School Days

This has been quite an adventure here but it definitely hasn't been all fun and games. PT school is a lot of work, I'm not surprised but it takes a lot to keep up with everything! We start every day at 8:00 am. The schedule has taken a bit of getting used to because it changes every day. We don't really have classes, we just have lectures, so we may have a neuroscience lecture on Monday, and then we might have one on Wednesday, but we might not have another one for two weeks. Who knows?! Mondays and Wednesdays we usually have labs from 2:00 to 5:30. I say usually becasue that is how it has been for the past couple weeks but who knows if that is how it will keep being. We also have labs Fridays from 8:00 to 10:30. Tuesdays are clinic days after classes in the morning. Half of us go to our part-time clinical from 1:00 to 5:00 and the other half of us meet in our small groups to talk about our experiences and then we switch the next week. I am doing my part-time clinical at Albert Einstein Medical Center in inpatient rehab. Inpatient rehab is for people who are medically stable but still need some time in the hospital. Thursdays are pro bono days. We go to Folkways or West Oak Lane senior centers to volunteer for a couple hours after classes.  The whole class can't go at once so we go in shifts. I don't start going until January so for now I get Thrusday afternoons off! Usually on Fridays we get out a little early, around 3 or so which is so nice! Each lecture is 2 hours so even though we only have three or four a day it makes the days so long. The whole program is broken into 20 units that span the whole 2 1/2 years. A unit lasts about three weeks and at the end of the unit we have one written test over everything we have learned in the past three weeks. The tests last three hours and then we have a practical exam. We are currently in unit 2 so I have only had one practical exam so far but it was probably the most terrifying experience of my academic career! Each student goes into a room alone with a teacher and given a senario. The teacher is the patient and we are the therapist, we basically do everything we think we should do for our patient and then they tell us what was good, what was not so good, and whether we passed or not (no points, just pass or fail). It was probably the most stressful 10 min of my life! Our next one is next Monday, pray for me! Labs have been pretty fun, we do a lot of practical, hands-on stuff which is a lot of fun. This week we have been learning about electrical stimulation which can be used for healing, pain relief, and to help drive medication into the skin. Yesterday we used electiricity to create a muscle contraction. I was in a small group of girls and we were having a pretty good time playing with the electricity. We had the electrodes on one girl's arm and when we turned it up it would start to contract the muscles in her hand which wasn't exactly what we were going for. We were trying to get a contraction in her biceps so we obviously put the electrodes a little off the target. Then the instructor came over and put the electrodes on my arm. It was a weird but cool feeling, it was really tingly and felt a little vibrating. First they were on my forearm so when she turned it on it made the muscles in my hand contract. It was the strangest feeling, my hand was moving even though I wasn't telling it too! That is a sensation you can't really appreciate unless you feel it. Then she put them on my bicep. She must have had the thing up pretty high because when she turned it on I got a huge contraction in my arm! She was telling me to relax and let my arm bend and I thought, "You want me to what? Yeah right!" There was no way I would be able to relax my arm with 6 millivolts running through it! (This really is a safe proceedure, I'm just a baby so I'm making it sound a lot worse than it really is). When we were done and I took the electrodes off, my arm felt really tired, like I had been working out really hard. Oh the fun things we do in PT school :) Overall it's been really tough but I love school!