 Nothing. Don't do anything. You're not supposed to do anything before PA school starts. So I keep seeing this question pop up on PA groups on Reddit, on Facebook. I guess a lot of programs must be getting started right now. So naturally a lot of people are asking, you know, what should I do before PA school starts? What should I study? You know, what should I do? So I'm gonna give you two answers. The first answer is what you really should do. The second answer is gonna be the one you're actually gonna want to hear. So the first answer, this is the answer I got from everybody, and I just did not understand it when I was starting PA school. The answer is nothing. Don't do anything. You're not supposed to do anything before PA school starts. I understand the temptation to pre-study, to maybe get yourself ahead, try to learn a few things now so you don't have to learn them later. Okay, I understand that. But it's honestly, it's useless. What happens in PA school pretty quickly is you start learning at such a rapid rate and you become so efficient that anything you do in the next few weeks before PA school starts is honestly completely useless. It's not gonna do anything for you. What would be much better for you at this time? Oh, okay. I'm at Walmart. I'm gonna continue this in a couple minutes. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, so I think I just got done talking about why you should not pre-study before PA school starts. That means nothing, not medical terminology, not anatomy, neuroanatomy, anything. Pharmacology. Nope, don't study anything. It's useless. So why do I say that? Mainly because once you really get moving in PA school and you get in your rhythm of studying and you figure out what works for you, you become so efficient and you learn at such a rapid rate that anything you learn in the next few weeks, however many weeks you have until PA school starts, honestly, it's gonna be pretty useless and it's just gonna stress you out during the summer, your last few weeks of freedom. Think about that. That honestly, I wouldn't recommend you study anything. Now, what should you do if you're not studying? That's the question. Okay. What you should do right now is pretend you have only a few weeks left until your real difficult, important, amazing medical career actually begins because that is what happens on the first day of PA school. The minute your butt hits that seat, it's go mode. You are learning. You're in a very condensed medical training program, which means every day you're learning something important that can save somebody's life. That's while you're in didactic. When didactic ends, you're in clinical, that gets even more important and you actually learn what the diseases look like and smell like and you get your hands on people and everything gets even more amplified. So every single day from that first day of PA school on is very important and that's stressful. I understand, but it is very important. So what should you do until that starts, until you become responsible for people's lives essentially? Not that you're responsible for people's lives as a student, but you should start getting in that mindset. Everything you learn is important. So what should you do until that happens? Chill, sleep, exercise, go get some sun, see your friends, see your family, go to the beach, go travel, granted not anymore with COVID, but maybe you can't travel, I don't know. Go for a walk, go hiking, play with your dog, pet your dog, go play with other people's dogs. I don't know what else to tell you, but do not study. Do anything that you can to relieve stress, make yourself healthier, make yourself happier, make your family happier because they need to understand these next two years, three years, however long your program is, you're going to be MIA, granted again with COVID, you're probably going to be starting online. So maybe you'll see them, but you're going to be studying the whole time. You're going to be online in lectures and you're going to be studying. That's all you're going to be doing. Unless you're like some brilliant savant, which I'm not, I have to study, most of you probably have to study, you're not going to have a whole lot of time for your family and your friends or your dogs. And you should really just take advantage of this time, however much time you have until PA school starts, to see everybody that's important to you, to make some memories if you can, to get outside, to try to get a little healthier, get some sleep, you know, front load that sleep, you're not going to be sleeping much in PA school. Unless again, you're a genius savant, which I'm not. So I know you're probably not going to listen to this because PA students are type A and they just have a go get them attitude and they knock it out and they do great work, but if any of you listen to this, I think you'll be happier in PA school. Take this time to try and just relax and enjoy yourself. So I'm editing this video and I realize I never gave you the second answer. If you really do want to study something before PA school starts, what should you study? Okay, so I have some books for you here in no particular order. But before I even talk about the books, I think the first thing that you should study before PA school starts, if you are going to study is the medical interview process. So HPI, History of Present Illness, ROS, Review of Systems and PE, Physical Exam. So this is a system that we use during mock patient encounters basically from day one in PA school. We do this over and over and over again. We keep practicing and it's something that becomes much less stressful as you do it more. So if you kind of have the script in your head, HPI, ROS, PE and you just know what goes into each of those components before you even start practicing in PA school, I think that might help you relieve some stress because some mock patient encounters can be kind of stressful. It might be done in small groups. It might be done with the whole class. Everybody is watching you interview the professor who's acting like a patient or one of your students or an actual mock patient and it can be a little stressful. So learning everything that goes into an HPI, you know, onset location, duration, severity, relieving factors, aggravating factors, all that good stuff. Look that up. Family medical history, personal medical history, surgical history, hospitalizations, allergies, medications. Just all that stuff just kind of construct that list in your head. So going into PA school, you're less stressed when you have to do a mock patient encounter. Then learn everything that goes into the ROS, review of systems, learn all the body systems, learn which questions to ask for each system. That could help you too. And then the physical exam, you're going to be trained very hands-on, but it might be good to have an idea of what goes into the physical exam of each body system as well. So if you really must study, that's the first thing that I would do. The second thing, EKGs. So this is the book that my program uses. It's Dubens. It's kind of the EKG Bible, at least for initial learning of how to read EKGs. It also gives you a really good introduction to cardiac physiology, not nearly as in-depth as you're going to learn it in PA school, but cardio is a very large percentage of the pants. So it's very important to learn cardio well. So PA schools will spend a lot of time teaching you very in-depth about the heart diseases, treatments, and especially EKGs. So this book is kind of long. It's about 350 pages, but the font is actually pretty big and there's a lot of pictures. So it really doesn't take that long. You could probably get through it in a week or two and actually have a good knowledge of EKGs. And it's just written very well in a very stepwise manner. So everything kind of flows into the next topic. And I really found it to be a pretty easy and enjoyable read. We had to read it over Christmas break, but if you get a head start on it right now, maybe it'll help you out. Another book I have here, this is Netters Anatomy. So you'll probably end up buying Netters Anatomy for your anatomy class. Anatomy seems to be something that a lot of people have trouble with. There is a lot to learn. It's just a lot of material. So you'll end up buying Netters. This is actually Netters Anatomy coloring book, which is really cool. So you can see, yeah, I got really far. You can see you actually end up coloring all the different parts and layers and everything else. It also comes with a free online learning platform where it goes a lot more in-depth than the actual coloring book. But as you color each part of the anatomy, you'll learn it. It's just kind of a fun way to start learning Anatomy. And last but not least, medical terminology. So I think I told you before, my program actually had medical terminology in the summer. We had to take it online the summer before we actually started the program in the fall. If your program doesn't do that and you've never had a medical terminology class, it might be good to get a medical terminology book just to kind of give yourself an idea overall on how medical words are constructed and some of the more common ones that are used. So as the didactic year went on, I did find myself seeing some of the words that I learned in medical terminology coming back up. And that was just one less word that I had to learn. So it was a little bit helpful. So like I said, I personally would recommend that you do not study before PA school starts. But if you must study, you could do the medical interviews. So figure out what to put in an HPI, R-O-S, P-E, all that stuff. EKG book, Dubens is good. And Anatomy, Netters is definitely the best. And if you still have time, just going over some medical terminology wouldn't be bad either. So yeah, that's all I can really tell you. This was completely unscripted. So I'm sorry if I rambled. My next video is definitely going to be much more planned out just like my other ones have been. But yeah, that's all I have to say. Anyway, I'll see you guys in the next one.