word files

hello everyone,
i was schooled w mac but my dad just got me a Macbook pro been using pcs for work + teaching and sick of pcs and compatibilityissues so the switch was welcomed!
upon opening my USB stick in my Pro i did some report work using Word. i have my life on a USB stick. upon closing Word and just about to close laptop, took USB stick out as i normally do. i noticed later that my IT course files were all corrupt.
i only just noticed weeks later that quite a few Word docs are corrupt and some won't open and the ones that do are empty. some files i really need. Anyone know how to get files back? i managed to save my Cv/resume by saving it as a text file.
worse mistake ever just taking out the USB like i normally do!
help!
Kim

Unless you have access to the original files before placing them on the USB flash drive, the files that are corrupt probably can not be corrected. As you found out, removing a USB flash drive or any drive improperly will cause data corruption.

The "just taking the USB stick out" without properly dismounting it has the exact same risk and effect on PCs, as I have found out quite painfully several times. You just got lucky up until now.

The problem is that the OS (PC or Mac) may still be writing directory info (or file saves) to the stick when you pull it out. Thus, corrupted directory (or files). If it isn't doing that you may not see any harm from removing the drive improperly, but sooner or later this "bad practice" is going to bite you, as you've discovered. This is why you should properly unmount USB thumb drives on PCs or Macs before removing them.