Let me introduce myself!

Hello!

I am Olivia, and I am currently a first-year PA student. I’ve taken a bit of a winding road to get here, and I’ll be the first to admit that I have self-diagnosed “Career ADD” which means becoming a physician assistant will actually be my third career. Whoa.

After high school, I thought I wanted to major in business. Had excelled throughout most of my education but quickly learned that economics and finances were not my thing. So, I started considering other careers. I liked writing but didn’t want to be a starving artist, so I ended up transferring schools and ultimately getting a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism & Mass Communication.

I worked for about three or four years at advertising agencies doing writing work in creative, public relations, social media… and I was good at it. But I didn’t like it. It didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. So after much thought (and a big breakup) I convinced myself to go back to school for dietetics. I completed a three-year certificate and landed a job out of one of my clinical rotations. My job as a registered dietitian (RD) at an acute care hospital was amazing.

So amazing, though, that it left me wanting more. I felt like I was able to influence only one piece of the puzzle in my role as an RD, and I was hungry for more.

To be entirely honest, I don’t think I had a clue what a physician assistant was before that job. But when I saw advanced practice providers (APPs) in the hospital, I thought they had a really cool role -- lots of patient interaction, the ability to participate in or do awesome procedures, lots of autonomy. That all looked great! We can talk later about why I chose to be a PA over an NP at a later time, but the important thing was that I realized this was the next step I wanted to take.

So here I am. Sitting in my teeny tiny studio (where I should be studying!), right at the cusp of this amazing new adventure.

With this blog, I am hoping for a few things:

Give myself a much needed creative outlet. The writer inside me is still alive and well!
Share my story of being a PA-S, getting into school, my applications and interviews. While my story may not be applicable to everyone, I hope you’ll learn something from it.
Write about challenges that lots of people deal with: time management, finances and budget, and other general lifestyle topics.

In essence, while everyone may not love or get a lot out of every blog post (heck, I may end up with no readers at all!), I hope there’s a little something here for everyone.

Be well,
Olivia

Comments

Three months: My life as a new PA-C

As I'm sure many new PA's can attest to, the end of PA school is a bit of a blur. One minute you're finishing up classes and studying for the PANCE and the next you're ... here? Three months into practice and wondering how it happened. Graduation was on May 13, 2022, and that was a really wonderful day. My parents came to support me, I enjoyed beers on the terrace with my friends, and I felt wonderful standing on the other side of three years of grad school. After a quick day of relaxation, I hit the ground running with my studying. I stuck with my plan for the most part, and felt equal parts "I can't possibly study any more!" and "But I'm not ready!" when exam day arrived. I happened to be at the very same testing center as a fellow student, so when we finished our exams, we headed over to the local mexican restaurant to enjoy tacos and well-deserved margaritas. Hilariously, our brains were so absolutely melted from testing that we could

Rotation #3: Internal Medicine (and pondering my future)

When I decided to go back to school to be a physician assistant, internal medicine is what I had in my mind. As a clinical dietitian, I had the chance to collaborate with APPs and loved the idea of being able to provide that kind of care to patients. One of the APPs who I had the chance to work with often while I was a dietitian became my preceptor for this rotation! It was very cool to be standing in the exact spot I had imagined back then. Back then, though, I did not appreciate just how challenging this job would be! I worked with a small private practice group that has privileges at various area hospitals, and my preceptor and I were based at one large metro-area hospital. The service was crazy busy the entire time I was there, and that was both good and bad. I got to see a ton of different diagnoses, a wide variety of patients, and was challenged to be relatively independent. But dang, it was hard to keep up most of the time. Honestly, I worked more and was more exhausted during

Rotation #2: General Surgery

Another one bites the dust! It's crazy to me that another rotation (and therefore all of my surgery experience) has come to an end. If I want to be one thing, it's totally honest. This rotation was challenging . I had a ton of fun during orthopedics -- I felt like a lot of providers and residents wanted to show off how great their subspecialties were. And they succeeded! But I didn't get pimped very much and I wasn't seeing patients independently. That all changed in a big way when I went to general surgery. Did I learn a lot because of this? Absolutely. Did I feel like an absolute pile of garbage most days because I felt like I couldn't do or answer a damn thing right? Yes. Did I talk to my classmates and get some reassurance that many rotations feel like this? Also yes. Thanks for making me feel less alone, guys. The days were long and the list of things to study was even longer. But here we are, one rotation down. We've survived, so far at least! One big t

OJ the PA

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