Skip to main content

About Me

Hello!

Thanks for reading my blog. My name is Olivia, and I am a non-traditional, distance PA student in Wisconsin. As a distance student, I am completing my didactic education over two years instead of one, and then will have one year of clinicals. I watch my lectures online and have my exams proctored at a local public library. Because I am a "part-time" PA student right now (but, technically a full-time grad student!), I am able to keep working. I work 24-32 hours a week as a clinical dietitian at a local hospital. Needless to say, I am quite busy! In fact, you can read about my daily routine here.



I've written a few posts about my pre-PA story, so check those out to learn about what I did to get into PA school, how I chose what schools to apply to, and mistakes I made along the way.

What else can I say about myself? I'm in my 30s, I own a home and have an adorable dog named Milo who is the best study buddy. I'm an extrovert and I love squeezing in time in my busy schedule to meet friends for tacos, go for a hike, grab a drink, or walk to the farmers market. When I'm taking breaks from studying, you can probably find me taking Milo for a long walk while listening to a true crime podcast!



I originally had a career in the marketing and advertising industry as a copywriter and social media specialist, but then went back to school to get my certificate in dietetics. Originally, I thought I would be a private practice dietitian and have a strong online presence (given my background in social media), but I fell in love with clinical nutrition and working in a hospital. And while I still enjoy being a dietitian, I can't wait for this next challenge and career!


You'll see that one of my focuses on this blog is related to budget. While I am certainly no expert on the matter, it's important for me to be as financially savvy as possible and to try and keep my student loan debt as small as possible (a laughable task given that I've put myself through college three times!). According to ThePALife.com, "the average anticipated debt load from PA school is at $112,500." A staggering number. I can't imagine I'm the only PA student stressing over how to pay for this adventure, so I hope you can learn something along with me!

Oh, and I should mention you can follow me on Instagram, too!

Thanks so much for reading,
Olivia


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more