Alright, everyone take a deep breath and begin relaxing…NOW!!!
I have a million of those jokes.
It turns out this blog is a good barometer for how quickly time is going. Last night I was talking with a friend about time slipping away. So much is going on in such a short amount of time, that you just don’t realize where the days go.
I had no idea, but the last post was practically two weeks ago.
I have a test this week. The neuro/psych module is well underway. We have wrapped up gross anatomy lab for the time being and have started a brief neuroanatomy lab section. We have had about two labs a week for the last little bit. Basically we float around from station to station. There are around 6-8 students per station where we review tag sheets of items to identify. Occasionally an instructor stops by, and we’ll review a few sections of the brain. The instructor will walk through the internal structures that can at times seem like two tiny objects of very similar shades of the same color on contiguous field of another similar shade of the same color. It really isn’t that bad, but you do have to appreciate how complicated the brain is considering how similar most of its structures are. Much like histology there is also a lot of two-dimensional presentations of three-dimensional structures, so there is a lot of spatial reasoning (the non-dominant side of the brain) that must go on.
One of these past weekends, I had a nice break from studying. Our class went out to one of the local homeless outreach organizations and set up a health fair. The first year dental students were there as well. We had booths talking about dental hygiene, foot care, health in general and stress relief. There was also some high school students who I think were on the back-end of a coat drive, handing out supplies for the upcoming winter.
I was in the stress relief booth which was pretty slow until a second year student stopped by with a blood pressure cuff (i.e. sphygmomanometer). The main point of the booth was to promote stress relief practices (diet, exercise, socializing) and for us first years it gave us a chance to learn and practice taking blood pressure. I had actually done this in my freshman A&P course that I had taken right before coming to medical school, but doing it on other people…who are waiting…is much different than taking your own in lab.
Most of the last few weeks have been spent with my notes. I’m actually quite stressed about this upcoming exam. I think I’m getting the material down, but I’m just repeating a lot of this stuff over and over again to make sure that I know everything. The good and bad news is that I have the last time slot for my practical this time around. This means that I won’t be in one of the groups getting the test out of the way, but I’ll have 3-4 hours to study in between the written and practical exams.
I’m going to get back to studying. I actually wrote like half of this earlier in the week and just now realized that I left the draft just sitting here. Hope everyone is doing well.
And don’t let the stress get to you…
From Real Genius. Go rent or buy it at your local video renting/buying place.
Behold the Resplendent Anatomy of the Human Fry...by Futurama
So…
The end of the last module hit me much harder than I expected. I managed to get through without any major damage to my grades or my ego. Wife feels a little ignored and my caffeine twitch is a little more pronounced, but all-in-all it was a rousing success.
Musculoskeletal was a very interesting module because it gave me a chance to think about some specialties which I had not considered yet. We did have a bit of lecturing on integument which meant that we also had a dermatology clinical lecture. We also had a radiology clinical lecture, which was a jumping off point into the radiograph studies that we made use of in the gross anatomy material. However, the majority of clinical correlations during this module had to do with surgical specialties, orthopedics and surgical oncology. It has been interesting to listen to these clinical lectures, because I hadn’t given a lot of thought into surgery. However, the major sticking point still seems to be that an early retirement age (or at least retiring from surgical procedures) means that I won’t get to practice as long as I would in other fields.
A lot of significant first occurred during this lecture. Gross Anatomy Lab kicked off which we’ve already talked about. We also started Histology Labs which I’d like to spend a post talking about. This has also started a round of lab practical exams, which I should probably also include.
Mostly, however, this module has been a lot of grunt work. Biochemistry has started covering a lot of metabolic pathways which means memorizing the pathways, the enzymes, the regulation and the clinical conditions associated with their dysfunction. Anatomy is mostly memorization with a little bit of sussing out function (once you have the origin and insertion of a muscle, you can figure out what it does…and sometimes vice versa). Histo is more visual memorization but basically the same thing as Gross on a smaller scale (if a cell has a lot of secretory vesicles…it secretes stuff, if it needs a lot of energy…it has a lot of mitochondria), but with some accompanying Cell Biology. Some Physiology and Development were also in this module.
Neuroanatomy Lab...by Futurama
The Nervous System has gotten off to a slow start with some intro lectures…until today which was basically a four hour laundry list of structures that we need to memorize, the skull, the brain, the supporting structures and the ventricles (I’m going to go with the description “brain holes” for the ventricles). We are wrapping up some of the muscular dissections with the neck and face and quickly moving into the brain next week. We’ll also have a separate series of neuro anatomy labs. This module is more lab-heavy than the last module.
Neuro/Psych is what people are considering to be the hardest of our first year (but I bet they say that about every module), so I’m going to be doing my best to stay well ahead. Luckily both Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks occur during this module, so I’ll have a couple of chances to catch my breath…or at least study a lot without new material.
Futurama is a show that was on Fox but is now showing on Comedy Central or somewhere. Go watch it or buy it. Thank you.
