What have been some of the highlights and low points of attending MUSC so far?
I honestly love MUSC, and I'm not just saying that just because I go here. Sorry this is going to be long!
Highlights:
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Professors: our professors are amazing, and a lot of them are nationally recognized. The current president and the president before that of the SC chapter of the APTA are PT professors from MUSC. The vice-president of the national APTA is a professor from MUSC. A lot of them are also still practicing clinicians and are still treating patients, which is great because they are still getting new clinical experiences to share with us and sometimes even bring some of their patients into class for learning experiences.
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CARES clinic: this is one of my TOP reasons for coming here. The CARES clinic is basically a PT/OT clinic on campus that functions as a normal clinic by day, but two nights a week, it turns into a free student-run clinic for underserved/uninsured people in the area. So you get hands on experience starting your first semester here, which is AMAZING. You learn things in class and see a lot of of it soon after on an actual patient. You learn glides and exercises in class and then can show them and do them on a patient in the clinic. With a lot of other programs, the first hands-on experience you get with real patients isn't until your first rotation, which is kind of scary to me. I feel like it's better preparing me for my rotations and making me more comfortable in the clinic setting. You also have opportunities to be on the board that operates CARES so you can also see the business side of things if that interests you or if you want to open your own clinic someday.
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Location: I mean, it's in Charleston, so there's so much stuff to do and beaches to go to. Lots of great restaurants and venues, etc. Also, the location of the school is great too. Since we're on a campus with a hospital, you get to have some experience in there as well. Like this semester we learned about transfers and bed mobility, and then we got to go in the hospital and practice it on actual patients. A lot of schools don't have those kind of opportunities.
Low Points:
I don't really have any low points so far. PT school is definitely the hardest thing I've done in my life so far, so low points might be that I have had to adjust to an 8-5 school day while still having to make time to study, go to the gym, cook, etc afterwards. The material is thrown at you really fast and you learn VERY quickly that undergrad study habits don't fly in PT school. So for me, I had to learn how to study effectively and stay on top of things. But I feel like that would be the same with any other school.
Another thing that isn't really a big deal to me is that because MUSC is kind of old, some of the lecture rooms are kind of outdated, but they're refurbishing a lot of them and building a lot of cool new things. (We have an amazing gym.) But even though some of them are outdated (and they aren't even really that outdated), they all have outlets for your laptops at every seat, which is all that really matters to me. haha
-One thing that I was kind of bummed about is that we didn't get to dissect our own cadavers for anatomy lab. The PA students dissected them, and then we got to go in and learn all of the stuff. (Although, the PAs were always staying late after to finish the dissections because they took so long and always seemed stressed about it so maybe it's good we didn't have to haha)
-Parking and Traffic: because it's Charleston (aka Tourist Central in the summer), there can be lots of traffic, especially during peak hours. Parking is kinda sparse and far-ish away from campus (at least as a first year), but they have buses that run from the lots to campus. It's still within walking distance, though.
That's all I can think of right now!