A walk-through of a typical week of a 1st year cohort (first semester)

Monday:  We try to arrive on campus around 8:45 a.m. to look for parking.  It’s usually not too bad finding parking in the parking lot next to the school of education but in the beginning of the semester it’s usually worse.  Between looking for a parking space and walking from the parking lot to the Education Building, it takes about 10 – 15 minutes.  We arrive to Assessment around 8:50 a.m. Class begins at 9 a.m.  In the middle of class, we’re given a 10 – 15 minute break.  Class ends around 1 p.m.  After class, the cohort has a 4 hour break before Adolescent Develpment class at 5. Most of us stay on campus until class.  Some of us do homework, we eat lunch and some people have meetings or do work for their assistantship.  At 4pm we all have a meeting to talk about how things are going at our practicum sites.  After this meeting we go to Adoscent Development class until 9pm. We have a 10-15 minute break during class.  We usually bring dinner with us to class.  After class, we all go home as we are exhausted from this long Monday. 

Tuesday:  We have class at 2pm-5pm today.  Most of us come to campus early because parking around 2pm can be difficult.  We use this day to do work for assistantship or do homework.  After class we either go home or stay on campus to do homework.  This is a good day to do errands and get work done. 

Wednesday:  This is the day we go to our practicum site.  Everyone in the cohort is assigned to an elementary school where we spend half the school day shadowing a school psychologist and the other half of the day in an elementary classroom.  Typically, we arrive at the elementary school around 7:30 a.m. and are there until 3:30 p.m.  Incase you were wondering, here's the general dress code for practicum: You do not have to wear closed toed shoes.  You should NOT wear a suit.  Many of us wear khakis, tailored slacks, or skirts, and button down shirts or blouses (men can wear polos).  After practicum, we drive to campus for our Learning Theories class.  This class starts at 5pm and goes until 9pm.  We have a 10-15 minute break during this class. Most of us eat dinner during break or during class.  We are usually quite tired after the long day at practicum and class, we go to bed relatively early.  

Thursday:  We have Statistics at 5 p.m. – 8:50 p.m. so we spend the day doing work at our assistantships.  We all have different assistantships, which the School Psychology Department basically assigns us to during orientation.  After statistics, we either go home or our cohort would go out and have some sort of social life.

Friday:  We spend a 9 – 5 day at our assistantships.  Occasionally, you can do work for your assistantship without having to come to an office (such as search for articles or read them), so people also study on Fridays, and maybe do work for their assistantships on the weekends.  Fridays are also good days to run errands and be social. Weekends:  To be perfectly honest, we spend a lot of the weekends doing schoolwork, then we reward ourselves by going out at night.  Plan on committing 6 hours a day towards studying.  Obviously, some weekends you’ll spend more than others studying.  We all highly recommend working ahead on long term projects when it seems like you have a little amount of work presently due.