Time flies when you're having fun. Time flies even faster when you're having fun at the pace of one or two weekly exams plus volunteering plus getting your ass kicked by a rhinovirus or some such infectious baddie. :)
I am hanging in there, though the last two weeks have probably been the most study-filled of my life. I'll admit that isn't saying a whole helluva lot... I have been gifted with the ability to cram and I utilized that ability way too often in undergrad. Marathon 16-hour study session before exams I am used to. Keeping up something like that kind of intensity (if in slightly shorter individual bursts) over the long haul is a novelty.
In this last while, I have (roughly in chronological order):
- discovered that I passed my first round of exams (though the physio was far dicier than I thought it would be... seems as though they got tired of keeping the exam the same)
- celebrated the above not by going out, but instead by collapsing in bed and sleeping for an amazingly luxurious twelve full hours
- sawed through the ribcage of my cadaver
- held a (dead) human heart and lungs in my hands
- been fairly certain that I failed my first gross anatomy written (No muscles? Anywhere?? WTF? Weird, I thought this was the back and thorax exam, not the PNS-and-embryo-to-the-exclusion-of-everything-else exam)
- performed my first standardized patient interview (complete with mildly humiliating DVD recording of same)
- performed my first interview on a patient in the ED
- volunteered at the free clinic
- dissected a six-pack (of muscle)
- performed a colectomy (on my cadaver, of course)
- relearned basic sugar chemistry, glycolysis, the TCA cycle, ETC/ox phos, gluconeogenesis, the pentose phosphate shunt, and glycogen metabolism
- located the ampulla of Vater, which for some reason always makes me think of Darth Vader's helmet
- discovered that I passed my first gross anatomy practical and written
- been very happy that this physiology module is cardiac and hence about 70% review
- (except for the thirty-seven brazillion different ion channels we are required to memorize)
1. Get used to the lack-o'-muscles on writtens in particular. Typically too easy to be tested on, unless it's an embryological origin or some weird innervation question, but chances are they would have grilled you on it several times prior in lab so it's cake-like.
ReplyDelete2. They're giving you DVDs now?? We had VHS tapes, but that was all the way back in 2004 when no one had ever heard of this complex DVD technology.
3. Best SP interview scenario I've heard: Medical student already has a DDS and obviously knows how to interview patients. Walks in, sits down. "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that you have cancer and you're gonna die. The good news is that I'm a student, you're an actor, and none of this is real." Walks out 20 seconds later.
LMAO at Ben's comment about the actor patient.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you passed your exams. Oh and you make me laugh with your funny blogs.
BTW, that link below your blog is weird cuz that dorm dude looks like a girl not another dude.
I remember video-taping all of my clinical therapy sessions when I was in grad school. It was painful to watch then, so I know how you feel. Good thing is it gets routine, so you get better (and faster).
ReplyDeleteI love your blog, Molly! Pritzker is my dream school!