Clerkships are a course of clinical medical training usually lasting a minimum of several weeks that take place during the third or fourth year of medical school; they typically allow the participant a chance to learn a specialty. When you get to the clinical stages of your education at National, there are some opportunities for positions outside of the school clinic to pick-up clinical skills. Those in the chiropractic program can apply to work in a few different VA hospitals and at the Medical College of Wisconsin. To get to participate in one of these programs you need to apply and fulfill any of the additional requirements that the program has for admission.

One of the awesome things about being a student is that you get to pay the "student" rate for a whole bunch of post-graduate seminars! Our Post-grad Department sets up a wide variety of extra learning opportunities, because once you finish school you need to stay up-to-date with all of your continuing education units.

If you choose to come to our campus in Lombard, Illinois, you are almost guaranteed to end up with a snow day. So far, this trimester was a lot more like a snow week, as full and partial days of classes were canceled due to the frigid temperatures. That's Chicago area weather for you, 70 degrees of temperature change in less than seven days.

While you are a student, the last thing you might be thinking about is being involved with The Alumni Association. I mean that's for graduates right? Well, our Alumni Association does some great things for students, too.

Hooray for finals…just six tests away from "freedom"! Aaaand I got sick.

Happy Thanksgiving student blog readers!

We have reached that point in the trimester where I find that I have been looking forward to a little time off. Veteran's Day seemed like it could be my chance; unfortunately, the problem is that when given time I quickly find ways to fill it. So, I kept busy, and will continue to be busy right up until the end of my last clinic shift during finals week; the tests don't ever seem to end this term. I do get one more chance at a little break for Thanksgiving though and we will see how that one goes.

So, it is the beginning of week nine, and I only have two exams this week, hooray!

At the end of last trimester, I mentioned that I was going to be shadowing at least one doctor over the break. There are many docs out in practice who are all too happy to have a student come in to shadow them, often with little more than an email of introduction containing a request to come for a visit.

One of the awesome things about living around Chicago and having a compulsion that requires you to always be learning new things is that there are a ton of seminars that come to town and many offer discounted admission to students.