My own little version of "You Might be a PA Student If..."

Well folks, here's a small taste of my life.

You might be a PA student if...

- You check your watch so often that you even look at your wrist in the shower and have a mild panic attack when you see that it isn't there. It takes a few seconds to recover and realize that you don't actually wear your watch in the shower and there is no pressing need to know what time it is every second of the day, anyway.

- Your backpack has become a constant companion. A constant, heavy, companion. When you don't wear it, you have phantom limb pain.

- You buy beverages according to caffeine content. When you go out for some rare leisure time, you buy beverages according to alcohol content.

- You refer to anyone who hasn't gone into a medical profession as a "non-masochist."

- You seriously consider the possibility of living in a shack on the beach and selling sun-tan lotion for the rest of your life.

- You start to think things like "Oh, it's only another $10,000 on my loan. That's not too bad."

- You realize that the afore-mentioned loan will total more than many mortgages when you're finished.

- You also realize that, after graduation, you will have to move to a remote part of Alaska to qualify for repayment of the afore-mentioned loan because that is the only way you will ever be able to afford things like groceries again.

- You watch TV shows, commercials, or movies and notice all of the things people do wrong, medically. You announce these things to your friends. They give you a look that says "It's fiction... it doesn't matter if she put the earpieces of her stethoscope in backwards."

- You automatically run through the ABCDEs in your head whenever you notice that a friend has a mole. You then tell them what the ABCDEs are and insist they go to a dermatologist immediately just for monitoring. Pester them until they make an appointment.

- When you're out in public, you diagnose certain things on sight alone, then you think about how you would write up a description of your assesment.

- By the end of first semester, you have become convinced - on at least three occassions - that you have some sort of rare disease or condition. Your classmates have also convinced themselves of this. Between the 30+ students, you've covered every disease known to man.

- You have absolutely no clue what your, :ahem:, cycle is anymore - partly because you're constantly stressed and partly because you sit in a classroom with 30 other women every single day. You also hang out together most evenings.

- You can put together a complete sentence using only acronyms and abbreviations and know exactly what it means.

- You use these acronyms and abbreviations with your non-school friends and they look at you as if you're speaking Greek. (You are).

- You say things like "If I see the word beta-adrenergic one more time I'll have to claw my eyes out." You're only half-kidding.

- You love every single second of it and wouldn't trade it for the world because when you finally stop to think about it, you're still astounded that you got accepted in the first place. ;)

Time to get back to studying for the big Pathyphysiology exam tomorrow (and hence look at the word "beta-adrenergic" again and again and again).

xo,
Ms. V