Just recently I was accepted to DPT school and my program starts in june. We have been notified that the program will be online this summer.
I was wondering for the fall, if schools are still closed due to covid, how will they be online? There is a lot of practical aspects of this program, so I'm slightly considered with the quality of my education if a large chunk of it is online.
At my school, the first semester is all lecture with the exception of gross anatomy lab, so it's an ideal semester to be stuck online. They switched the anatomy students to online "dissection" labs (not really sure what this looked like exactly but one student told me he actually really liked it) so they were able to finish the semester. For their upcoming semester over the summer they are supposed to have a heavy lab schedule, so I believe they are front-loading lecture with the hopes of finishing out the semester on the ground playing catch-up with labs.
It will be a challenge, no doubt, and probably a bit lonely given you haven't even met your classmates yet. Last semester for finals I did a few facetime study sessions with a couple of friends and it helped enormously. I would definitely try to set up a zoom party "meet and greet" of sorts before classes start!
I think it will depend on what classes specifically you are supposed to take first semester. But in general, there is *so much* lecture material in the program that they can keep you quite busy and productive purely online for awhile, especially your first semester.
Unless you are considering delaying starting, I would not worry about it. There is literally nothing you can do about it and none of us know how this will all play out, so try to breathe, be flexible, and just roll with the punches. Worrying about it is stressful and unproductive. I know easier said than done, but just consider, since you can do nothing about it, why waste the time and energy on worrying? Control what you can control, congrats on being accepted, and be excited about your new journey
If you ARE considering delaying starting (I wouldn't delay but that's just me), I would reach out to your director and ask these same questions. I do not think they are inappropriate concerns to voice. Just know that they are also scrambling and trying to figure everything out, which is especially challenging in a totally unknown situation. I am in NY where the virus is hitting the hardest and while we don't know how things will play out, we do know we will probably be on the ground later vs sooner....if you are in a state where reopening is happening sooner vs later, it'll be a different story.
Good luck! Congrats again
