{"id":2446,"date":"2026-05-18T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/?p=2446"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T16:15:57","slug":"trusting-the-process-a-pa-students-guide-to-graduate-school-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/2026\/05\/18\/trusting-the-process-a-pa-students-guide-to-graduate-school-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Trusting the Process: A PA Student\u2019s Guide to Graduate School Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Trusting the Process: A PA Student&amp;apos;s Guide to Graduate School Success\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/24KokV91eHzpQSiN3y6pv7?si=BIY1udsfQJqg8g9ibi2bKw&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In the latest episode of \u201cVictors in Grad School,\u201d Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Edie Lerner, a second-year physician assistant (PA) student at the University of Michigan, Flint, whose journey offers a powerful blend of inspiration and practical advice for anyone considering\u2014or currently navigating\u2014graduate school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the moment Edie Lerner shares her story, the theme of intentionality stands out. Edie\u2019s path to graduate school was anything but rushed. After double majoring in Biology and Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she took two and a half years off. During this gap, she gathered hands-on experience in healthcare, worked as a teaching assistant, and developed both the skills and self-understanding necessary to thrive in a rigorous PA program. As Edie notes, the decision to pursue graduate education isn\u2019t just about academics\u2014it\u2019s about being truly ready as a person for the journey ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A recurring message throughout the conversation is the importance of support systems. Edie intentionally sought out programs close to home, valuing proximity to her family and the ability to lean on her loved ones during challenging times (05:29). For her, success in graduate school isn\u2019t just about surviving exams or clinical hours\u2014it\u2019s about sustaining her well-being through community connections, advocacy, and service. The University of Michigan Flint\u2019s focus on leadership and integrated service learning resonated deeply, aligning with Edie\u2019s passion for making a meaningful impact beyond the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Transitioning to graduate-level study, Edie speaks candidly about the reality of burnout, adapting study habits, and the need to maintain boundaries. Her approach\u2014setting realistic limits for study hours, making time each week for personal renewal, and actively seeking help from faculty and peers\u2014emphasizes that resilience is built through self-awareness and intentional choices. Through it all, Edie\u2019s mantra has become \u201ctrust the process.\u201d Growth doesn\u2019t happen overnight, and every challenge\u2014big or small\u2014shapes who you become as a student and a future professional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the most powerful takeaway from this episode is Edie\u2019s encouragement to anyone at the starting line: know your \u201cwhy,\u201d lean on your support system, and remember that you are capable. As Dr. Lewis points out, the journey isn\u2019t always easy, but the transformation and sense of purpose make it all worthwhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether you\u2019re considering grad school or are deep in the trenches yourself, this episode provides practical insights and a comforting reminder\u2014you\u2019re not alone in your journey. Ready for motivation and strategies you can apply to your own path? Listen to the full conversation and fuel your drive to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TRANSCRIPT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:<br>Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I&#8217;m your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love that you come back and you come back to learn and grow every week. And the reason for, for that is that you&#8217;ve got this inkling and maybe it&#8217;s an inkling of just like, hey, maybe I want to do this graduate school thing, or maybe you&#8217;re a little bit further along. No matter where you are in the journey, it is a journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:40]:<br>You have some idea in your head that you want to either go to graduate school, you&#8217;ve applied to graduate school, maybe you got accepted to graduate school, maybe you&#8217;re in graduate school, but you want to be successful in this journey, and that&#8217;s why you&#8217;re here, and that&#8217;s why this podcast exists every week. I love being able to talk to individuals that are interested in working toward that graduate school goal for themselves, and I love being able to introduce you to people that have gone before you. They might still be in graduate school, they might have already graduated and are out working and have been in the field for many years. But the commonality is they all went through the journey themselves and you can learn from them. You can learn from the things that worked, the things that didn&#8217;t work. And, and that&#8217;s why I bring you different people with different experiences that can share those journeys with you. And today we got another great guest. Edie Lerner is with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:32]:<br>And Edie is a second year physician assistant student at the University of Michigan, Flint. She just finished up the first year, moving into the second year, and I&#8217;m really excited to be able to have her here. Edie, thanks so much for being here today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:01:44]:<br>Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I&#8217;m so excited to share a little bit about my journey and share my time at U of M. Flint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:50]:<br>Well, I&#8217;m really excited to be able to have you here as well. And I know that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and you did a double major there, doing a biology degree as well as biopsychology. Cognition, neuroscience, that&#8217;s a big named degree. But at some point in that journey, and it might have been during college, and you always had the idea for graduate school or I know you left college, went out, did some work, got some experiences before you decided to go to graduate school, Maybe in those first few years after graduate school, something lit up, something sparked, and you said to yourself, I want to keep going and I want to go and become a physician assistant. Bring me back to that point. What was going through your head?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:02:35]:<br>Yeah, I started my journey at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and I truly loved learning. I&#8217;ve always enjoyed the sciences most specifically. And I kind of went into undergrad knowing that I wanted to do more higher education afterwards. So I didn&#8217;t know what that looked like exactly for me. I knew it was something in the healthcare field. I grew up in older adult homes, which my mom works for a company in long term care. And I knew I wanted to continue my journey supporting patients and supporting people through their healthcare experiences. And I didn&#8217;t know what that looked like for me at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:03:13]:<br>I was very young, 18 years old, and I joined Alpha Epsilon Delta, which is a pre health honor society at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And I got to hear other people&#8217;s experiences. They were pre med or they were pre pa, which is ultimately what I decided to go into. And I really wanted to make sure that I was ready as a human to go into graduate school because it is a big commitment, education wise, time wise, financially. And so after I graduated from U of M in Ann Arbor, I took about two and a half years off. I worked on my PA school applications, I worked on getting direct patient care with others, and I even was a teaching assistant for a little bit in Denver, which was an amazing experience. And finally, when I went to apply to graduate school, I said, I feel comfortable who I am as a person and I feel ready and capable of taking on this huge next step. So while I knew I wanted to go to graduate school and undergrad, it wasn&#8217;t until I really worked on myself outside of education and outside of being a student to know I was ready to be a graduate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:21]:<br>So going through that process and finally figuring out, okay, this is the cycle that I&#8217;m going to be applying in. And if you haven&#8217;t applied to PA school, physician assistants apply in a cycle. So that means that at one point in the year, all PA programs will open up their applications. You apply during that cycle, and then you&#8217;re considered for the next start period for that program. That could be in the fall, it could be in the winter. There&#8217;s lots of different times. So talking back at that cycle, Edie, you decided it was time you decided to put in the application. Well, when you applied, I&#8217;m sure that you had done some research and started to figure out for yourself what programs do I really want to apply to? Because there&#8217;s many different physician assistant programs out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:05]:<br>And getting into a PA program is quite competitive and there&#8217;s a lot of applicants. So talk to me about how did you whittle that list down? How did you identify which schools you were going to apply to? And ultimately how did you decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right program for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:05:22]:<br>Yeah, that&#8217;s a great question. Applying to PA school and getting into PA School is a whole feat in itself. So when I was applying, I really valued programs that were close to home. I&#8217;m from Farmington Hills, Michigan, which is about an hour away from Flint. And I knew PA school is an incredibly treacherous journey. Learning and being in uncomfortable situations. And I wanted to be able to have my support system close to me. It&#8217;s so important that I&#8217;m able to go home on the weekend to see my mom for dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:05:53]:<br>And just that really kept me sane throughout my school journey so far. Other things about the University of Michigan Flint specifically I really valued was some of the pillars of our program which are leadership and advocacy. I still work on Perfect Pair, which is a national nonprofit, as the director of chapters. And we work to pair college students with older adults living in long term care facilities to combat loneliness and isolation. And the University of Michigan Flint in my PA program has an entire leadership and advocacy project that we actually get to start working on this summer, which I&#8217;m very excited for, where we get to go out into the community and do more research and outreach in an area that we&#8217;re interested in. And so that was one part of the program that was really aligned with my goals and values. Especially because being a leader and being an advocate not only for patients but also for community in more public health spaces is something that is incredibly valuable to me personally. Another thing that I really loved was the fact that we do integrated service learning in our program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:07:00]:<br>So embedd one of our courses. We are assigned to go to different community bases. So right now, or actually it just finished because we&#8217;re going into our clinical phase, but we would go into the hospital and participate in the Hurley Help program, which is also supporting older adults who are admitted to the hospital and combating delirium. And so we would visit with them, sit with them. I love to play uno with the patients that I got to see as long as they wanted to and just hear their stories and be there as another support system outside of their Healthcare staff as a volunteer. And so I think especially with my previous experiences in undergrad and throughout my gap years and in PA school, really being able to serve for the community in a volunteer capacity, getting us prepared to serve the community as a PA has been really valuable to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:49]:<br>Every student that goes to graduate school has to go through some type of transition for themselves because going through an undergraduate education you&#8217;re taught in one way, there&#8217;s certain expectations and the expectations are not the same as the type of expectations that you would get, especially, especially in a health related program where there is a high caliber of learning that has to happen with hands on experience and being able to show mastery. So talk to me about for yourself, as you were transitioning into your graduate program, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success? And as you&#8217;ve continued through not only the first term but your second term and beyond, what have you had to do to maintain that success throughout the journey thus far?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:08:35]:<br>Yeah, that&#8217;s a great question. And to some degree it just happens in PA school specifically, a lot of the jargon surrounding it is that you do not learn the same and you cannot learn the same as you did in undergrad. And I completely back that statement. The reason is we are given so much content and so much learning and so much information because the future of our specific career is supporting people and saving people&#8217;s lives. And there is so much information that comes with the human body and anatomy. And so with getting that amount of information, you cannot learn the same. So in undergrad I reviewed, I read over things I highlighted and going into BA school, if you try to rewrote, rewrite one PowerPoint, you will, it&#8217;ll take you three days and that sets you back immensely for studying. So one part of my growing has been academically and learning that active learning, flashcards, doing practice exams that you either find on a website or that you create yourselves are the way that success comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:09:40]:<br>So really learning how to learn and relearning how to learn as a graduate student has been a big part of my journey as well as knowing in being confident in who I am and knowing when it&#8217;s time to take a break. I think my first semester of PA school, I have never studied so much in my life. I studied 10 to 12 hours a day, even if we were in lectures. And I became incredibly burnt out, which was a scary feeling because it was my first semester and we had a long road to go until graduation. So after that first semester I decided to make it a point that I would do one thing either with my friends and family or for myself in a week. And that is something I have continued to maintain and hope to maintain throughout my clinical education. Because it is so important to take a step back and know that you can&#8217;t be studying 24 hours a day. It&#8217;s impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:10:29]:<br>And so learn how you need to learn, as well as maintaining some mental health and connection to your community and support systems that have been there along the way for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:39]:<br>So, speaking about burnout, I want to delve into that a little bit because you&#8217;re not the first individual that has talked about having to deal with burnout as they go through a graduate degree. Talk to me about the warning signs that you recognized in yourself or that others recognized in you, and what did you have to do to be able to not only get through that point, but you just mentioned some of the things you had to change, but what were other things that you had to change to be able to make sure that that burnout didn&#8217;t keep reeling its head?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:11:09]:<br>Yeah, burnout is incredibly real, especially in health care. I mean, we are serving people every day. We&#8217;re talking to people, you know, we&#8217;re learning every single day still. And so some of the signs I saw was my partner would talk to me and they would say, hey, you know, like, you don&#8217;t seem okay. I haven&#8217;t seen you smile in two days. And when you&#8217;re in the thick of it, studying for four exams that happen within the time span of three days, it&#8217;s really hard to figure out what you need to do to get over that hurdle. So for me specifically, I took the time during my break between my first semester and second semester to say, okay, I don&#8217;t want to get into that hole again. I don&#8217;t want to feel the way I felt during that specific exam week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:11:52]:<br>What are some things that I can implement actively so that I feel prepared and I feel that I have studied enough while I&#8217;m still maintaining my own mental health and the things I need to do to stay happy and stay excited to learn and stay excited to be uncomfortable in new learning environments. So I also implemented. I would Never study past 10:30pm 9:00pm and 10:00pm was a little too early for me, but 10:30 was my cutoff, and I also made sure to do that one thing a week. Another thing I did was study actively earlier. So it wasn&#8217;t until the end of my first semester where I started to understand what my learning looks like to give me success in my exams and in my Patient evaluations. So I started studying for my exams the day that we walked into the classroom. So there wasn&#8217;t many full days off, but there was a lot of days that I was studying for less hours so that that burnout wouldn&#8217;t build upon itself, which within such a short time of cramming. Because if I got to the point where I had to cram again, that&#8217;s when things really started going downhill for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:00]:<br>One of the other things that I guess that I would ask is this, because being in a program that does have a lot of expectations, and as you are entering into a program, you&#8217;re still a friend, a daughter, maybe a significant other, you wear a lot of hats, you&#8217;re a student, and wearing all of those different hats draws from your time, draws from your effort. And you have to figure out where is that optimal balance? What did you have to do to be able to find that balance for yourself? Whether it was with school, work, family, personal responsibilities while you&#8217;ve been in graduate school thus far?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:13:37]:<br>Yeah, all of those different hats are so important when you are just living your life. So while I was preparing to go to graduate school, I knew this was two and a half years of my life that I needed to put myself first and put my education first. And so I had a lot of conversations before I even began the program, talking with my family and with my friends, saying, hey, here&#8217;s my week off. That happens in five months. I would love to set a time to see you and talk to you then, but before then, I&#8217;m not sure what my capacity will look like. And that is a really hard conversation to have. And sometimes people didn&#8217;t take it as seriously. I remember Visit vividly, one of my family members, they said, oh, don&#8217;t be dramatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:14:22]:<br>You&#8217;ll be fine. I&#8217;ll see you the same amount of time. And that&#8217;s okay if that&#8217;s what they need to hear. But I have set those boundaries for myself. And it was really important to set those boundaries so that when I had to say no to a family obligation, that wasn&#8217;t something important enough for me to miss studying or miss an exam. I could call back to that time and say, hey, this is something I let you know before I started the program. And I have to put my education first and I have to put my studying first. With that being said, I personally have never had to miss something that was important to me to go to and that my family needed me to show up to, whether that meant having a little bit later of a night or an earlier morning to study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:15:04]:<br>Those expectations that I put on myself to be there for my family still maintained. It just looked a little bit different than maybe it would have in the past where I had to leave an event earlier or just wake up earlier to study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:16]:<br>You&#8217;ve been on campus now for about a year and a half and as you said, you&#8217;ve dealt with different things, whether it be burnout or other issues. Were there any campus resources or student organizations that really help you do to help you support your success in their journey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:15:31]:<br>Thus far, 100%. I don&#8217;t think as a graduate student you could survive just by yourself on an island. Specifically the Merchi Science Building. It&#8217;s not a particular organization, but it is a place and I lived there for my didactic education. I really loved utilizing the whiteboards and USAN has a coffee shop and also food that I would go to often on the weekends. In the morning when I was studying on Saturday, it would be, I&#8217;m gonna go, but I&#8217;m gonna get a coff. It got me there and it helped me start my day. Also in our PA program we have such wonderful faculty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:16:06]:<br>Professor Falls, Professor Moore. They are only an email away or even a phone call away if it&#8217;s an emergency. And I really think that them having such an open door policy to support their students has been life changing. As a PA student, when the education is so complicated, if I do have a question or if I need some emotional support for a tough time because life does not stop when you&#8217;re in graduate school. They&#8217;re always there and that&#8217;s been a really wonderful resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:33]:<br>What specific skills would you say that you had to develop most in graduate school?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:16:38]:<br>Yeah, the first skill that comes to mind is adaptability. Every day does not look the same and every exam doesn&#8217;t look the same. And we are constantly changing what we&#8217;re learning in terms of body system. If we&#8217;re learning about the heart versus learning about the lungs, things that worked in one area of studying doesn&#8217;t look the same in the next area of studying. And so really being able to to adapt to different learning styles and systems, even within the program itself has been really important as well as adapt. I am so uncomfortable sometimes in my program in the best way possible. We talk to standardized patients a lot, so being able to shift and adapt depending on what they&#8217;re saying and completely new situations that we&#8217;ve never been in. Our last standardized patient was a large surprise to a lot of our cohort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:17:25]:<br>So really being able to adapt in the moment, in seconds in the room with the patient of what you&#8217;re talking about and what you&#8217;re expected to do as a PA student, I think has been vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:34]:<br>And I already heard you talk about those first exams and burnout and things like that. Was there any other defining moments or turning points within your education thus far that really have shaped either your academic journey or your professional journey for where you&#8217;re at right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:17:50]:<br>I think it really comes with just trusting the process. I can&#8217;t pick out a particular moment, but I am not the same person I was when I stepped into graduate school. There are so many skills and lessons and professional developments that happen within PE school, and I think it happens within every single exam and within every single patient interaction, and by meeting and leaning on an entire group of 50 new students. And so instead of one moment, I think it&#8217;s just a journey. And we hear it a lot in our program. Trust the process. Trust the process. Trust the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:18:26]:<br>And it&#8217;s so true, because we are being built on a knowledge base, but also just a professional base of how to speak to somebody else from the medical field who you&#8217;ve never worked with before. And now you get on a call with them and they&#8217;re telling you all these things about a patient that you&#8217;ve never met. And now you have to learn how to respond back. And so, especially being in a graduate program where we&#8217;re being taught to be healthcare providers, we have to be taught interprofessional skills as well. And so not only academically, but also professionally, it&#8217;s a growing process through all of those little assignments that we&#8217;re given and through our interprofessional education, education and really learning how to be a healthcare provider in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:09]:<br>Have you found that you built specific relationships with faculty or peers that were especially impactful? And if so, how?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:19:17]:<br>My best friend in the program, her name is Emily. She is my lifeline. She is my partner in crime. We studied almost every single day together throughout the program, and I truly do not think I would have made it this far without her. So we do a lot of. Of delegating in terms of who does what to make our study materials, because it takes a lot of time in some ways. So she creates all of our quizlets, and I create our charts that go to all of the different diseases as well as our practice questions that we both use. And so without her and without being able to lean on my community, I wouldn&#8217;t have been able to pass my exams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:19:55]:<br>There&#8217;s no way we bounce off each other in Ideas and questions, questions. One of my favorite things we do while we&#8217;re studying is to just say, can I ask a dumb question? Because it&#8217;s real and you need somebody and you need support and you need to be able to ask questions. And I think that&#8217;s really important in grad school as well as our professors. I mean, all of them are super open to asking questions. But Professor Moore is someone we had throughout our entire first year of didactic education, and I really appreciated his learning stuff style in terms of sometimes he said, you&#8217;re gonna have to learn this on your own, and here&#8217;s the information I give you. But you&#8217;re in graduate school, and so when you have questions, come to me. And we learned. And you have to learn, because when you&#8217;re a provider and a PA out in the field and you&#8217;re seeing a patient and you&#8217;ve never heard of this disease before, you&#8217;re gonna have to go do research, and then you can ask questions later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:50]:<br>As you think back to the beginning and where you were when you first started graduate school, what&#8217;s something that you wish that someone had told you before you started graduate school?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:21:01]:<br>I think really, it&#8217;s just that you can do it, you will do it, and if you&#8217;re passionate enough, anything is possible. And I think that graduate programs and getting a graduate degree is so worth it. And personally, something that I really value in higher education and the amount of growing I&#8217;ve done academic, academically, and professionally is so profound. And the amount of things I learned has been amazing and incredible, and I&#8217;m just really grateful for this journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:33]:<br>And again, as you look back at your graduate education, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education, Whether it&#8217;s becoming a physician assistant, going to business school, going into a technological field, whatever it might be that would help them find success sooner?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:21:49]:<br>Yeah, I think my number one is write down why you&#8217;re here before you start. I wrote it down on a sheet of paper, and I pulled it out every once in a while when I needed a little bit of motivation. Going through a tough exam week, I think it&#8217;s really important to know and really have an idea of the reasons you&#8217;re here and the reasons you&#8217;re doing this. And if those are the right reasons, then it will get you through. I also think finding success looks really different for every single person. And so being able to have a support system that can really cheer you on throughout that success. Success has been wonderful and something I&#8217;ve really leaned on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:28]:<br>Well, Edie, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for sharing the ups, the downs, and everything in between. And I think from what you&#8217;ve shared, it&#8217;s not always going to be roses, it&#8217;s not always going to be easy, but it&#8217;s worth it. And as you said, everybody&#8217;s here, they&#8217;ve been admitted, they can do this. So always have to remember that. And I love that. And I just want to say good luck as you move into your next phase of the PA program, as you&#8217;re getting out into the clinics and doing, doing all of this other really exciting work that you&#8217;re going to be able to now take what you&#8217;ve been learning for the past year and a half and putting it into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:05]:<br>I&#8217;m excited for you, but also excited to hear how it goes. And I just want to say I wish you all the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edie Lerner [00:23:11]:<br>Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It&#8217;s been wonderful being able to share a little bit of my journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:16]:<br>The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master&#8217;s and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you&#8217;re looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the latest episode of \u201cVictors in Grad School,\u201d Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Edie Lerner, a second-year physician assistant (PA) student at the University of Michigan, Flint, whose journey offers a powerful blend of inspiration and practical advice for anyone considering\u2014or currently navigating\u2014graduate school. From the moment Edie Lerner shares her story, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":509,"featured_media":2448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,108,45],"tags":[816,2978,2976,2899,1070,27,2453,2979,32,142,996,2973,109,1250,1168,2624,1237,1068,226,832],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-graduate-school-general","category-physician-assistant","category-podcast","tag-academic-journey","tag-adapting-study-habits","tag-advocacy","tag-burnout","tag-campus-resources","tag-graduate-school","tag-graduate-student-tips","tag-healthcare-education","tag-higher-education","tag-leadership","tag-mental-health","tag-pa-school","tag-physician-assistant","tag-professional-growth","tag-resilience","tag-service-learning","tag-student-success","tag-support-systems","tag-university-of-michigan-flint-2","tag-work-life-balance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/graduateprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}