I have a pet peeve. It bothers me when dentists look at the very best people in the field and believe they will never achieve that level of success, because they don’t have the “hands” or the technical skills necessary to do great work. This problem isn’t restricted to dentistry...artists and writers look at great works and judge only the result rather than looking at the process that the person went through to achieve the result.
No matter how many times I hear the story about what Michelangelo told an admirer when she called him a genius, he said, “If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius, ” and I truly get it…so many of us turn to the beautiful photography on Facebook or the work displayed by dentistry’s masters, and say we can never do that because they are “genius’s” and I just don’t have the hands or the skills to do that work.
The other day a dentist commented on some work I did, saying it wasn’t up to the “Pankey” standard. He expected that every piece of work would be perfect if done by a Pankey dentist. Well we’re all on the same journey. When starting out our work can be just plain shitty. Then after a few years it just sucks. But eventually it gets good with the potential of becoming great. The problem is that most people expect great every time. Maybe the masters can do that and I certainly shoot for that, but the reality is we do our best and grow to be better and better.
And that’s all we can do.
But there is a problem… (more…)
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