Orientation is Over

Well, our three days of orientation are through and we are now oriented to the school.  (kind of)  Yesterday was the fun day.  After a session in the morning about IT services and all our different usernames and passwords and what we use each one for, a couple second year PT students talked to us about the different opportunities available for us to get involved in as PT students, namely, the PT club.  About the usernames...we have three different usernames: email, class information online, and online student account information.  You'd think they'd be able to do something about that so we could use the same one for all three functions.  At least they could just have two.  But no, I don't think Massachusetts is quite up to the same caliber of technology as the west coast yet.  (See random thoughts below.)

Moving on....the anatomy teachers then came in and talked to us a bit about the class and a little bit about what to expect tomorrow.  I'm excited for anatomy!  But, I am not excited about the size of our class and that there will be eight people to one cadaver and that we'll be broken up into two different groups--early afternoon and late afternoon.  The faculty told us that they would only accept 50 students into the program and no...they decide to bring 67 DPT students now, and they didn't tell us until this week.  Fifty was already big and now 67?!  That's ridiculous and what none of us were expecting at all.  Surprise to us!  Maybe some people will drop out...as much as I don't want that to happen to anyone, it would reduce the size of the class, which would be nice.  Oh well, it is what it is and we're going with 67.

Alright...the fun of the day was this scavenger hunt/amazing race type activity around Boston.  We started at school and went to the Bunker Hill Monument, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Common, Fenway Park, the North End (which has a lot of restaurants), Paul Revere's grave, and we ended at The Four's, which is a bar kind of by school, where we were able to hang out with our class as well as some of the second and third years, although I didn't meet many of them, which was part of the goal of this social event.  It was a pretty fun day...A LOT of walking, and speed walking or jogging at that, but it was fun to go around town and see some places I haven't seen and do a little bit more exploring.  I definitely want to go to a Red Sox game, or at least be in the Fenway area before a game--I hear it can get pretty crazy!  :)  Boston fans sure are true and loyal fans!

Today, we went to school and talked about what it means to be a professional for about three hours or so.  It was a good topic to promote a comfortable discussion time among us as a class and was relevant to our future profession.  Nothing astonishing or mind-blowing, but informative nonetheless.  Then, we paid for and collected our anatomy course materials while also paying for our lab coats and medical supply kit.  I also joined the APTA (American Physical Therapy Association) today, which was strongly recommended (pretty much required).  Tuition is so much money and then we have all these fees for all these other smaller things as well.  Why, why, why?!?!  So much money that I will have to be paying back--yikes!  Maybe God has something amazing planned for me when I am done with school and a job all lined up that will have a loan forgiveness program in which they will pay back ALL my school loans if I work for them for a few years.  If not, I know He'll provide the funds in another, maybe more creative, way.  Somehow, someway, I will be able to make those loan repayments someday, sometime.  But, I will choose to not think about that too much right now.  I need to finish school first!  :)

Well, tomorrow is the first day of anatomy lab and we start at one in the afternoon rather than nine in the morning, which will be nice to sleep in a bit and have the morning to not go to school.  My anatomy teachers seem to be great and I think I will really like this class, except that there are only eight cadavers for 67 students....

Random thoughts/observations:

Many places around town have signs that say "Cash Only".  Really?  Who carries much cash around these days?  Why can't they take plastic?  My goodness. 

The milk jugs don't have the screw-on caps.  They have the caps that you just put on and take off, like what we had in CA as I was growing up in my younger years (since I kind of am still growing up).

There are still real garbage men who stop the truck at each house, get out of the truck, manually put the trash from the cans (normal cans with a lid that is not attached) into the truck.  Except, I only saw one garbage man on our route last week, so I think he does it by himself even!  The driving and the dumping...he's working a lot harder than the garbage men in the Clayton neighborhoods!  

Okay...that's all I have for now...I'm sure there will be more fun/random thoughts later.  :)