From the 2026 Summer Journal of the Colorado Dental Association, By Casey Rhines, D.D.S., CDA Editor
There’s no universal definition for how long an era or a chapter should last. Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore eras, for example, were separated by only a few months— proof that some chapters arrive quickly, unannounced and still manage to change everything. William Faulkner once wrote a chapter that was only five words long, which feels like the literary equivalent of a dentist writing “WNL” and calling it a .
Life moves like that — some seasons are sprawling and dense, others are brief but meaningful. And just like finishing a great album or closing the back cover of a book you didn’t want to end, you’re left with that strange mix of satisfaction and longing. You’re grateful for what you experienced, yet you can’t help hoping for a sequel.
For me, that’s what my time in Colorado and my chapter as Editor‑in‑Chief has been. A story I loved living in, and one I’m reluctant to place back on the shelf.
Recently, I made the bittersweet move to California. I left behind a beautiful state, friends whose offices were shouting distance, passionate students at CU and the wonderful people at the CDA who made every deadline feel like a team sport. But in moving, I’ve gained a lot of good. I now live five minutes from my in‑laws (who, fortunately, I adore), and I’ve joined a new dental school community filled with fresh faces and new opportunities, including teaching an ethics course, which is a funny “full circle” situation for me.
undergrad era was spent at a Jesuit university, which meant I had to take three religion and/or philosophy/ethics courses. At the time, I was an atheist and I only went to this Catholic school because they had a great pre-dental program. Thus, I took the required Intro to Philosophy and, for my religion elective, Intro to Islam (one of the only online courses offered at the school). For my third class, I was informed to my surprise that the healthcare ethics course I would take when I got to dental school would end up retroactively counting toward my bachelor’s degree. I was off the hook for that third required course and .
At 18 years old, ethics was a distraction from organic chemistry manuscripts and biology flashcards. Also, like most college freshmen, I was convinced I already knew everything and had personally decided that I was obviously ethical and didn’t need a professor to confirm it.
So, I enrolled in the Ethics Bowl, a tournament style ethical debate (for extra credit in my organic chemistry class, of course). I’m grateful I did this at 18 and not at 30 because it was so much easier given that I already knew everything and that the world was very black-and-white. Inevitably, I lost in the second-round debating physician-assisted suicide. It was hard enough on my ego that I lost in a debate about healthcare when I wanted to be a dentist, but to add insult to injury, I lost to a group of fraternity boys who enrolled as a joke (much less honorable than my enrollment purely for extra credit).
I’ve since learned that most issues have many sides, and that ethics lives in the grey areas. In a black-and-white world, there would be no need for an Ethics Bowl; balancing ethical principles demands that there is a middle ground to be discussed.
Fast forward to dental school, which has a fun way of humbling you. First-year dental students go from each being the top of their class to quickly being re-ranked against all the other valedictorians. It’s the academic equivalent of going from big fish to small fish in a very competitive pond. It also shines a bright light on the optional prerequisites you ignored (gross anatomy and ethics, in my case).
Although I barely passed gross anatomy and left every lab with a formaldehyde headache, I loved my dental ethics class and finally understood the ADA’s principles: autonomy, beneficence, justice, non-maleficence and veracity. It was the excitement that I drew from that course that got me interested and appointed to the Michigan Dental Association’s Review Ethics Committee while in dental school. This was my initiation into organized dentistry and I was immediately hooked. After serving on another committee and graduating, I joined the MDA Journal.
Dental journal editing is one of my longest eras — almost 10 years. My first blog for the American Student Dental Association (ASDA) was titled An Atheist Walks into a Baptist Church. Despite its spicy title, it was widely praised and I was offered a position as a copy editor for ASDA’s Contour magazine. A decade later, I graduated dental school, found God, wrote for the MDA Journal and eventually became Editor-in-Chief for the CDA.
This chapter has been the most rewarding. The CDA provided me with the opportunity to be a big fish in a little reservoir (Denver humor). If you’re reading this, you are already contributing to organized dentistry more than you know — but don’t be afraid to take the next step toward leadership. When CDA Director of Communications Becky O’Guin asked me to be the editor, I thought she was crazy, and now I’m searching for my sequel.
