It will also be the first day of the fall semester. It's about time we got back to work. I was becoming tired of filling my days with mind-numbing time wasters like internet surfing and getting lost on youtube.
Today I was reading all of the schedules and syllabi for our classes online and I can tell that this semester is going to be busier than the spring semester. I'm not opposed to being busy, I just don't want to be so busy that it begins to affect my performance negatively. (*cough* summer semester *ahem*) So while I am enthusiastic to begin our studies anew tomorrow, a part of me is filled with mild trepidation.
In an effort to preserve my sanity, I will try to change my studying methodology. In the spring, I made hundreds and hundreds of flash cards using a program called "Flash Card Manager". You can do a simple google search to download a trial version. Flash cards really helped me out for the anatomy course and even the anatomical techniques course. The drawback of having made so many flash cards is that the process of making them took up about the same amount of time for ice to melt in the Antarctic. I'd wager that as much as 1/3 of my studying time during the spring semester was spent just on creating those cards. They proved to be worth it though, not just for my test scores, but now I have a personalized flash card resource for whenever I need to look up something that I had already studied. This semester, instead of focusing on flash cards, I'll make an effort to add my own notes and scribbles to the powerpoint lecture handouts. It won't be as refined as before, but it should be able to pull me through while maintaining some semblance of a work/play balance. (90% work / 10% play is good enough for me.)
As mentioned earlier, I was looking through the schedules of our fall semester classes and one seems to have piqued my interest. Our clinical laboratory management course will have us working on quite a few reports and projects, such as trying to balance a budget and how to choose which laboratory tools and software to use. I think that this course in particular will offer us some interesting role-plays to work through. Upon graduation, most PAs begin their careers working at the bench. After a couple of years they may move on to higher supervisory or managerial positions. In the off chance that we accept a rural position and we are the only PA in the laboratory it's good to know that we'll be better prepared to deal with how a laboratory is run in addition to all of the usual things that PAs do at the bench.
Still no word back from the AAPA about my request to list states with PA job opportunities. I'll need to get on their case.
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