Emails 5 days a week for months on end… then came distance-learning, and it all came crashing down.
My kiddos have several hours of work per day, but they can’t do it on their own. On Friday, I spent about three hours working on writing projects with my 5th grader. You think writing is hard, try NOT rewriting a 5th grader’s story about their favorite memory. Holy smokes.
Distance learning is tough. It’s new. We’re struggling to even figure out what they have due when. Where do you check for teacher comments? Is it in an email? (What 5th grader checks his email?) Is it listed as a comment in the google doc? Is it on the assessment page?
The hardest part about rotations is the mental energy it takes to find the bathroom. The mental energy it takes to figure out where to park and see whether or not the residents carry their stethoscopes. That stuff spikes your cortisol like you wouldn’t believe.
My wife and I got into a huge argument Saturday morning at 8 AM. We’d been working on figuring out our kids’ schoolwork for about an hour and I lost it. She has her way. I have mine.
It isn’t the work, necessarily; I mean that’s part of it, but mostly, it’s the change. It’s the figuring it out. It’s stressful and exhausting and no one counts it.
It’s like a surgeon whose last patient is scheduled for 3:50 and tells you he can be at the hospital at 4:00 for surgery. The office is 10 minutes from the hospital, but 3:50 is when the last appointment is scheduled for. That means you probably won’t see that patient until 4:30, and that’s if you’re lucky. Then you spend at least 10 minutes with that patient. Then you have to “clean up” from the day’s work. Scripts, notes, etc. Ok, at best you’re out of the office at 5pm and it’s a ten-minute drive to the hospital.
No one accounts for margin. No one accounts for the spaces you need. No one thinks to mitigate the stress driving to their PANCE (that’s exactly when it builds up and overwhelms you).
You need to be smarter than that. You need to see the pain points, the stress points and appreciate them. See them for what they are. Sometimes you can deal with them and sometimes you can’t; recognizing them will help lower your overall cortisol levels and that’s a good thing for you and everyone around you.
Now, listen up. I don’t just say all of this for health. It is actually for your health, but that’s beside the point. The point is you can mitigate a lot of this stress by thinking, paying attention, and planning. As people are starting to take the PANCE again, I want to spend some time helping you plan for the exam. Plan in a very specific way.
In this month’s issue of Physician Assistant Exam Scholars, we’re going to cover test questions. I get emails from people all the time who get questions they don’t understand or “can’t even read.” I’m going to show you how to easily handle test questions. I’m going to walk you through exactly what I do. It isn’t hard, but it’ll change your scores forever.
Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace