I always try to prepare as much as possible for anything that I can foresee. Studying for finals started well before the last week of school for me. To my surprise, I found that I had done much better on these last finals than I had expected. It could have been that our professors felt pity for us and decided to decrease the difficulty of the questions that they asked. Or, perhaps we students hunkered down into our study-mode shells and toughed it out like the battled hardened veterans of academia that we have become.
So, upon reflection of this year, the big question becomes, which were the hardest and easiest semesters? I’ve talked with my classmates about this, but my own personal experiences deviate from the opinions of my classmates.
As for the majority of my classmates, they felt that the semester that they most struggled with was this fall semester. This fall, we certainly had a lot of extra reports and papers to write than the spring semester. Microbiology and physiology were also big classes for us, but microanatomy and clinical pathology were not classes to be ignored. I think that my classmates were feeling run down by the end of the year and wanted to move onto clinical rotations so that made having to slog through the fall semester difficult for them.
As for myself, I thought that my most difficult time was the summer pathology course, while the easiest (I shouldn’t say ‘easiest’ because really, there’s nothing easy about this program) semester for me was this fall semester. The summer pathology course was a barrage of information in such a short period of time that it was difficult for me to grasp at so many different pieces of information all at once. I mean, what person can go through 4-5 chapters of Robins every week for 7 weeks and still emerge sane? That period of a month and a half was the most challenging and difficult period of my academic life, but at least I’m still alive.
The reason that I thought that this fall semester was the easiest for me may have been due to having emerged from the summer course and comparing everything to that. In addition, I had studied microbiology extensively during my time in undergraduate school so that course wasn’t as difficult for me as for many of my classmates. I didn’t mind having to write the many reports because once I’ve formulated my thoughts I can write at a good pace. On top of all that, since I had moved out of my old bed bug infested apartment from the spring semester, it left me more time to concentrate on school and studying. What a nightmare that was during the spring semester.
For the newly matriculated students into WVU’s PA Program, I’ll say that you shouldn’t underestimate the spring semester. You’re going to feel overwhelmed at first, but if you study consistently every day and don’t give up, you’ll become accustomed (dare I say, inured) to the lifestyle. Unlike what many of you may have learned during your time in undergraduate school, the things that you’ll learn here are the things that are relevant to what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. If it doesn’t stick at first, give it some time. Find a strategy that works for you. During the spring semester, my strategy was to make lots of flash cards and it worked for me. During the fall semester, I stopped making flash cards and focused on printing out the powerpoint lectures. Writing my notes on the paper copies of the power point lectures worked for me. So, as you can see, my studying strategy changed as the year progressed. The majority of my classmates wrote their notes either on the laptops directly using the pen/stylus, or they bought lined notebooks and filled it with their handwritten notes. The important thing is to find what works for you and adapt when necessary.
Now, all that’s left to do is to get a little bit of paper work filled out for both school and my new apartment in Pittsburgh. It feels nice to not have any immediate obligations, so I had better enjoy this moment while it lasts. I expect that next year will be busy with clinical rotations but despite not having any breaks I imagine that the time will fly by quickly.
Have a nice time everyone.
"4-5 chapters of Robins (sic) every week for 7 weeks." Is that true? That sounds like murder. Most pathology courses are taught in at least two separate semesters!
ReplyDeletePersonally, cramming 4 to 5 chapters from Robbins every week for 7 weeks is just way too excessive, and there's no chance in hell anybody is going to come away with actually knowing and understanding pathology that way. It has to be divided into at least two semesters if you're going to teach the entire course using Robbins.
I just can't imagine covering every single topic within 7 weeks. Unless the course did a lot of cutting and trimming of the material, there's no way you could cover every single topic from that book. In fact, for PAs, you don't necessarily need to know Robbins from cover to cover.
Yeah, I died in that class. I don't even want to try and remember how many power point slides there were. In the spring we did have a course on pathology that covered the very basic diseases found in Robbins, but the questions for the summer course were much more in depth. On the bright side, we'll have all of next year during our rotations to study Robbins to our heart's contents. A lot of the material, as I'm told, will show up on our ASCP certification exam.
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ReplyDeleteWhile that the summer pathology class is, to say the least, challenging, it is preceded by a General Pathology class that covers everything the summer class does at a basic level. Students are not going into the summer class without having ever seen the material. Further, as Forrest has indicated, the information is covered comprehensively again in the second year Pathology Review class. As indicated by our 100% pass rate on the first attempt on the ASCP national certification exam, our program is effective as is. That said, now that we have additional faculty there are plans to "revamp" the summer pathology class, increasing the length of the class, but still covering about 1 chapter a day. Also, there are no other classes in the summer, so students concentrate on that one class.
Forrest, please enjoy your break!!! You deserve it, you have done well!
Cherie
That's not bad then! Sounds like a nice set-up to ensure a 100% passing rate on the first try. Very nice, and a job well done on getting through the first year, Forrest!
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