AUC White Coat Ceremony Photos January 2011

For whatever reason the individual photos aren't up, but to see the rest of them please click here
These are some of mine and of the class:

The Jan 2011 class!

Saturday Morning and an Anatomy Update

Image via Wikipedia

Oh Oh Oh To Touch And Feel Very Green Vegetables and Herbs ;)

I just got a good study session in this morning. When I drink the night before, I usually wake up pretty early the following morning so I was up, dressed, and out by 8:30.  Right by Note Services in the main AUC building there are a bunch of picnic tables stationed with awesome views of the lagoon, so I decided to sit there and do work. I wish I had my camera at the time. For the two hours I was up there, I went over most of my MCB stuff from this past week and now I have to worry about anatomy for the next few hours.

Speaking of anatomy, the start of this block is significantly better than the start of first. I actually know what's going on in class, which was not the case for the first couple weeks of school, and now I've learned to use the UMich site for extra questions and for going over things I don't quite understand. This block we are focusing on the head and neck of the body. I've heard from a few student that this is may be the hardest block because you have to remember so many details about the nerves and blood vessels, like what foramen they exit out of, what muscles they innervate/supply blood to, the clinical significance if a nerve or artery is cut or impinged upon, etc. So I've been staying on top of my work, I've got the general cranial nerves down thanks to the help of a somewhat dirty pneumonic (not the one in the brain caption) and now I just need to memorize all the bones and muscles of the head and face. Not so bad, right? I've been using a site that's been great for naming all the external and internal structures of the body called winkingskull. You can click to hide or reveal the name of a particular bone/muscle/nerve/artery/vein and after you think you've got the hang of all the names you can take the quizzes. If you want to use this site, it's free, but you will have to register your email address. 

In addition to lecture, my lab experience has also been better. For whatever reason, the smell has not been as pronounced and I want to say it's because I've gotten used to it, but I think it's because we are only working with the head right now (small exposed surface area) and we've been covering up the rest of the body. I don't even want to think about what's growing in our body's thorax right now. Since I haven't been having issues with the smell, I actually did some dissecting on Thursday! Shocking right? I feel like I outdid myself since I couldn't even handle the back, but I somehow managed to go ahead and dissect my cadaver's FACE. On one half of the face, the guys at my table were digging for nerves and on my side I was trying to clear the fat off to expose the muscles. We had a couple of awesome TAs at our table helping out with the parotid gland and clearing off fat, thanks Khyati and Qinshi! And also a shout out to one of our Head TAs Josh who was helping me out with the muscle half of the face, and showing off some finesse with the scissors and probes.

Island Music Mode

I've been sick of my ipod for awhile, so I've recently started listening to the local radio stations here and when I say radio stationS, I mean just one-- 92.5 Youth Radio. It's pretty much a top 40 station for Caribbean music, but I've enjoyed it so far. To listen live you can click here.

I also put some of the songs I particularly liked on my little pink ipod to the right of this page. It's a shame that I can't find half of the better songs anywhere on youtube! Oh well. I will try to update/add more songs from the islands as time goes by.

Enjoy :)

The First Step to Improving my Study Habits

Studying in the quiet lecture halls without a computer.

It was amazing. I sat down for three straight hours and reviewed all my histo, MCB and most of anatomy. I  need my computer to finish up my studying for that particular subject. For first block, I spent the majority of my time holed up alone in my room, and I would hardly get anything done. I would be chatting with my boyfriend, searching facebook, reading news articles, or checking out my blog-- not really conducive to learning. But today I went to LH4 and got away from all the distractions. I could just focus on my material and for the first time, I felt like I was actually learning!  I think I'll turn this into a routine.

Related articles

• My Newfound Study Method (medschoolcaribstyle.com) 

Block I Exams and Post-Show Festivities

They are done. 

Finally. 

And just when I think I have a moment to catch my breath, the force feeding begins again. Block II has officially kicked off with the usual round of classes this morning and lab in the afternoon. I also already have the results for my exams, but I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, so let's take a moment and backtrack.

At AUC, each semester is divided into 4 blocks. At the end of each block, everyone takes 3 or 4 exams pretty much back-to-back. As a first semester student, I took:

--Anatomy Lab exam, 40 questions, one hour beginning at 9:15 a.m. For this exam, the anatomy professors tag different arteries, veins, muscles, and nerves of the cadavers and you have to identify the structure or state what that tagged structure is associated with, or even apply it to a clinical situation. There's also another room (the dry lab) where x-rays/CT scans are displayed, as well as bones and you have to identify the structures. Each student is stationed at one question and we rotate around the room every 30 seconds or so. I suppose this is an efficient way of doing things, but once you pass a question you are done with it. There were some tags that I knew within 5 seconds and others where I wished I had more time (BPS of the lungs!!)

I was out at 10:15 and spent the next few hours reviewing histo, MCB and anatomy. The next round of exams started 1:00 and they were suppose to go till 4:00, but the thing I *really* liked here is that you could take whatever exam you wanted and spend as long as you liked on it within those three hours. The professors allocate an hour to complete each exam, but the thing is if you finish Histology in 30 minutes like I did, you use that extra half hour for the MCB exam. Roll over minutes at their greatest.

-- Histology exam, 50 questions, 1:00-1:30. I felt like this was going to be my easiest exam so I decided to take this one first and man did I burn right through those questions! I felt like I knew every answer and that never really happens to me during exams.

--Molecular Cell Biology I exam, 40 questions, 1:30-2:15. I took a little longer on this one. I felt fine throughout, but not like how I felt during histo. I could see which questions I was missing and I felt like I could have done better if it weren't for my laziness with detail in DNA replication. I saw what special enzymes and proteins I had to memorize the day before and decided I didn't feel like exerting the extra effort. No bueno

--Anatomy written exam, 40 questions, 2:15-3:00. Anatomy is my achilles heel and I knew if I took this one first I would probably lose a lot of my confidence going into the exams. I felt lost throughout this exam. I was frustrated because I felt I knew about the structures and subjects that were most stressed in class and lab, but for whatever reason there weren't many questions on what the professors spoke most of! For example, Dr. G spent the most time of any of his other slides discussing the Tetralogy of Fallot during his heart lecture. NOT ONE SINGLE exam question about it.  Because there were 3 professors teaching this block, each got to write at least 12 questions. I was so frustrated towards the end of the exam I think I was just blindly choosing C for every question I skipped over and preying I got a few hits. All I wanted was to just get out of there and enjoy a few hours without having to worry about studying. I thought to myself that tomorrow would be a new day, a new block, and I'd have to implement new studying techniques.

RESULTS:

Histology- seems like Histo is everyones favorite subject since we all did pretty well in it 

Class Average: 84%

Me: 92%

MCB I- Another good average for our class, but it kills me to think that if I had studied a little better I could have gotten somewhere in the 90s. 

Class Average: 80%

Me: 80%

Anatomy- a 69.5% and above is what's considered passing at AUC and I'll tell you right now, the average of our class was a failing grade at 68% (the written and lab are averaged together) The professors decided to throw out a couple of the questions in attempt to raise the average, which now stands at 74.5%. With that being said, I scored below the minimum passing grade for this exam and *gulp* I failed. Yes folks, I failed with a 65%. I needed an additional three or four questions to pass, but there you go. You know what this means? Study regiment overhaul. I need to actually follow my own rules I've already put forth on this blog and then sprinkle a little UMich every night with a heavy dose of BRS anatomy.  From this moment on, I vow to do this every single day. Failing is simply unacceptable. 

Lastly, when you're done with blocks please go all out Monday night. I went to Tantra with a bunch of my fellow first semesters/second semesters and I had a fantastic night. A little craziness is essential for the preservation of sanity. 

Related articles

• Block II Hits and Misses (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• Goodbye Block III (Good Riddance) (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• First Semester Done and I've Passed All my Classes! (medschoolcaribstyle.com)
• Semester 2: Block I  (medschoolcaribstyle.com)