what grad school is like
Today i will discuss some of the eccentricities and quirky habits of the grad student lifestyle
let's discuss workload first. i am taking 6 classes for a total of 18 credit hours (note- you only need 9 grad. level credit hours per quarter to be considered a full-time student. thus, i am kind of a double full time student). My class day runs from 7:30 am to about 3:30 pm with about a 1 hour break every day of the week except for thursday. over the 10 week period of the quarter, i have 7 quizzes, 3 major presentations, 2 major papers, and 18 (EIGHTEEN!) exams. just looking at exams, that averages out to more than 1 major exam every 3 school days. i wouldn't hesitate to say that in this one quarter i will take more exams than most people do in an entire year, and it's even probable that i'll take more exams in this one quarter than some of the people reading this have taken in their entire college career up to this point. i also still work part time at CVS and have 3 experiential rotations to juggle over the year.
some quirks of professional school students:
-100% attendance to all lectures, recitations, and labs. seriously, 100%. nobody skips anything.
-the lunch hour is for studying
-actually, every hour is for studying
-we aren't competitive with each other... but most are elitist swine. myself included. (evidence exhibit A: this journal entry)
-in theory, the P2 and P3 classes should only be on average 1 and 2 years older than us (we're P1s, as in 1st year pharmacy students). but if you look at them, they all seriously look like old people, like 5 or 10 years older than us. pharmacy school ages you in a terrible way.
-granted, i'm one of the youngest people in the class since most people did their 4-year bachelor degree first... but i'm very sad to admit that the ol' hairline has started to recede a bit. at this rate i'll probably be gray, wrinkly, and have erectile dysfunction by the time i finish the second year.
most fellow students are very friendly people, but it's obvious we're all just a couple chemical structures away from snapping and doing something horrible. as a sign of how intense and dedicated most of the students are, i would estimate that i'm very much towards the bottom of the class in terms of study habits and dedication, and i'm a friggin reamsnyder.
on the plus side, i'm not addicted to anything. yet. hey, i can stop whenever i fucking want, ok? get off my back!
and to further prove there's a point to my whining, here's another example: 1 powerpoint slide from the midterm i took today: (note- there were exactly 194 similar slides to this. this test was not cumulative and there are 5 total tests in the class, which means that over the course of this quarter i will learn and MEMORIZE approximately 1000 times the info on this single slide just for this class)
_____________________Neurophysiology:
"Locus Coeruleus in Pons and Parietal
Lobe Cortex" Involved in Selective Attention
- Locus coeruleus projects to parietal
cortex and other brain areas
- Assists DA by amplifying signals
from some sensory inputs so
contrast more strongly with others
- Lesions of parietal lobe interfere with
disengagement step
-- Fail to pay attention to sensory
information from contralateral side
of body (neglect syndrome)
- Neglect most severe if lesion to
right parietal cortex
(Also imagine a giant brain diagram where you have to memorize what lobe, hemisphere, level, and cortex the locus coeruleus is located in the brain)_________________________
anyway, let's just look at two cases of how pharmacy days can go:
1. regarding this most recent exam, not counting all the time i study during lunch and between classes and the days before, I studied from about 6 pm to 1:30 am (only breaking for a half hour of South Park, of course) and then woke up at 5 am, walked down to the pharmacy building, studied some more until the 7am midterm (yes, we quite often have exams at 7 in the morning) and now i'm back here at 8:30 am writing about my day. normally i'd have a 3 hour meeting from 8:30 to 11:30 to discuss and set up my rotations, but they aren't finalized yet so for once, i get an easy day off. this sequence of events has been strangely satisfying, and one of the easiest ones. only negative is that i've been outside for an hour today (it's a half hour walk to the college of pharmacy, but that's a whole other complaining journal entry) and didn't see one bit of sunlight in that hour outside.
2. the other day it was storming, lightning and thunder and ridiculous amounts of rain- the mirror lake water level was at the sidewalk and i walked through an inch of water most of the way to class. i usually see about 1000 random people on my journey to class, but in this weather i saw about 20 since nobody was going to classes in that weather. yet, when i show up to my lectures, all 126 pharmacy students are there and ready to go, not one stayed home... stupid dedicated geniuses make it hard for semi-dedicated assholes like me to excel...
anyways, i could rant more but i've gotten enough off my chest. thank god GPAs don't matter now that i'm in the program, because mine is going down the shitter in a rapid way. does anyone remember how stressed i was when i took the entire organic chemistry series in 8 weeks two summers ago? well this is at the exact same pace, and it lasts 3 years.
overall life isn't bad, just horrendously stressful. blah. nap time.