I don’t think a career in dentistry really ever crossed my mind as a shy 10-year-old.

My aspirations were to be part of an orchestra, touring the world, playing to thousands of adoring fans. Eight further years of education and an aspirational Mother later, I found myself in a Birmingham University lecture theatre with 300 eager teenagers and a worrying lack of desire to be a dentist.

The five years of study passed in a flash: a drunken haze of pub crawls, lectures, first loves and molars. Though not necessarily in that order. It wasn’t until the final year that the reality of what I was being trained to do, at great government expense, began to sink in.

A quick glance at some of my peers reassured me that: a) I was not as dull as some of them b) I was not going to fit into the stereotype of the average dentist: failed medic; lack of personality; inability to engage in conversations not involving teeth.

Incidentally, the first of these points is a constant bain to the majority of the profession, but it is actually true that probably about 50 per cent of dentists couldn’t get into medicine (sorry guys, the secret is out).

That final year was made much more pleasant by the fact that my then boyfriend, (now husband of 12 years) had qualified two years ahead of me and was enjoying the fruits of a well-paid profession.

How proud I was when he visited my scabby student house to show off his newly-acquired mobile phone. As a teenager in the 90’s, there could be no greater status symbol.

One of our children recently found the phone in a drawer. “What’s this Mummy? Is it a helicopter remote control...?” Only in the months after qualifying did I realise I’d stumbled across a profession I was beginning to enjoy and which seemed to be furnishing me with a lifestyle that in some ways made up for the years of hard graft.

The graft at uni did not prepare me for those early years of learning the trade, however. Relentless weeks spent with a virtual conveyor belt of patients, all commenting on how dentists were looking younger these days. Oh how I long for those comments now.

There can be few professions laden with so much responsibility at the offset. A year of stress-induced acne later (tricky to mask when you are usually six inches from someone’s face), and I was beginning to settle into my new life as a dentist.

Twenty or 30 patients a day is 20 or 30 separate conversations, often with people whose first words are: ‘I hate the dentist.’ Dentistry is definitely a life lesson in personalities. Every dentist has experienced the serial complainer, the lonely time waster, the precocious child. They have also had the satisfaction of helping people out of pain or improving someone’s confidence.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go into dentistry for some Mother Theresa-like desire to rid the world of toothache (despite what I wrote on my application form). I still don’t really know what steered me other than my lovely Carole Middleton-esque Mother.

I guess I should feel lucky that my job fits around a young family and through it I meet so many interesting folk. I’ve been introduced to all walks of life: professionals, academics, families of all sorts, drug addicts and the occasional celebrity.

Though I can name no names, there are many stories to tell. I’m not sure I would have found that as the lead flautist at the London Symphony Orchestra.