgotten Joint That Holds Your Life Together There are things we take for granted until they start to hurt—the ability to chew a meal without discomfort, to yawn without fear of a clicking sound, to wake up without feeling as though our jaw has been clenched in an unseen vice overnight. The temporomandibular joint […]
NBDE – “Non-Recognized Bored Dentist on eBay?” Traveling across the globe from Mysore to Manhattan changed my life forever. Friends compared Manhattan to Bombay and Bangalore, but who knew those places? I had spent my entire life in a small town. This new world was exciting to my eyes. Passing by Chinatown dental offices on […]
Dr. Hajeera Banu sat by the window of her Mysore clinic, watching the soft evening light filter through the trees. It was a quiet moment before the rush of post-Iftar patients would begin. Just as she reached for a sip of water, her phone buzzed, displaying a familiar name—Dr. Martha O’Connell from Dublin. “Hajeera, […]
Blogs By Dr. Syed Nabeel
Lights, Camera, Drill: The Bollywood-Style Saga of Starting a Dental Clinic in India
The sun sneaked into Jehaan’s funky Mumbai flat, painting golden patterns across the floor as Shaan, her lanky, restless dentist cousin, drummed his fingers against the table. His untouched chai sat steaming, silently judging him. He had a big, messy dream and needed Jehaan—the family’s wisecracking oracle—to turn his chaos into clarity. “Jehaan,” Shaan blurted, […]
DentistryUnited | Occlusion in Dentistry | Digital Occlusion Analysis Dr. Jahaan lingered at her desk, her gaze lost in the glow of her screen, her once-steaming coffee now a tepid relic of forgotten sips. A shadow of doubt had crept into her mind, unraveling the certainties she once held about dental occlusion—a realm where articulators […]
As I sit in my Mysore clinic, absently twirling a diminutive metal toothpick extracted from my Swiss Army knife—a keepsake from my father-in-law—I am struck by its understated elegance. Among my treasured possessions is another heirloom: an intricately carved ivory toothpick, passed down from my great-great-grandfather. A relic of a bygone era, it embodies both […]