OJ the PA

Guess what?! I am officially halfway through my first summer semester of PA school! It’s just crazy to me, because it both feels like it has flown by and it feels like I’ve been here for 6 months, not 6 weeks. But this means 6 more weeks (plus one day) of really hard work. I’ve heard that this next gross anatomy exam is the worst of the bunch, and it’s messing with my head a little bit. Cranial nerves are hard, ya’ll! So once I’m done here, I’m headed off to the library for the rest of the day. One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about is my mental sanity. Studying this much information this quickly has a way of turning you into a caffeine-fueled stress-monster. In the past, I may have taken a night (or, honestly, a full day) off to just relax and binge-watch Netflix, there just isn’t time for that anymore. So I’ve been trying to working in other small self-care tactics into my day that will help me relax and re-focus without losing time. Each day, I have to take a bus home ...

My program started in May of this year, so I packed up my belongings and moved into a teeny tiny studio in a new city! In just three shorts months, we're getting through a number of courses and so much new information.  During orientation, they said learning like this is like drinking from a fire hose. Man, they were not kidding!  Now, one thing to mention is that I am actually a distance education student. So that means I am a full-time student on campus this summer, but then I'll move back home and complete my didactic education part-time over four semesters instead of two. This means I'll still be able to work part-time (yay, money!) while completing my education. So, my fall routine is probably going to look a lot different than my summer routine.  I wanted to set up some really good habits for studying, so one of the things I immediately changed about my daily routine was getting up early. And anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm definitely more of a...

When I started looking into PA school, I quickly realized that there were numerous pre-requisite classes that I was going to need to take. And, oh-so-conveniently, what I needed for one school may be entirely different than what I needed for another school. It looked like it was going to take some time (at least a year, probably) for me to take the courses I needed to apply.  I knew a handful of schools I wanted to apply to (since my goal was to stay local, if possible, to be close to my family and boyfriend at the time), so I made a chart of the schools with all their requirements for coursework, if I needed the GRE, etc.  And that’s when I realized, oh shoot, here’s a school I can apply to right now because I’ve met all but one of the requirements -- taking the GRE. I could apply and, if I got in, start a whole year before I had originally anticipated! In this whirlwind of excitement, I decided to take the GRE in just eight days and see what happened. Why just ...