It’s Monday morning at 4am and the sound of my alarm clock awakens me. Snooze. Okay world, five more minutes. My next alarm goes off. Snooze. My internal thoughts, and the sound of my boyfriend’s voice saying, “your routine is important, get out of bed”. Although he is over 500 miles away, somehow he is still the one who gets me out of bed each day. It’s either his voice in my head, or his early morning phone calls on his way to work that guilt me into getting up and moving for the day. I shuffle out to the kitchen to get my first cup of coffee. Bless thee who discovered the delicacy that is coffee, seriously, my life depends on it. First sip goes down, and my brain starts to awaken. My day can officially begin.
An example of how my typical Monday goes is below. An example of my typical week is shown above.
Monday To do list:
- Wakeup + coffee 4am
- Study 4:15-6am
- Get ready: 6-6:45am
- Clinical Medicine exam 8am
- Clinical Medicine lecture from 9am-12pm
- Lunch 12-1pm
- Clinical Medicine lecture from 1-4pm
- Workout with Beth from 5-5:30pm
- Shower 5:35pm
- Eat Dinner, call/facetime mom or boyfriend 6pm
- Study for Tuesday and Wednesday classes/tests 6:15-?
- Bedtime: 10-10:30pm
Since I have an exam at 8am, my morning is spent looking over my notes and my practice questions. My clinical medicine notes are typically over 250-300 powerpoint slides which equates to about 50+ pages of notes. I just read and read and read. Over the weekend I spent time doodling all over my notes with various colored pens trying to make associations in my brain.
My roommate, Beth, and I like to leave extra early on exam days (which, as you will see is almost every single day). On Monday mornings we leave our house about 6:45am. Around 5:50-6am, I begin trying to make myself look presentable–hair, makeup, brush teeth, and then of course the daily struggle of trying to figure out what to wear. Our dress code for each week is Monday-Wednesday: business professional, Thursday: scrubs, and Friday: casual. You know, I have a million combinations of clothes but yeah, like most people of the female gender: I will spend about 5-10 minutes trying on different combos trying to find the perfect one.
After tearing through my closet and leaving more clothes on the floor than when I started I head out to the kitchen for more coffee (DUH!) and pack my lunch for the day. Packing my lunch not only keeps me on my “diet”, but it saves me money by not going out to eat all of the time. On Mondays we are on our school’s main campus, and we don’t have access to a refrigerator there. There is a microwave across campus, but since I’m lazy I typically pack myself food that can easily be kept fresh with an icepack and doesn’t require to be heated up (ie sandwich, granola bars, banana, yogurt, crackers, and my yeti full of, you guessed it, more coffee).
Our drive to McKenzie campus is about 20 minutes from our house. Beth and I typically jam out to 90s country, chat about the upcoming week or just have more girl talk that we never seem to get enough of. Once we hit the school though, its go-time. Before exams, we are very quiet, allowing ourselves to get into “the zone” before our test begins. In PA school, in order to pass your test you have to obtain an 80% or better. To some, an 80% seems like an easy feat, but the reality is with ~30 credit hours, exams everyday, and trying to figure out your scheduling/organization/routine, occasionally an 80% sneaks up on you. You might go into a test with confidence and be 10 questions in and wondering if you are going to pass it.
At 7:50 we take our seats and one of our classmates or professors will pray over us before we take our exam. Once 8am hits our lockdown browsers are engaged and our brains (hopefully) carry us through our exam. Usually the exam is about 50 questions long and we have just under an hour to complete it. After the exam we head to the lecture hall for lecture. I try to get a head start on my notes before lecture begins so I can try to keep up with our professor as she begins the material. Monday lectures are from 9am until we break for lunch at 12 and then we continue from 1-4. It’s a long day of lecture for one class, but it’s arguably our most important class. Luckily for us, our professor does a pretty good job at keeping us engaged.
4pm hits and we are released from the lecture hall to travel home. Once we get home Beth and I get our butts whooped by Autumn Calabrese via her Beachbody workout videos (if you haven’t tried it I would suggest looking into it!). As you could imagine there is a lot of complaining, laughing and sweating that occurs for 30 minutes. It’s then shower time followed by dinner. One of the smartest things that I learned from Beachbody is how to meal prep and let me tell you, it has saved my life in PA school. Over the weekend I cook a ton of food for the week and then Monday through whenever my food runs out, I just have to heat it up. I don’t have to spend my study time cooking meals since I have them already prepped and ready to go—it’s a lifesaver!
While I eat my dinner, I usually spend that time to talk to my mom and/or my boyfriend. One of the most important things that I have learned in PA school is that it is incredibly important to take the time to talk to your loved ones. We are so busy, that is true, but you are never too busy to take the time to decompress and talk to family/friends. It works wonders on your mental health, and it helps immensely with homesickness if you live far away from home, like I do (more on that in a later blog-stay tuned!). After taking my time getting my mind off of school related things for a while it is then time to jump back in and study before heading to bed.
In my opinion the most important aspect in regards to PA school is your organization and time management. I have gotten to the point where if I need to do something and it is not written down on my to-do list, then there is a high probability that it will not get done. I have 2 calendars, a planner, and reminders in my phone about what I need to have done (or try to get done) each day. Use those planners, sticky notes, reminders in your phone, whatever it is that works for you, to keep yourself organized. Once you fall behind just a little bit, you will find that it is a very slippery slope trying to regain your organizational control. At the end of the day we all have the same 24 hours to utilize. How you choose to utilize your time is up to you. For me, I wake up at 4am to get my day started. There are other people in my class who wake up 20 minutes before they have to leave for class. Whatever your situation is, you will need to figure out a routine that works for you to utilize your day efficiently.
“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination. – Napoleon Hill”
-Paige
Paige the PA 