I'm a first year student at Nova Ft. Lauderdale, I can answer these questions!

Our schedule each semester is a little different. In the summer semester, we are in class from 8am until 3pm most days. We take Anatomy and Physiology courses in the morning and Anatomy lab 2x per week in the afternoon (we take all of these with PA, PT, and OT students), which equals about 18 hours in class, and that's before you add in our anesthesia classes (of which there are 3 plus a lab course).

In the fall semester, you are in the classroom for less time, and you are taking only anesthesia-related courses, but the workload is similar to the summer (and the classes get much more challenging). We had 6 lectures per week plus lab once per week. Most of our classes are in the afternoon, but a few were in the mornings, including most labs. I think we were out by 3 or 4 pm most days.

In the spring semester, our schedules open up quite a bit (luckily!). We started clinical rotations, which are all local (the furthest anyone drives is about 45 minutes). We have one lecture per day in the afternoon (3-5pm), one lab session per week, and we are in the hospital 1-2x per week (usually for about 6-8 hours, depending on the site). In my opinion, I have had a lot more free time this semester, despite being in clinic. Our classes seem to be less stressful than in the fall (or maybe I am just used to it at this point!).

As for dress code, we can either wear our light blue scrubs or business attire. We have AA t-shirts that we can wear with scrubs as well. Pretty must everyone opts for comfy scrubs. All the different health professions programs at Nova wear a specific scrub color.

As I said before, all rotations in the first year are local. You still have classes to attend in the afternoons. On clinical days, I get to the hospital around 6:30 am, stay until about 2:30 and head to class from 3-5 pm. We have local rotations in both the spring and 2nd summer semester. In September, we will go on our "away" rotations.

Keep in mind that we also have one online class during each semester as well, in which we have to write papers and such.

I hope that helps, let me know if you have any more question!