What does Tyler do?

I get this question all the time, so I thought I'd answer it here on my blog once and for all. [For those of you who already know the ins and outs of our lives, this may be very elementary for you. Feel free to skip this post.]

Here goes a typical conversation:

So, what does Tyler do?
He works at a hospital as a resident.

But I thought he was a dentist.
Yes, he is. He graduated last summer, got his DDS and now he's doing a residency.

I thought only medical students did residencies.
Yes, med students are required to do residencies after they graduate medical school. After dentists graduate from dental school, they can either start working or do a residency (typically to specialize). Tyler is specializing in oral surgery.

Oh, he's going to be a dentist who takes out wisdom teeth?
Yes, and they do more than that too--they fix jaws, do dental implants, and perform bicoronal buccal lingual mesiodens flaps. (Just kidding on that last one, those are some big words that Tyler uses sometimes, so I thought I'd throw those in.) He actually rotates through quite a few programs at the hospital like: anesthesia, internal medicine, trauma, general surgery, plastic surgery, etc. etc. He's having a blast learning about so many things he was never exposed to in dental school (like BOOTY call exams).

So, are you almost done?
Yes (in the eternal scheme of things).

How much longer?
As of today, 1196 days till he walks across the stage (June 12, 2011). But I think he has to work through the end of June, so make that 1214 more days till we're really done.Couldn't resist throwing this pic in from graduation. Check out that goose-egg on Whitney! She was jealous that dad was getting all the attention and had to do something to compete. Actually, she fell on the marble floor just as graduation was ending. Ouch!