Back to School

My first week as a Pathologists’ Assistant student has flown by.  Coming back to school after having 8 months off has been a rude awakening.  Gone are the days of hitting snooze, watching Netflix in bed, and being employed.  Hello staying up late reading textbooks, bringing flashcards everywhere, and eating cheap meals.  But I already love the program and I know that all this hard work will pay off.

Line up for the first semester:

Human Anatomy for the Path. Asst.

Anatomical Pathology Techniques

General Pathology

Advanced Forensic Photography

If you are curious, our schedule looks like this:

Here are my first impressions of the classes:

Human Anatomy for the Path. Asst.

            I haven’t taken an anatomy course since 11^th grade (YIKES!), so this class seems like it will be the most challenging for me.  I spent all of Wednesday studying a table of common anatomic derivatives and terms and I’m starting to feel more confident about the class.  I’ll admit that I also practiced naming all the anatomical planes and terms of movement while out at dinner as well.  This class also includes microanatomy and a cadaver lab.  Our first lab is next week and I cannot wait!

Anatomical Pathology Techniques

            In this class we will cover the various techniques that we will encounter as PAs.  This week we learned about the fixation process, formalin safety, and the frozen section techniques.  I can’t wait to try out all the techniques, although I must say that finishing a frozen section in less than 7 minutes seems absolutely impossible!

General Pathology

            We have this class with the dental students. I feel as though the 17 PA students stick out in a sea of scrub clad dental students, but hopefully we will become one cohesive class.  From what I can tell, this class seems like it will prepare us for our summer course (Mechanisms of Disease). So far we’ve learned about cell injury and inflammation, but I'm looking forward to learning about specific disease processes and how they affect particular organs or systems.

Advanced Forensic Photography

            I am lucky enough to have taken Forensic Photography while in undergrad at WVU.  In the Forensic and Investigative Science program we had multiple classes that required the Nikon D7000 DSLR cameras, so I feel pretty comfortable working with them.  It seems like we will get to complete some pretty cool projects (my classmate and I are planning to do our first project on photographing bite marks).

In addition to these classes we also get to spend 2 days on a Histology rotation as well as 2 days in the Gross Room.  We also will attend 1-2 pathology conferences a week.

We have our first exam on Thursday, so it's time to get back to studying!