First week... Again.

Here I am, after the first week of my second semester of PA school... This week was particularly exhausting, but luckily we get Monday off for the holiday. 

We have class this week and next week from 5-7pm for our ophthalmology part of my CMS class... Getting home at 7 and still be expected to study is slightly unrealistic... and it's not just me! It's my whole class :)

My books are unbelievably heavy and carrying them to school is NOT fun... but alas, it is necessary. The books are pretty interesting for the most part... I'm surprised by the classes that I like and don't like, compared to what I was expecting before the start of school...

Our pharmacology teacher is new and she is AWESOME. She is down-to-earth, has the cutest clothes (one person compared her to Reese Witherspoon - accurate) but most importantly she is such a good teacher.  She makes sense, she tells us the important things, and she regularly asks us practical questions that will be useful for testing purposes, PANCE purposes, and real-life.  Of course, pharm is still difficult, but I don't dread her class, which by my standards, makes it a class that I like :)

Another class that I really enjoy is Legal and Ethical Issues in Healthcare.  To be completely honest, the teacher isn't my favorite for our practicals, therefore I was pretty worried that i wouldn't like his class. He also wrote the book for our class.  The last teacher I had that wrote the book for our class was a complete narcissist and I hated it... But alas, I LOVE the class!  He uses case studies and such to put the information to make sense in real-life situations.  You can tell that he really enjoys ethics and he isn't pushy about his book. And mainly I just like ethics. 

Surprisingly, the same ethics teacher teaches pathophysiology and I do not like this class.  I took patho at my undergrad school and had the best teacher EVER so I had pretty high standards, and unfortunately, his awesome ethics teaching doesn't pass over to patho... It's a one credit class so it's not too bad, just kinda boring...

As for microbiology, I thought I would like this class.  I have taken 2 microbio classes so I thought I'd enjoy this, but the teacher (who is also my adviser) doesn't really give you ANY hints/tips as to what to study and she expects you to read every chapter and know everything... Apparently the last class that had this teacher for microbio had to remediate 22 students.. that's A LOT. Needless to say, it's going to take about twice the studying for something that isn't that interesting... Can't wait....

My CMS and Clin Lab are interesting... I haven't quite formed an opinion about them yet... They have a lot of different teachers and none of the students can quite figure out exactly what the class is supposed to be teaching us.. Hopefully this will come throughout the semester... We'll see.

Physical Diagnosis is kinda in the same boat.. We've only had it once, and it was similar to last semester, but with less labs and such.  We are learning how to do an "OSCE" this semester. It's like a real-life patient/PA situation... Like for derm, we go in, they say "I have a rash for a wk" and then we have to do a history and pt physical, come up with a list of differential diagnosis and then determine what we think they have. (they have a paper that will give them the answers that we are supposed to be asking). Should be exciting, and incredibly nerve wracking...

I think that's all my classes.. Should be a difficult but good semester... And the best part?!?!! After this semester, I will halfway done with my first year of PA school... That's good stuff.

Stay tuned for an exhausting semester!!!