Getting Into PA Schoolhouse: Paul's Story

Posted By: Paul | Become a PA

Information technology's easy to become caught up in the demands of physician assistant requirements.  With all the exams for prerequisite classes, researching PA programs, filling out CASPA applications, chasing down letters or recommendation, and paying the bills any way you lot can, things can plow into a grind.  Exercise you feel that way?  I remember how conspicuously I felt it.

It'south been a while, and I'm feeling a reflective today, then I'll share a little of my own story.  Sometimes it helps to meet that others have been through something like what you are going through.  My story is not perfect, or even typical, but perhaps you'll get something out of it.

I hadn't considered the field of md banana medicine much until I told my primary care physician, Dr. Yard., that I needed to practise something dissimilar after existence a stay-at-abode father of three young children for five years.  Before existence a parent, I had enjoyed working equally a wedlock and family therapist, merely it was hard piece of work that didn't pay well, and information technology just didn't seem like the answer.  Dr. G. told me near a PA named Lynn whom he had preceptored, and he suggested that I call her for an "informational interview."  It was great advice.  Lynn had worked in orthopedic surgery, midwifery, primary care, emergency, and was now a hospitalist.  She was enthusiastic, and reassured me that PA medicine was a field that had allowed her to remain an active parent to her children, earn a tidy income, and do work that she loved.  She spent plenty of time with me on the phone (on two or three different calls), gave me her email address, and even offered to let me shadow her.  I should have taken her up on it, but I'm embarrassed to say that never did.

Later on researching the field for a while, I decided to go back to school to go a doc assistant.  In order to apply, I needed to take anatomy, physiology, and microbiology.  To be more than competitive, I too decided to have a private EMT Basic course.  I had worked as an EMT some years earlier, but had let my certification lapse, then I had to start all over.  In all, while parenting, these courses would take me at least two years to consummate.  I was excited about the opportunity, I jumped back into school with a vengeance.

I loved my studies, just quickly realized how much work I was in for.  I took beefcake, and studied in spurts – an hour hither, a weekend there.  I was intimidated by the grade, but managed to print my instructor, who somewhen became a friend and letter writer for my PA school application.  On my not-school days I stayed abode with my three young kids.  During this process, I felt torn between my family and my teaching.  I studied belatedly at night and during the day for brusque periods while the kids played on their ain.  I was tired all the time, and ofttimes grumpy and irritable.  I didn't feel like a very good educatee or father, just I knew that not following through with this would mean beingness unhappier and therefore an fifty-fifty worse father, so I kept going.

The second yr of my preparation, I began looking for a health clinic to volunteer with, but had no luck.  I was told by several that they were as well busy, or that they couldn't take me because they couldn't afford to insure me, and wouldn't let me get my own insurance.  Finally, I lamented to a friend that this was my dream, but I was stymied.  She talked with a doc friend she knew (who eventually became ane of my preceptors) at one of the clinics that had turned me down, and he was able to button through the red tape to get me in to volunteer.  I learned so much in clinic and had a great time doing it.

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sleeping in the car
It was never comfortable…

Soon subsequently, I learned that because it had been years since I had taken physiology, I would need to retake it in order to have a chance of being accustomed.  Unfortunately, I found this out in August of the year before I applied, late enough that all of the classes in my area were total with wait lists.  I searched up and down Northern California for an open slot in a physiology class and finally found ane in Eureka, CA, a three-hour drive from my domicile.  Undeterred, I signed upward.  On Mondays I had microbiology at my home schoolhouse, and on Tuesday I left at 4 PM for Eureka.  I studied while driving by listening to a digital voice recorder into which I had dictated notes and questions like, "BLANK is the enzyme that unwinds bacterial DNA…Reply: Topoisomerase Two."  I got to class at vii PM, finished lab at x PM, and so turned around to drive 3 hours back abode.  I took naps past the roadside because I couldn't stay awake on the long, winding road, and I usually didn't get home until at least 2 AM.  My diet consisted so "gut bombs," the cheap burgers you lot get at gas stations, Coca Cola, and that spicy dried mango you also go at the gas stations.  (Yes, I could have washed better with the diet).  Through information technology all, I was with my kids whenever I wasn't in class.  I didn't know if I would get in, and all I kept telling myself was, "This has to piece of work."

After completing my prerequisites, I began my CASPA awarding.  I treated CASPA like a chore.  I went to "piece of work" every day at the library for 3 or four weeks to write and rewrite my essay.  I printed multiple versions of it and tormented everyone I knew with it.   In the cease, it said a lot nigh me, and I was very proud of it.

When information technology came to letters of reference, I blew it.  I had ane of my references (my anatomy teacher and friend) write ane on paper, and I promptly lost it.  I called him at home, apologized profusely, and he wrote information technology all over once again.  (Larn from my fault, people).

Confession: although I would love to let my readers believe that I got interviews and acceptances to PA to programs all over the country, peradventure the truth volition testify more useful.  I applied to just three programs, all within 5 hours of my domicile, and got exactly i interview: UC Davis, my absolute, hands-down first selection.

I interviewed at UC Davis in October, on what I later was told was the second day of interviews.  It was a panel interview with four faculty members, all of whom were kind and responsive.  They told me that they had received a record 1300+ applications that year for 57 seats in the class.

I thought virtually those numbers–1300+ and 57–for the entire three-hour bulldoze home, and by the time I arrived, I was furious at myself for "bravado it" so spectacularly.  Information technology had been a good try, but I was prepared for the worst – a long wait to receive a form letter of the alphabet beginning with something like "We receive many applications each yr, and although we wish we could accept all of them, regrettably, we cannot."

The post-obit morning, while dropping my daughter off at her kindergarten classroom, I got the call from their manager of admissions, and information technology was all I could exercise not to scream — I had been accepted.

I hope my story is useful to y'all in some mode.  If you have questions or comments, delight don't hold back.

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