You almost never want to use the PARTITION
clause when querying a partitioned table. You almost always want to specify a predicate that allows Oracle to do partition pruning on its own.
SELECT t.column1, t.column2
FROM first_table t
WHERE t.partitioned_date_column >= <<date that delimits fast partitions>>
AND t.column3 = 'someVal'
When you specify a predicate on the date column that the table is partitioned on, Oracle can automatically determine which partition(s) need to be accessed.