You are right, every rotation is very different in terms of schedule and responsibilities. I can give you, culled from experience at 3 programs and interviews at others, averages.
Generally every rotation includes lectures at 7 or 8 or whatever time the day starts. Lectures can be slide review, didactic, case or autopsy presentations, whatever. Generally there is something every day. Sometimes there are also other committments, whether at noon or 4pm, or whenever. Generally not every day. But at my program we have brain cutting (autopsy brains) once weekly at noon, an occasional forensics afternoon lecture, a slide review session one afternoon a week, a research seminar. Lectures at most programs will be called "required" but this is flexible often depending on what rotation you are on.
CP rotations usually have additional lectures at other times.
The day on other rotations:
Autopsy: If there is an autopsy, you do it, usually finished by early afternoon at the latest. You also have to dictate or type up the gross report and prelim diagnosis. Depending on the program, autopsy months can be combined with others. Like if there is no autopsy, you look at dermpath, or you do some surg path.
Surg path: Every program is different. Some will have separate days where all you do is stay in the lab and do frozens or gross in specimens that come in. This will alternate with days where you look at the slides of all the cases you did the previous day and sign them out with attendings or fellows. There is no uniform schedule. Programs range from having you do frozens and grossing every day, and previewing cases and signing them out in between all of this work to having a 4 day schedule where day 1 is frozens, day 2 is grossing the leftovers, day 3 is previewing your slides, and day 4 is signout. Surg path is usually the busiest rotation - you go until the OR stops. Sometimes this can be into the evening, and if you have lots of specimens to gross, same thing. When I did my surg path during my PSF I would start after lecture, generally frozens started coming in about 9:15-9:30. Slides from the previous day started coming out at 10. So my day was spent juggling things until 4pm when all the frozens were done and I would finish grossing. Sometimes there until 7 or 8.
Cytology months often have you on call for FNAs (either doing them yourself or being present while a clinician does them). And the rest of your day is spent reviewing cases - first alone, then with the attending, again varying with the program.
Hemepath varies so much from program to program it is almost not worth trying to describe.
Other CP also vary - blood bank you handle calls and lab issues all day, write up transfusion reactions. Chemistry you do lots of reading or reviewing lab tests. Micro, same thing.
In general the day runs from whenever lectures start until 4 or 5 pm. If you are on a busy rotation with extra work, you will have to stay later than that. Sometimes you are done before 4 or 5. Some rotations require a lot more self direction, others have you going almost non-stop (although it still isn't as bad as other specialties where you have 85 things to do IMMEDIATELY).
Do you have specific questions about specific rotations? The basic stuff, I guess, is that
1) You generally have time for a nice lunch
2) Lots of self-directed learning at times
3) Manageable schedule
