A World Where There Are Octobers (2/30)

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." -Anne in L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

     Last Friday was my White Coat Ceremony. At the ceremony, an alumni of the MCPHS PA program talked to us new students about what lay in store for us. He mentioned that, believe it or not, the program would go by quickly, probably faster than we thought. That might be true for some of the students, but for me this fact is already blatantly apparent. After all, we're already starting the second month out of thirty for this program, and this week marked the halfway point of this semester. Believe me, we students can feel the speed. For those of you trying to follow along, I’m going to start keeping track of my progress through the program with a little “____/30” indicator in some of my titles, and I’ll try to post at least once a month to keep up with this. 

Boston in the fall

     So, it's October. On the one hand, I completely agree with the quote I used to title this post. October is a lovely month, especially in New England. The leaves can be simply fabulous, and the weather is still warm enough that you can go outside and enjoy them. Also, unlike Oregon, the weather tends to be much sunnier in general, so there's less rain and more crunchy leaves to walk through. That's delightful. However, to enjoy all this beauty, you need to actually have time to go outside. It turns out that free time is not nearly as plentiful as the fall leaves. I'm finding that free time is a rare and beautiful thing I have to plan for, or grab as soon as it appears. 

After the White Coat Ceremony

In my first year at Gordon, I had a discussion one day with one of my bio teachers about balancing school and the rest of my life. I won’t get the quote word for word, but essentially he said, “You can be a good student and work hard, but still make time for friends and non-scholastic activities, and you won’t get everything done. On the other hand, you can be a good student, study all the time and cut out all extracurricular activities and people, and you STILL won't get everything done. So what do you want to do?” At the time those were exactly the words I needed to hear. As an introvert, withdrawing from people and becoming absorbed in work or other non-social activities can be an easy trap I fall into. This advice helped me greatly during my undergrad. The semester I spent abroad in Germany, where I eventually realized all my classes were pass/fail, further drove this point home and helped me start balancing my priorities and time so that my life was more balanced. This is still an important lesson for me as I sometimes still have to remind myself that life experiences can be just as important as book learning. That being said, I’ve had to rethink some things in grad school.

My undergrad advisor got to come to the ceremony

     A year between the end of undergrad and the beginning of the PA program was both a blessing and a curse. I can’t imagine having to finish my CASPA application and go to program interviews while simultaneously finishing my senior year of undergrad, and it was so nice to be home for a year. However, even with the EMT program I did last fall, I got out of practice with homework and all that jazz, and it’s taken a while to get back into the routine of reading assignments, discussion posts, attending classes, and taking exams. This wasn't helped by the fact that, frankly, this isn't undergrad. Most of my classes I only have twice each week, if that, and things move sooo quickly. It sometimes seems like there's not enough time to pause and take stock of what you're doing and where you need to go, but those moments of orientation are crucial. Otherwise you'll find yourself studying for an exam or working on an assignment and you'll be hit by a wave of panic as you realize just how much you have to do or learn. It's not pretty. 

     As I mentioned in my last post, some of the second year PA students told my class that October is the time when all the first years start crying. I think many of us thought they were joking or exaggerating. They weren't. There's a very simple reason for this. Projects are due in October, exams become more frequent, and the exams also become much more difficult. I think all of us realized this yesterday during our second pharmacology exam. It's pretty common knowledge that pharmacology is one of the most difficult classes of the PA program, but yesterday's exam was a doozy. The hardest thing about it, at least for me, was all the drugs and their names. If you know exactly how a drug works, its contraindications, and adverse effects, but you didn't learn the brand name and that's the one the teacher uses on the exam, then all the other knowledge doesn't help you one bit. You usually can't even make an educated guess since many of the brand names look nothing like the generic name and give no hint as to what kind of drug it is. Everyone was very quiet after the exam, with the exception of the people asking what the process for remediation was. It was bad. Well, the exam itself was fair, but I think most of us realized that we had focused on the wrong things during our studying, or that we had not spent enough time studying. I think the fact that the average grade of 67.5% (after three questions were thrown out) speaks for itself. One of my classmates posted the below gif to sum up our feelings about taking the exam. 

The Tumblr "I Prefer You Call Me Doctor" posted this with the caption "What happened during the exam again?" and it's a pretty accurate representation of the pharmacology exam.

     I still love October. I still love PA school. I'm still ready to put in the hard work to do this thing. However, this month has been both tough and enlightening as I've more fully realized just how much effort PA school requires. I still think my bio prof's advice was correct, but I also think that I'm going to have to cut back more on non-school activities, or get more creative about how I balance school and relaxation. The magic of technology means I can listen to past lectures while I drive, and going for a walk (like my expedition to Winter Island today) can serve the multiple purposes of getting exercise, enjoying nature, reviewing lectures, and studying in a new location. Of course, going for a walk doesn't always count as relaxation if it leads me through the hordes of tourists in downtown Salem, but that problem will be gone soon enough. :) 

My thoughts whenever I'm in downtown Salem this month.

Diving In

The original MCPHS building. When they needed to upgrade the facilities they decided to simply build around it rather than tearing it down, which I think is pretty nifty.

          I can’t believe it’s already October. It seems like I just arrived in MA a week ago, and I’m already approaching the one-month mark for classes. I’m really glad that I had just over a week to settle in to my new place and job before classes started, because once they did, life started getting busy. Classes started on Sep. 4 and my first exam (genetics) was on the 16^th. Then, in the last week I had an exam on Wednesday (primary care psychiatry), another on Friday (pharmacology), and a third on Monday (pathophysiology). I sort of shut off from the outside world during that and then had quite a decompression day after the last exam. That didn’t last too long though because I had a group presentation today (ethics and issues of PA practice) and my second genetics exam is next Monday. Fun times.

Stress relief: baking!

Aside from studying for exams, these last few weeks my focus has been on adjusting to the PA program, and just being back in school. Even though I did an EMT program and genetics course last fall, the set up then was a bit different from normal, so it has taken a little while to get back into the swing of classes, homework, and the balancing act with work. Since all the PA students take classes together, we don’t pick our schedule or classes. The program coordinators figure it all out and we just go where they tell us. This term I only have classes three days each week, and on Mondays and Fridays I usually only have one class because two of the classes scheduled for those days are partially or completely online. It’s nice to have two short days, but this does mean that Wednesdays are loooong. With the exception of one hour for lunch, I have classes from 10am to 6pm. Most of my classes are 1-2 hours, but my last one on Wednesdays is 3 hours. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to put the longest class at the end of the longest day, but it’s not a scheduling move I’d recommend. The saving grace is that this class is one of the most interesting and the teacher is interesting, informative and hilarious. She’s also pretty good at timing our mid-class break so we can refresh ourselves and come back ready for more.

Having fun despite being shutout from Mixfest

Life hasn’t been completely all work and no play for me, thankfully. My apartment mate and I went apple-picking at the beginning of September and have been enjoying homemade apple goodies ever since. Then a few Saturdays ago some friends and I attempted to go to Mixfest in Boston. I say attempted because there were too many Backstreet Boys fans who got there ahead of us and we weren’t able to get close enough to really hear or see the concerts so we left, but we still had a fun evening walking around Boston. The next weekend my parents were able to come for a visit, so I got to do a bit more playing. They came into Boston with me on Friday so we could explore once I got out of class. We went to look at the lovely church I can see on my walk to school, then walked everywhere, from MCPHS to the Fens to Fenway Park to the Prudential Center to Copley Square to the Public Gardens and the Commons, until eventually I gave my tired parents a break and we took a T into the North End rather than walking there as well. All our walking was rewarded by some delicious Italian food and cannolis. The next morning I was supposed to work, but I was able to switch shifts and get the entire Saturday free. We had lots of ideas of things we could do, and it was hard to choose, but we ended up going to Portsmouth, NH. Not only was it a lovely and fun town, but we arrived in the middle of some sort of fairy festival and were soon surrounded by small children wearing fairy wings and building fairy houses. On the way back to Salem we stopped in to J.T. Farnham’s in Essex to get some fabulous seafood. All in all it was a wonderful weekend and a nice break before the craziness of exam week. 

Everyone loves cannolis

This month should be interesting. Now that exams have started, I probably won’t have quite as much time for exploring and hanging out with friends, but I knew that was coming. Some of the second year PA students have said that October is the month when the first years start crying. We’ll see how accurate that is. Thankfully the weather’s been nice and there’s a nearby park that is quite nice for studying, so I can at least get some sun and fresh air while I’m reading and cramming away. On the plus side my White Coat Ceremony is just over a week away, so I’ll soon look like a legitimate health care provider. As to work, that should be interesting too because October is tourist month. We’ve already started to get some fun foreign coins in the tip jar and yesterday was the first time I had to give detailed directions to the Salem Commons. It sounds like it could be stressful, but at least my coworkers are chill, tips are good, and my manager is trying to keep things light and fun by having costume days on the weekends. Now, for the first time in years, I actually have to figure out a Halloween costume. Should be fun.