A further word on placements - although you realise that physio's different int he real world (my first educator told me to stop asking for consent to do every single little thing or we'd never get anything done for instance), it's also helped an awful lot of stuff click into place for me. Although there's a greater worry about a patient falling, you actually see what foot drop looks like. To be fair uni did show us videos and we did get in some guests who had had amputation and stroke etc to demonstrate, but it can never be the same as having patient after patient with foot drop, or COPD, or whatever, especially ones in the early stages of rehab. All the guests we had were inevitably further along the line of recovery, although they were still very useful.
As long as you get a good educator, and so far mine have both been utterly superb - placement rocks!