Well, I survived. I can take a breather. I am finally, finally caught up. We have a 3 day weekend!!!

Monday was our H+P final, which could have gone horrible considering I only knew about 40% of what we were required to know. PA school is just so crazy that you have to determine what you aren't going to study, because there literally isn't enough time to study anything unless you have a photographic memory, or can run on 4 hours of sleep (and I'm not blessed with either of those skills).

Tuesday was a paper and presentation, which went well.

Weds was AWESOME. It was our comprehensive practical, where we have to do an entire history and physical from memory. We only had an hour to ask a full review of systems and do a physical exam. A comprehensive H+P is what you do for a new patient in a practice, so it has to be very thorough. There are over 200 different signs and symptoms of the body we had to remember to ask about, and then we did a full body exam: head, ears, eyes, nose, throat, heart, lung, abdomen, musculoskeletal, and neurological. I got lucky and hit the jackpot in terms of patients. When I first got a glimpse of who my patient was when my examiner went into the room while I was waiting, I literally started dancing up and down on the inside. He was skinny and young and male (male you ask less questions about, and you don't have to deal with breasts when you're listening to heart and lung sounds). He was able to move around quickly, and I didn't have to explain things to him several times. I finished with a minute to spare,so I was lucky.

Thurs we had our pharm final. I needed an 80 to keep a B+ avg, and I got a 78. One question away! haha. I'm ok with that though, today's exam was heinous and it could have been so much worse. I also don't deserve a B+ considering I failed an exam earlier this semester.

Despite the horrible exam, yesterday was perfect because I was finally able to celebrate my birthday. I have been wanting to do something fun and exciting for my 25th, so back in August when I got access to a 50% off coupon for skydiving I jumped on it. Between our schedule and the weather, I've been trying to jump with a friend since September, but yesterday was the first day it worked out. I'm glad it did, it was beautiful!! The sky was so clear, we could see for miles. There was also a bit of color left in the trees. It was a fun experience. I wasn't nervous at all...my eyes got a little big when I was standing at the door of the plane waiting to jump out, but once I was out it was awesome. It felt like I was floating. We had 90 seconds of free fall and then 5 minutes twirling around on the parachute, but it went by so fast. There was an option to get a video taken, but at $99, I felt like I would wait until I actually have an income. I'm definitely going again!