With appreciation to Mary Schmich’s iconic 1997 “Wear Sunscreen” essay, this adaptation imagines a commencement address for today’s dental hygiene graduates.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Class of 2026:
Use interdental brushes.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, interdental brushes would be it. The long-term benefits of cleaning between teeth have been supported by research, clinical experience, and every hygienist who has ever sighed quietly while looking at posterior bitewings. The rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than years spent in treatment rooms, operator stools, and conversations with patients who insisted they floss “all the time.”
Protect your neck and your wrists. You will miss them when they start filing formal complaints against you at age 38.
Wear your loupes properly adjusted. Invest in shoes you can stand in all day. Learn where your shoulders are when you are stressed.
You are about to enter a profession where people will tell you intimate details about their lives while you hold sharp instruments inches from their throats. Treat that trust gently.
Do not confuse productivity with worth.
Some days you will leave work convinced you made no difference at all. Then years later a patient will tell you that you were the first clinician who listened to them without judgment. Remember that prevention is often invisible. The best outcomes in healthcare usually are.
Floss.
Do one thing every year that scares you professionally. Learn a new technology. Present at a meeting. Mentor a student. Ask for a raise. Apply for the position you assume you will never get.
Do not waste too much time comparing yourself to other hygienists online. The race is long and, in the end, it is mostly about maintaining your own curiosity, compassion, and lower back.
Take care of your hearing. Ultrasonic scalers are louder than you think.
Remember the instructors who challenged you. Forget the classmates who made everything a competition.
Keep good notes.
Stretch between patients, even when you think you do not have time.
You will occasionally encounter patients who say, proudly, “I only came because my wife made me.” Be kind anyway.
You will meet anxious patients, difficult patients, skeptical patients, and patients who have not seen a dental office since the last century. Try not to mistake fear for rudeness.
Do not become cynical. Cynicism masquerades as experience but is usually just untreated exhaustion.
Understand that healthcare is changing constantly. Insurance codes will change. Technologies will change. Office software will definitely fail at the worst possible moment. Human beings, however, will continue to need kindness explained to them slowly and repeatedly.
Drink water.
Eat lunch when you can.
Use sunscreen if your operatory has windows.
Some of the most interesting hygienists you will ever meet will take unusual paths. Some will work in periodontal practices. Some will teach. Some will go into public health, research, sales, advocacy, administration, or orthodontics. Some will leave clinical care entirely and return years later. Very few careers move in straight lines.
Respect the assistants. Respect the front desk staff. Respect the sterilization team. A smoothly functioning office is one of civilization’s great collaborative achievements.
Learn how to talk to children. Learn how to talk to elderly patients. Learn how to talk to people who are embarrassed, grieving, impatient, or afraid. Technical skill matters enormously. So does making another human being feel safe in a chair.
Not every office culture deserves your loyalty. If a workplace consistently destroys your confidence, your health, or your sense of ethics, leave.
Save money early, even a little.
Do not let social media convince you that everyone else has perfectly sharpened instruments, spotless countertops, and endless enthusiasm for fluoride varnish.
You are not behind.
Call your parents.
Be nice to your classmates. One day you will need a temp recommendation on short notice and they will remember whether you were insufferable in radiology lab.
Travel when you can.
Attend a conference occasionally. It will remind you that thousands of other people also spend their days discussing calculus deposits over boxed lunches in hotel ballrooms.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Your schedule will run behind. Someone will cancel five minutes before their appointment. Children will bite the suction. Adults will lie about flossing. You, too, will someday become the patient who says, “I know I should come in more often.”
When that day comes, tip your hygienist generously in spirit.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is often just experience wearing nostalgia’s nametag. Passing it along is one way people try to make sense of time.
But trust me on the interdental brushes.
