WOW! No rest for the weary!

Well week 1 has come and gone and all I can say is, HOLY HELL this semester is going to SUCK!!!!

I have 7 different classes, only 1 of which is a "throw away". That class is a pass/no pass class discussing our clinical affiliations for spring and summer. No homework, no tests. A nice break! The rest is a murderer's row of scholastic sadism!!!

I start Monday mornings with Pathology of Disease. This is a "stimulating" 3 hour lecture class about, well, the pathology of different diseases and their processes. The professor is good, but the information will be a bitch. Plus I can't sit in one place for 3 hours and concentrate or stay awake!!!!

After lunch I move on to Analytical Anatomy. As hard as this class will be, I think I'm going to enjoy this one. It is 4HOURS LONG!!!! but I will get to move through several different areas. We spend time in lecture, anatomy lab, imaging (where they teach us how to read X-rays, MRIs, & CTs), topography (where we learn the landmarks and locations of anatomy on living bodies-us), & literature review (I'm sure you all know this is my least favorite part!) There will be a LOT of work to do in this class, but hopefully the variety will make it more interesting. Plus we get to perform a surgery! Unfortunately my group has the cervical spine (neck) so we will probably get to do a fusion or something on the cadavers.

Tuesdays start with 5 hours of Orthopaedic lecture & lab. This class last semester taught us all the diagnostic tests we will use, now we will start learning what to do for interventions when we do find something wrong. I think this class will be interesting and probably fun, but the amount of information is again going to be staggering! I already feel behind here, I need to go back and review some information from last semester!

Tuesday afternoons bring Evidence Based Practice for PT. Yeah, it's as interesting as it sounds. I think this class will consist of a lot of busy work on how to look up articles and apply them to your practice. A lot of it seems to be common sense type stuff. BORING!!!! Maybe it'll be a little bit of a break though. No tests or anything, just homework.

Wednesday mornings is Musculoskeletal Pathology where we learn about problems/diseases of the muscles, cartilage, bones, etc... Should be pretty interesting stuff. I actually asked the prof if she needed help with her research. She does a lot of work with the knee so of course I'm interested in that. The assistant prof for this class heads up PT for USC athletics so that would be really interesting too!

Wed afternoons brings Therapeutic Exercise. This class has a lab where we will be performing and using different exercises and interventions. First class I got volunteered to perform a 4 min step test for fitness levels. It showed me just how out of shape I've gotten since I got here!!! At least it will get me up and moving! Bad part is that second half of the semester times switch and I will be in there from 3-5pm so yet another long day!!!

Thursday and Friday are repeat days. We have Ortho on Thursdays and Analytical Anatomy & Musculoskeletal Pathology on Fridays.

All in all this will be a really interesting semester and the classes will all blend together but I don't think I'll have ever worked harder in my life then I'll have to this semester. Even the first week we didn't get out of a single class early and most of them actually went LONGER b/c we didn't have labs last week. So much for a break-in period! At least we got today off for MLK :)

I'll try to get one of these out every week to keep you all updated on what's going on both in and out of school. Feel free to leave comments/criticism or anything else you want to say. Hope you enjoy!