This might be helpful for you if you're wondering what graduate school is really
like number one I had no idea how intense school was going to be now I did
have some people tell me oh you know grad school is gonna be hard you can
have to study more which I was not new to studying I've always had to study
really really hard to get good grades so I figured okay how much more intense can
it be I had no idea nobody in my family or extended family at that point had
gone to graduate school so I didn't have someone that said to me hey this is what
you should expect I graduated in the mid-2000s with a doctorate degree in
physical therapy when you get into the doctor program it's already set up for
you you're with the same 25 people or the exact same classes every single day
for the entire three years you don't get to pick what classes you don't pick what
time of day you do the classes it's all laid out for you so the first semester
they eased us in with only six classes per semester which you know not too bad
it was rough the second semester I had ten classes I had no clue people even
did that I really was like this is impossible who can do ten classes a
semester plus all of your homework plus all of your assignments plus studying
for quizzes plus studying for exams so can you imagine exam time when you have
ten classes you literally have like ten exams in this period of like three days
died but you don't because you know what you have no idea how strong you are
until you go through something really tough and then it's amazing what you can
make yourself do on the other hand I had absolutely no life my entire life was
that program I lived and breathed physical therapy click this video right
here where I talk about the difference between undergraduate degree and a
graduate degree and yeah they're pretty different now once you get into grad
school you kind of feel like alright I made it it was super competitive it was
really really hard to get in but I did it so now I'm kind of look big sigh of
relief ah wrong it is so incredibly competitive I'm not naturally a
competitive person but people are so intense it's all about getting really
really good grades doing the best you can which of course you should always do
the best that you can in life you were expected to maintain a relatively high
GPA and if you didn't you were put on academic probation I'm not even joking
and if you didn't improve your grades by next semester you were kicked out of the
program you were never safe once you were there if you didn't
maintain a high average you were a goner so literally every test I took I was
like okay don't screw this up because you paid a lot of money to come here so
you better do well anyway I was a little intense with putting pressure on myself
I had no idea how many egos there were in graduate school and by egos I mean
professors with PhDs that have very high egos about themselves and the things
they've accomplished now don't get me wrong I value education I have a lot of
respect for people who are highly educated but I also have a problem when
they literally think that they are in God's on earth and can treat graduate
students like they are idiots and like they don't know a single thing people
work really hard to get into graduate school and yes there's obviously so much
that we don't know and we're already aware that we don't know things because
we're all struggling a little bit to keep our heads above water especially
the first semester but when you have professors that literally Lord there are
titles and there are accomplishments over you and make you feel like you are
an idiot it is really hard to have respect for
people like that that's just me not all of my professors were like that
definitely not and here's the thing you have to stay on good terms because you
have these professors over and over for classes so even if they're not your
flavor personality you have to find a way to get along with them and to show
them respect even if you sort of feel like really this guy is driving me nuts
I don't think anyone should ever be made to feel like they are a lesser then the
third thing that I wish I'd known before I started graduate school was that I
would basically be required to learn another language the language of Latin
no because my major was physical therapy I obviously had to become a body expert
I had to learn all the muscles and all the bones in the body so we're gonna
take the example of muscles there are approximately 650 muscles in your body I
had to learn at the origin the insertion the innervation and the action of every
single muscle gross anatomy completely has its own language so for example
let's talk about the muscle flexor carpi radialis you're probably saying what on
earth is she talking about it doesn't even sound she's speaking English and
I'm really not so picture the muscle right here so the first part of the word
flexor is actually a derivative from Latins and it means bender car Pete is
the modern Latin word and it means wrist and radialis refers
to the position of the muscle on the body which would be the radial side of
the forearm so when you break it down it does make sense but when you're first
learning it none of it makes any sense at all and you feel like you have no
idea what you're even studying it does get easier with time and over time you
actually start realizing wow I know what all this stuff means and then that's
really exciting I would feel dumb on a very regular basis now obviously you've
done a degree before you go into graduate school but you also know that
there's a lot that you don't know and it's okay it's totally okay to realize
that you don't really feel like you know anything hopefully you've been given a
foundation but then you build on that foundation and you get so much more
information packed and thrown at you in such a short amount of time it feels
completely overwhelming and it often feels like you actually aren't learning
anything all you realize is that you know less than you thought you knew last
week and every week more and more information is being thrown at you but
the interesting thing is some of it does actually start sticking and I remember
my very first semester of anatomy I feel completely overwhelmed learning this
like new language of anatomy and having all of these classes and it just felt
like I was drowning constantly every single day and then as time progresses
you just get used to constantly feeling overwhelmed it's just like your new life
you're overwhelmed and you feel like you don't know what's going on half of the
time and then after you've completed your first year you look back and you
realize oh my goodness I've completed an entire year of graduate school I'm still
breathing I'm still alive and now I actually know what a lot of this stuff
is it's making sense to me and number five I had no idea how time-consuming my
thesis project would be the research that you have to do for a thesis project
is completely overwhelming and so you're basically working on your thesis during
your free time I was like you've got to be kidding when am I gonna have time to
squeeze in doing all this research for a thesis and then writing up my entire
paper and presenting it before I graduate when I'm already taking so many
classes and I'm so busy with lab work and papers and all the stuff that comes
along with graduate school I kind of think that they're joking they're gonna
say haha psych actually what we mean is you're gonna have this in
semester blocked off and you're going to have a single class and you're gonna get
time to work on your research yeah no that that's not at all what happens if
you don't love statistics it's really hard to get yourself into the mind frame
of okay how does a researcher think how do I approach this project how do I
approach this hypothesis because you have to start thinking the way that a
researcher thinks and that's really hard even though you've taken your statistics
class now the good thing is you did have a faculty member that you could discuss
your project with I mean they certainly weren't doing your project for you and
they didn't give you ideas per se but they did help guide you a little bit to
say okay well think along these terms or think along this term or you know ever
through your paper it's terrible you need to redo it and then once your
research was actually done you had to take all of that information and then
you had to put it on paper that has to make sense to someone that's actually
going to sit down and read it and listen to you talk about it so the whole
research paper was just this other enormous hurdle but you had to jump over
and here's a crazy thing even if you passed all of your classes if you
presented your research and they were like no sorry that sucks you have to go
back and fix your research before you could graduate which means you couldn't
start working until you finished your thesis paper I actually still remember
to this day what I wore when it presented my research paper isn't that
kind of weird I tried to block a lot of that day out of my memory to be honest
and then you just keep your fingers crossed
you're hoping please pass me please pass me let it be good enough because you
just want to graduate and go back home and start working you don't want to
spend another semester working on the freakin project well you know what I did
get through it and you will too you are in grad school right now don't lose hope
because it will end at some point it doesn't feel like it's going to but it
will go ahead click the subscribe button and don't forget to tap on the
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