Distance Year 1: My daily routine

Over the summer, I wrote about my daily routine. Remember, at that time I was living in a tiny studio apartment and doing school full-time on campus. As expected, the transition to life as a part-time student, part-time dietitian has been challenging.

I'll say this upfront. I knew PA school, even in a part-time program, was going to be difficult. But this has, well, exceeded those expectations. When people tell you that you'll be studying basically all the time, they weren't kidding. But I'll let my daily routine help you see that!

Work Day Schedule

I work three days a week (generally W-F), and I have quickly realized that I can't slack off on these days. If I do, I definitely get behind!

5:15 - Alarm goes off. My small dog Milo somehow takes up the whole bed but I try to sneak out of bed without disturbing him too much. He's lazy so he'll sleep most of the morning.

5:30-6:30 - Watch a lecture while sipping on my coffee and eating a simple breakfast (usually fruit and yogurt). Milo will hear the yogurt container open, sleepily crawl out of bed, lick out the leftovers from my empty container, and then go back to bed. What a life.

6:30-7:15 - Pack my lunch/snacks and get ready for work. Take my sleepy dog for a walk.

7:15-8:00 - Unfortunately, due to construction at my hospital, I have to park far away and get shuttled in to work. That means my commute is 45 minutes ... even though the hospital is just 10 minutes away from my house. I usually listen to a podcast on my commute, which constitutes as one of the "fun" things I do during the day.

8:00-4:00 - Sometimes this is later because I'm finally done training and am handling my own unit(s) by myself, but I'm still not the fastest at getting my work done. It's a hard balance because I want to make a good impression at my job, but I also need to get home and be productive.

4:00-4:45 - Commute. Sigh.

4:45-5:30 - I try to take Milo on a nice long walk after work for two reasons -- first, he needs some good exercise and second, this is my exercise too. It helps to rejuvenate my brain and bring my energy level back up after work. I wish I had time for more exercise, but for now this is simple and effective, so it is what it is.

5:30-6:00 - Eat some dinner. Hopefully this is leftovers from a meal I made on one of my non-work days, but I've also been eating some frozen meals from Trader Joe's lately. Ideal? No. But it works. I'll sit on the couch while I eat dinner and watch like half of an episode of something on Netflix. Sometimes it takes me three days to finish one episode of the Great British Bakeoff! Ha.

6:00-9:00 - Study time. Watching lectures, creating my own study sheets, reading Pance Prep Pearls, completing literature review assignments, whatever. There's plenty to keep me busy for this time. Some days I don't quite make it to 9:00 because my brain is that fried from a day of work and studying. But my goal is definitely 9:00 if I can manage it.

One night I had such brain-drain that instead of grabbing my toothpaste, I took out my makeup case and opened my concealer and almost started doing my makeup before I realized what the heck I was doing!! 

All in all, work days are really long days. But if I can be productive, I don't feel like I'm playing a massive amount of catch-up on the weekend.

Exam Day Schedule

These days are actually my favorite! No, no one likes being stuck in a library for hours taking a test, but then I am rewarded by not studying afterwards. Hallelujah.

5:30-8:30 - Wake up, get ready for the day, do some light review of my study sheets, but focus on eating a really good breakfast and drinking my coffee (but not too much!). I want to feel awake and ready for my test, and not rushed. Cool, calm, collected. I also have this theory that if you look good you feel good and a good attitude helps with good test taking. So, I try to wear something cute!

9:00-11:00 - Take my proctored exam at a local library. It almost always takes me the full two hours to take the test, and dang, it's a marathon not a sprint. Two hours feels very long. I also quickly learned to bring earplugs because my exam room isn't sound proof and the tiny bits of nearby chitter-chatter were super distracting.

11:00-11:30 - We get a half hour to review our exam results. I'm not the type of person to obsess over this, but instead I go through and review the questions I knew I was unsure about to see what the answer was supposed to be and then get the heck out of there. 

The rest of the day - I'M FREE. Okay, not totally free but free to do things other than study and my brain is very grateful for that. So here's what I try and accomplish:

• Clean my house. Papers, dishes, and mail have all piled up in the time leading up to my exam, so it's tidying time. I clean my kitchen and bathroom, sweep/vacuum the floors, gets things looking sparkly clean. No, this isn't the most fun thing every but I LOVE having a literal fresh start before I tackle the next module. It's like hitting the reset button and it feels so good. 
• Go grocery shopping. Girl's gotta eat. I've been going to Trader Joe's because then it actually feels like I'm doing something fun, I get inspired to make healthy meals, and I can pick up some relatively healthy convenience/frozen foods for the days when I don't cook. 
• R-E-L-A-X. Recently I made a pizza, got some candy from the Dollar Store, made some popcorn and cozied up on the couch to watch a move. Yes, a whole movie. And it was so nice to just decompress. 

I usually have exams once every other week, but occasionally it's more frequent than that (weekly, or even 3 exams in 8 days ... yikes). Sometimes, I even have to take my exam after work. So that means working a full 8 hour day, going home to eat dinner and walk Milo, and then sitting at a library from 6:30-9:00pm. Not my idea of a great time, but I'm definitely grateful that my library has the flexibility to accommodate me in the evenings.

Off Day Schedule

5:15 - Off day doesn't mean I get to sleep in! I try to keep a consistent schedule all week, even on the weekends. RISE AND SHINE, Y'ALL. I try to shower and get ready right away as a way to slowly wake up and get moving, but there are definitely days where I am in my pajamas until 11:00!!

6:00-9:00 - Study and eat some breakfast. Be sure Milo eventually crawls out of bed and gets outside.

9:00-1:00 - At least one day on the weekends, I try and go to a coffee shop with a friend for about four hours to study. It's like a treat for me (yay fancy coffee and time with a friend!) but I'm also being productive. Major kudos to my non-PA friend who has been joining me lately and understands how nice it is to have a study date!

1:00-4:00 - Do a little more studying at home but then take a break.

5:00-6:30 - Okay, by "take a break" I mean cook dinner and/or meal prep for the week. I really try not to leave any cooking for my work days, because that seems to take up my whole evening then and I get nothing else done.

6:30-9:00 - Rally and get a little more studying done, or maybe other "adulting" things. Paying bills, updating my planner, scheduling upcoming exams with my proctor, answering emails, whatever.


Sounds exhausting, right? Fitting in fun time with friends and family or for exercise (yay, hot yoga!) is challenging and then I feel a little guilty for not studying. It's a balance I'm definitely still working on. I try to limit this stuff to twice per week. So I might do hot yoga with a friend Tuesday night (so that's two hours in total) and then recently I got brunch with my family (that's four hours gone). But then that's it. I find that if I burn up too much time, playing catch-up is a nightmare.

This is the life as a PA student. I willingly signed up for this! Yes, it's crazy hard, but it's totally going to be worth it in the end.

Thanks for reading,
Olivia