| Add RSS Feed

May 13, 2008

By Kimberly Pajak, CDA

My name is Kimberly Pajak and I have been a CDA for seven years. I've always worked in single-doctor practices. I love CE classes and have always taken more hours than necessary to maintain my certification. I often volunteer at Yankee Dental in Boston in January just so I can take a few extra classes and give my time to the dental community.

This past year was very tumultuous for me. During the summer, I decided I was becoming burned out in dentistry. My husband asked me why I didn't go back to school to become a hygienist, which had always been my dream. While that had been the case years before, I now had a marriage, mortgage, and puppy to think about.

But as the summer progressed, I decided to go back and finish my prerequisites in the fall of '08. I struggled with this decision for months. I love what I do and I love my patients, and my struggles had nothing to do with hygienists, it's just a different job. I really love the diversity of my assistant job, but hygiene pay will always be better and we were just starting our family.

Well, on the train ride to PDA, my husband told me I had not been accepted to school. I admit I cried because it had been the most trying year of our lives. But at that moment I decided to become the best dental assistant I could be. I wanted to "soak up" as much knowledge and enthusiasm as I could from the PDA conference. I spent 13 hours on the train to get to Virginia, and 15 hours on the overnight train to get home.

As I attended my first class, "Keeping the Flame Alive" by Tina Calloway, I knew all my sacrifices to get there were worthwhile. You see, I found the inspiration I was looking for--people just like me, who knew what I was going through, who had lived my frustration and stuck with it anyway.

I concluded that I was going to enter each session with enthusiasm to learn as much as I could about working with a team to make the office a better place for both the staff and patients. I also wanted to make my "job" my career.

I want to thank PennWell Publishing and all the enthusiastic speakers who took the time to listen to us. I gained many contacts from this meeting, and I hope to run into the many friends I met at this conference again. I would encourage each and every dental assistant, especially those who want to "give up" on the profession, to attend this meeting next year. I came away very inspired and with a new positive energy.

I thank you for showing me that dental assisting is not a "stepping stone" but something to be proud of and a career I plan to have for the rest of my life. I want to thank each speaker for your inspiration and patience in the lectures. You should give yourselves a hand. I hope I can inspire others to attend PDA 2009.

| Add RSS Feed