Are there any current students/previous students on here that can give a little insight to daily life as a med student at RVU? What can we expect for our first semester? What is a typical day like for you?
A typical day depends mostly on which "block" you are in. So, first semester, you begin with the Biochemistry "block," then immunology/hematology, then musculoskeletal system, Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Nephrology. Concurrent to your systems classes, you have Osteopathic Principles and Practice (OPP), Ethics, Clinical Medicine (where you learn how to be a doctor). A "block" can last 3 weeks (like Respiratory) or 2 months (like musculoskeletal). What's nice is that the schedule is set up in such a way that your "block/systems" class correlates, in some way, with OPP and clinical medicine. So, for example, in Cardio, you will learn thoracic osteopathic maneuvers in OPP and auscultation in clinical medicine. Concurrent to all of this is also gross anatomy lab dissections. You begin anatomy lab during the musculoskeletal and finish next May in Neurology. In some blocks, you will be in lab every day. In some blocks, there is no lab at all. Again, depends on which block you are in. But a "typical/average" day looks like this:
8/9AM - 12PM: lectures. Most are recorded but most students show up anyway because they are usually very interactive and you get a lot more out of them if you are there in person.
12PM-1PM: lunch/club meetings. There's at least 1 club meeting every day. Lots to do on campus. Some students also organize volleyball games or other fun stuff to do during this time too.
1PM-5PM: labs. 1 OPP lab per week + 1 clinical medicine lab per week + variable amount of anatomy lab. Each "lab" is 2 hours long. So if you have an anatomy lab and a clinical medicine lab on the same day, we are done at 5PM. If we only have 1 lab, we are done at 3PM. If we have none, we are done at noon. We also have other stuff sprinkled in every few weeks like ultrasound lab or a lecture or tutoring. But this is what the typical school schedule looks like.
And then most of us go home and rest/eat and then study until 9PM.
You get used to it very fast and the school walks you through it all.
Typically, we have 1 big exam per week from 8AM to 9AM.
Second year looks completely different so I will not comment on that.
Congratulations on all the acceptances
I recommend checking craigslist and searching 'Parker' to get a handle of things.
