It is a little too quiet in my apartment right now. Since Ashley’s mom had a TKA (total knee arthroplasty) last month, she and Spencer boarded a train last Sunday for Utah to go and help out for a week and a half. (We thought Spencer might like the train, and he sure did. However, after the 12 hour ride, he was ready to get off.) Needless to say, it has been very quiet at home and all Daisy does is mope around the apartment and come stare at me until I take her out for a walk.
However, the one good thing about having the house to myself right now is all the studying I have been able to do for the 2 quizzes, test, and skills check, all in the same week, by the way. To give you an idea of how “performance” is graded here, most quizzes are taken at the beginning of class that relate to a particular article reading for that day (one time, for example, it was over 5 different articles). They aren’t worth too much of our overall grade, but they do add up. My favorite quizzes are the ones by Dr. Mike Keirns because he usually throws in a bonus question about recent sports scores, particularly those of Gonzaga basketball.
With regards to tests, most classes have a mid-term, sometimes two, and then a Final Comprehensive Test. All are scantron-type, ranging from 50-75 questions. An interesting aspect about tests here at Regis is when I come to a really, really difficult or poorly written question, I always cross my fingers and hope that the majority of my class misses it too. . . that way, the professors are usually nice about throwing those out. Not always, though. (They use some statistical tool to determine if it is thrown out or not; although they’ve explained it a dozen times, I still don’t understand it.)
This last week’s skills check was in Musculoskeletal Management III (MM3, as we refer to it). How it works is you’re given a list of all the skills that have been covered over the last set of labs (for example, this one was over the neck, upper back, and jaw); you’re assigned a classmate as your “patient” a few days before the skills check; then, you’re assigned a time to go into the lab with a faculty and perform 5-7 skills on your classmate/patient. Although in the past they were fairly simple and straight forward, now we are asked the reasons for performing a skill, parameters associated with it, and scenarios associated with a condition/skill. Your faculty grader is usually helpful at prompting you when you draw a blank or are heading in the wrong direction, so it’s not too stressful. If I remember right, over the past year and a half, I have only had the same partner once.
Here's one of our Musculoskeletal Management labs. Today's topic: the Temperomandibular Joint. . . aka the jaw.
As I look back at the last two weeks, I’m definitely looking forward to a week of Spring Break next week. . . . . . but then I remember there’s an MM3 exam the Monday we get back. So, I have two choices: procrastinate that extra week, or use it to study. I guess we’ll see.
To support the last weekend of the Winter Olympics, several of us sported the American colors. I would like to draw the reader's attentoin to my sweet eagle belt-buckle. Now that's patriotism.
Although these last few weeks have been crazy, a few of us went to IHOP Day for some free pancakes.
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Regis University Doctor of Physical Therapy Blog 
