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I've also seen that Florida is pretty bad for allergy sufferers. Can any current Florida residents weigh in on their pollen allergy experience in Bradenton?
I've got pretty bad grass allergies, and they've actually improved a lot in Fl, since there's not really so much of a spring and fall as there is a hot and really hot. The grasses which grow around here don't seem to throw as much pollen, don't know about other allergies.
Question for current students or anyone that knows more than me here (so that's probably everyone).... My mom wants to visit and see the school. She will probably only visit once or twice in my 4 years out there, so I want to make it worth while. Should I have her come out for the family open house right before school starts, or should she come for the White Coat Ceremony if they let people see the school at that time?
Thanks!
I agree if you had to pick one, white coat would probably be it. With a semester under your belt, you'll be a lot more settled and will know the area a lot better to show your mom.
Ok. So I was re-reading this thread (just for kicks...) and realized that the current LECOM-B regulars rarely have anything bad to say about LECOM.
There must be something you don't like about the school. Please share, no matter how trivial. What is/are your least favorite things about LECOM?
I love the place too, I just want to know what to expect!
Anyone?
There are plenty of things I don't like about the school or that bother me; by and large, however, most of them don't really seem to have much of an impact on my daily life, not do I feel like they've had a great impact on the past two years of my education. The no food and drink/dress code thing could probably be pretty annoying, but really, how bad can it be when you're only on campus ~10 hours a week? If the school was lecture-based, and I had to live by these rules 8 hrs/day/5 days a week, I'm sure it'd get old quick, at least to me.
I think this applies to many things that could be annoying - for example, people started cutting class so they gave everyone an assigned seat. Annoying, but again, when you only have lecture for 4 hours a week, it just doesn't seem like that big a deal, at least to me.
I agree that the mini-courses are weak, in fact, with the exception of anatomy and a couple others, I'd say the vast majority of lectures here are pretty weak, and not well integrated with the rest of the curriculum. The content covered during most of the mini-courses was pretty random, and seemed to be more a reflection of the presenter's interests than focused on the material you will need for boards. There is a very good possibility you will need to spend some time brushing up on mini-course topics like ethics, sexuality, epidemiology, some behavioral science, etc. before boards.
I think there's often some tension between students and administration here. They are very serious about enforcing the rules, and they can be kind of restrictive about things like club activities. I've never had a problem bringing in guest speakers for my club, but you have to fill out paperwork several weeks in advance and have it approved by the dean and several other folks. So, they'll let you do things, but it can be kind of a pain to go through the approval process. Since the pharmacy school opened, club activities have been limited to before or after school, meaning most club meetings happen at around 5:30 pm. This has not made it easy for some of the clubs to keep membership up, but it may change once the pharm school is more settled.
I'm almost reluctant to post these few things, since sometimes people have a tendency to latch on to negative posts and magnify them out of proportion. Lest that happen here, let me underscore that in spite of the couple issues mentioned above, it's tough for me to imagine having had a better experience than I've had here. I seem to do best when someone sets the goal, and then gives me as much freedom as possible to figure out how to get there, and PBL has really worked for me in this way. Lectures can be very useful, but as a sole learning tool, it seems very limited compared to the integration that happens through PBL. Good luck, everybody!
