Admitted

What do you do to recharge?

Sustainability. Same underlying concern as the stress question, asked more gently.

Written by Victoria Young, DDS · NYU College of Dentistry '24 · Penn Dental Medicine

The trap

Answering with something that's really more work — 'I recharge by reading dental journals.' Nobody believes you and it makes them worry about you more, not less.

How to structure your answer

Name what genuinely restores you → be specific → show it's an actual habit rather than an aspiration.

A weak answer

What most people say
I recharge by reading up on the field, honestly. On my days off I'll go through dental journals or watch procedure videos, and it doesn't feel like work to me because I find it genuinely interesting. That's usually how I unwind after a busy week at the practice.

That's more work with a bow on it, and it increases their worry rather than settling it.

A stronger answer

What lands
I fish. There's a reservoir about forty minutes from the practice where I assist and I'm out there most Sunday mornings before six with a thermos. Phone stays in the glovebox, which is non-negotiable and which my girlfriend gave me a hard time about for a year. I'm not good at it. Some mornings I catch nothing and drive home. But I've been doing it since high school and I come back different than I left.

Unglamorous, protected, long-running. That combination is what makes recharge believable.

The second answer has a time, a place, and a rule in it. Rules are how you tell a habit from an intention.

These are illustrations, not scripts. An answer you memorize sounds memorized — the point is the shape and the specificity, in your own words and about your own life.

Reading it isn't the same as saying it.

Most people can explain a good answer and still fall apart saying one out loud. Admitted asks you all 100 questions in a faculty voice, records you, and scores your pace and filler words.

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