Yo! What’s up Cal Poly!? I miss SLO, all the great people there, and the central coast. Since my graduation in June of 2016, I’ve done a lot. My girlfriend and I took a cross-country road trip where we traveled over 7,000 miles in one month and visited 26 different states. Besides that adventure, I’ve also continued my education and started physical therapy school last fall. I’ve completed my first semester and currently am in my second semester at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (Wash U. for short).
It’s a little amazing how fast the time has gone already. Feels like just the other week I was putting on my cap and celebrating my time at Cal Poly. My first semester of PT school is complete and before I know it, I’ll be done with my first year of PT school. My first semester of PT was just as I expected…challenging, stressful, yet doable. Wash U. did an excellent job though at “breaking us [first year students] in”. The first month of school isn’t bad at all. It was kind of odd because I remember saying to myself, “Wow, I seem to have plenty of time to do things outside of school.” For me, that equaled more time to play golf. Yes, I love to play golf. But, come the second month of the semester, the pace and volume of work picked up real fast. For the first semester I had 19 units, and 19.5 units for my current second semester. There were some very tough weeks in my first semester. Much tougher than any week I had at Cal Poly. Needless to say, I had plenty of coffee during finals week.
As a student with a kinesiology and exercise science background, I have to admit that many of the concepts learned in the first semester were more like review. Absolutely, I recommend any potential pre-PT student to take Dr. Clark’s biomechanics and neuroanatomy class. It will help a ton. Pretty much every kinesiology class from Cal Poly has helped me in some way so far. Literally, I’ve used dynamical systems (Dr. Hall’s motor control class), almost everything from motor development (Dr. Omli’s class), pretty much everything from Dr. Clegg’s exercise prescription class, etc. Guess what I’m saying is that Cal Poly’s Kinesiology 100% will prepare you for PT school. So, again, thank you to the entire Kinesiology faculty for teaching me and helping develop my knowledge. Serious, you all are awesome. With that said, it still won’t be easy or just “cruise control” throughout the first semester. In PT school, the exams require much more time to prepare for than I needed for Cal Poly. I learned this the tough way. The study patterns I used at Cal Poly to get A’s and B’s got me more B’s and C’s than I wanted in PT school. But, I credit myself for knowing my weaknesses and making the necessary adjustments needed to be successful. At this level of education, it’s not about getting straight A’s or having the highest GPA, but for me and at Wash U, it’s about being able to apply concepts to effectively treat patients. There may be students that have a knack for memorizing and are master test takers, but may not necessarily be the best at applying that knowledge in a real application with real patients. So, that is one thing about PT school that I like. In PT school, my class size is 87 students, so there is a wide range of backgrounds and knowledge in my class. My new teachers really instill in us that yes, grades are important, but they want to make sure that we can apply and utilize all the concepts we learn.
My current semester so far is going good. Once again, the amount of volume is astounding that we need to learn and memorize. This semester I am excited to be working with our cadavers in anatomy! If anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me and I will try to help.
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