7-Year Dental Student Forgets to Floss, Expelled
Photo by Young Lee
October 28, 2018 at 12:09 pm
Alex Wang, a junior in Penn’s accelerated dental program, just made a career-ending mistake.
Last Saturday, Wang returned home from a night out with friends and passed out before he got a chance to complete his 17-step dental regimen.
When Wang woke up the next morning, he realized his fatal error. “I opened my eyes and just knew,” he said, his voice dripping with remorse. “There was so much plaque. I reached for the bottle of Listerine I keep by my bed in case I get thirsty in the middle of the night and just chugged it all right then and there.”
Wang proceeded to report the incident to the dean of the program, Sarah Richmond. “We make a commitment as future dental professionals to hold ourselves to the highest standard of dental integrity. I cannot, in good conscience, hide my crime from my peers,” Wang explained.
Wang hoped his honest mistake would go unpunished, but was later expelled by Dean Richmond. “If our students can’t take care of their own teeth, how can we expect them to take care of humanity’s teeth?” Richmond explained that she was disgusted by Wang’s actions, and that he was "clearly a few incisors short of a full set of teeth, if you know what I mean."