Hello all! If you've been keeping up on the blog, you may know that we finished our first semester of PA school on August 19th! We had a 10 day break in between our summer and fall semesters and it's been an absolutely refreshing & relaxing 10 days. It was a much needed break that gave me enough time to recuperate and start out the next semester strong. Just to mix it up a little, I thought I'd do a little recap of how I spent my break away from the books!

First Semester of PA School

It's been a few days since the end of my first semester of PA school and I've been reflecting on how life has been the last 13 weeks. Although some parts are blocked out by my brain, here are a few things I have to share:

Three for Tuesday (08.23.2016)

Medicine

• Just how we use bleach to get rid of stains from our clothes, it's also the most efficient bactericidal agent in neutrophils (cells of the immune system) in our bodies.

• Pterion is a very thin region on our skull where front, temporal, sphenoid, and parietal bones come together. The anterior division of the middle meningeal artery is in this region. So if you get a skull fracture or a traumatic blow to this area, it can cause the middle meningeal artery to rupture and can lead to an extradural hematoma.

•  The sense of smell is the least understood sense of all five senses

How to Study Applied Anatomy in PA School

I'm done with my first semester of PA school! 3 more to go, then we'll be off to clinicals! Thank you all for your encouraging emails and kind words over these last few months, it means a lot. I get a lot of questions about how I studied for anatomy in PA school, so I thought I'd share my two cents here. Anatomy in undergrad is a lot different from anatomy in PA school (read about that here). In PA school, it's a lot more information, coming at you at a much faster rate, and you're expected to know all of it in a very short time. It blows my mind to think just how little I knew when we started and how much I've learned in 13 short weeks. I didn't think it was possible, but I'm so proud of my classmates and of how far we've come.

PA School Update

Hello friends! I apologize for my absence over the last few weeks, but PA school got CRAZY (in both good and not so good ways). Ever since midterms, we've been slammed with exams or quizzes, group presentations, and getting ready for our finals! I cannot believe we are literally 2 weeks away from the end of our first semester. When the upperclassmen told us that the didactic year goes by fast, I thought they were out of their minds. But, I'm glad that I stand corrected. This week is our last week of classes with one final tomorrow (in our Research Methods/Designs class) and then next week we have 5 finals!

So here are a few updates since the last time you heard from me: