So this week has definetely been a whirlwind for me. Between leaving the friends I made over the summer at URMC, to meeting new classmates, its all been an enlightening experience. I basically spent Monday and Tuesday moving in to UT Housing and buying/gathering the essentials for my place. Wednesday was the first day of orientation, which pleasantly included breakfast and lunch. We were welcomed with packets of necessary first year orientation materials/guides, a CD with syllabi for all the fall classes, and some other details. Dr. P and Dr.Valenza welcomed the students and talked about the vision, objectives of the curriculum. Although I was bothered to hear that the class after us, class of 2016, would be paying 20k in tuition alone, I was happy to hear that class of 2015 dodged that 4k increase...We were split into 3 groups, played some icebreaker games with the 2nd year students that led the groups, and given tours of the school's facilities. We were also assigned advisors and got to meet them, as well as the faculty that would be responsible for teaching the courses. Today, Wednesday was much more relaxed, as we heard from student health, financial aid, etc. I also purchased the first year instrument kit-at a whopping 5180 cost....I just keep telling myself its an investment, and what else would I be doing if not this? That usually calms me down...lol
In order to get a head start on organization, I've been looking through the syllabi and decided to make a calendar of all the class times, major exams and project due dates on Microsoft Works. When one has 23 credits a semester, its just not reasonable to try to remember when every assignment/paper is due. I'm pretty sure my first test is August 29, in immunology...just 2 weeks, 3 weeks or so? Time to get cracking...
While its such a hectic time getting adjusted, its also very refreshing and rewarding to finally be here. In a sense, I feel like I've been working towards this all of my educational career. Its interesting to note that there are many older students in our class, I'm talking high 20's 30's, some with kids-which brings a level of maturity and adds to the richness of the student body-wow, I'm really in professional school! Everyone seems so helpful and nice, and really family-like. While I know this will not be an easy journey by any means, I'm beginning to get my stamina back and the focus and motivation I need to give this first semestr my all...
White Coat on Saturday!!!
