On the Home Stretch

It is honestly hard to believe that today is July 29th, I feel like it was just yesterday that we were starting this program...but here I am with almost 8 months of PA school under my belt. Just thought I'd give a little update on how things have been going since the last time I posted and let's just say, July has been a crazy month.  We had three or four regular exams between our two classes in addition to the systemic pathology conferences and our occasional gross room, autopsy, and EM rotations.  Needless to say, there has been a lot of work and studying that has been going on over the past few weeks.

This week (the dreaded finals week) hasn't been any different.  We started Monday, July 27th, with our final "regular" exam in Systemic Pathology that covered the CNS and breast.  Thus far, the CNS chapter has been the most overwhelming because there is so much information on the different types of CNS pathologies.  It's slightly scary to think that we only covered a fraction of all CNS pathologies and we had 10 full PowerPoints of what our directors thought were the most important ones for us to know.  Once we conquered that test, the fun wasn't over.  The next day, we had our final exam for Clinical Pathology, which was composed of 90 multiple choice, true and false, and fill in the blank questions.  It was cumulative, so it covered everything we went over this summer, but I am glad to have everything finished for that class.

Throughout this week, we were also each given a topic/chapter from our Disease Mechanisms book that we had to make a PowerPoint and present on for 20 minutes.  That took a good bit of our time this week, but it was a good review for our final in Systemic Pathology this coming Friday.  I presented on the skin, which included benign epithelial tumors, acute inflammatory dermatoses and chronic inflammatory dermatoses. I can honestly say after that practicing that presentation that I should be pretty solid on knowing the skin part of the final for Friday.  The Systemic Pathology Exam Friday is cumulative and will also have a normal histology (tissue recognition) portion that will be performed in the scope lab.  The other part of the test will be composed of the normal multiple choice format.

Here's to happy studying and finishing the summer semester up strong! I'm excited for the two week break I have coming before fall semester starts! :)