 Hey guys, my name is Boris. I'm a board certified physician assistant and this quick video is going to be about the CASPA essay. So the pre-PA essay that you have to write, basically why do I want to be a PA, communicating that to PA schools, and also about the interview. If you're lucky enough to be invited for an interview at a PA school, you know, what it is about that. And so the video is titled, What the CASPA essay and the PA school interview have in common. And so I was just thinking about that. I'm driving home from the office. I actually just shot a bunch of other videos and sure enough now I got, you know, a little idea for one more. And this is actually going to be a good one. So what do the CASPA essay, the whole essay about why do I want to be a physician assistant, what does that and the interview have in common? What they have in common is the PA schools are evaluating whether or not you're a good communicator. Why is that important? Because like I said in another video that I just made, what is it we're paid to do as physician assistants, as doctors, as any kind of medical provider. We are literally paid to communicate. That's our entire job. We have to learn a bunch of medicine. We have to know a bunch of things. But the thing that we're actually doing every single day is communicate. You know, we're not laying bricks. We're not building things. We're not designing engineering systems. We're not building products. We're not shoveling driveways. We're not serving food. We are literally paid to talk, paid to communicate. And the better you can communicate, the better of a provider you are. You may not even know as much medicine as some people. You may know less medicine than all kinds of other providers. That's what up-to-date is for and that's where your supervising position is for, you know, early on in your career. And you'll get more and more knowledge as you practice more. But knowing medicine is important. But the most important part of our job is knowing how to communicate. So why do PA schools put so much emphasis on this 5,000 character essay? Isn't it kind of unfair to expect people who are science people or biology and chemistry people who are good at studying science to suddenly be like, you know, Pulitzer Prize-winning writers? I think that's what the Pulitzer Prize is for, right? It's for journalism, I think. Anyway, isn't it kind of unfair to expect people that are good at science, good at learning science, biology, statistics, math, chemistry, all that kind of stuff who want to practice medicine? Science people. Isn't it kind of stupid and unfair to expect these people to be really good writers? I don't think so. I actually thought that it was kind of stupid and unfair at one point. But yeah, I don't think so anymore. I think it's actually a good idea to expect these kinds of people to write a really good essay that shows not, you know, a sob story, not their whole story of their life, not that, but just shows that they are a good communicator for the reasons that I just told you a few seconds ago. Two, besides the essay, what is the interview mainly trying to determine? It's whether or not you're a good communicator. Also, whether or not, you know, you're like a stable, remotely somewhat even a little bit likable person, because if you're just a total a-hill, total ass hat, you know, that you're going to be a pain in the butt to have in the PA school class, patients aren't going to like you, people aren't going to like working with you. Okay, maybe you shouldn't be, you know, a provider. There's that too. But I think that the main thing that the interview is for is to determine whether or not you're a good communicator. Okay, so keep that in mind as you're writing your essays and as you're preparing for your interview. I'll see you in the next video.