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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Graduate School

I never would have imagined just how hard Grad school was going to be, I mean they say it but you never really understand it until you are there. For me, "there" is Portland, Maine, I am attending the University of New England and I am going for my Masters of Science as a Physicians Assistant. Fortunately, I have completed my first year already- but far the most difficult year of my life! We spent 8 hours in the same class room for 11 months and countless hours in the library until the wee hours of night. I worked harder than I have ever worked before- I mean I never really had to "study" before this- and all that hard work paid off. I passed all my exams and apparently learned the basics about everything I will need to know to be a clinician. I say apparently because you could ask me a question from anyone of the many exams and I would most likely have no recollection of ever having learned about it. Yikes!!! They say that we will remember so much more than we think and that the information will just come flying back to us once we are in practice, we excuse me if I am a little sceptical of this- I mean I can hardly remember how to do long division and my calculus almost never comes back to me while I am trying to figure out if I can beat the train through the intersection. In fact, I took 48+ exams, 58 semester credits in in 45 weeks of class- now that its over, I am not sure how we managed to do it all. We learned how to do everything from a complete physical exam- including a rectal and/or a pelvic exam- we learned a little bit about pretty much every area of medicine from Rheumatology to Dermatology to Cardiology- we learned how to intubate, splint, suture, scrub into surgery, draw blood from arteries and veins, we learned how to talk to patients and doctors, we learned more than I ever thought possible. The tricky part is that now, I have to start using all those things on real people! In just under one week I will be starting my first clinical rotation...

2 comments:

Mama Wisch said...

Hooray for getting done with your first year. You are my hero.. Good luck with clinical..you'll do great! Oh and by the way.. I am so happy you joined the blogging world.. it's addicting!

Anonymous said...

Yay for Stacy in the general sense...and Yay for Stacy doing so well in your first year!! I'm proud of you!! You go girl!! Now that you're blogging I can hopefully keep up on what's going on for you-cool. Love you and miss you lots.