The perfect combination!! This is another short entry because it's late and I have class tomorrow, and I've been busy all day pre-studying for the new classes beginning tomorrow, if "pre studying" consists of hanging out at the beach all day draped in Grenadian children, and then shedding said children and bumming out at the wine bar drinking Chenin Blanc.
Verdict: Parasit... rocked it... I am now an asswormologist. If you have explosive parasitic diarrhea, well, I can tell you how much it's going to suck. A useful skill, to be sure.
Genetics... we don't have the results yet, but I feel good about how the exam went. I had trouble sleeping (as always) but didn't feel panicky or horrible this time and it was only one night, I did the exam carefully, and thought that it was really fair and much less horrible than I expected.
What's weird and a little concerning is that most people either thought it was really pretty easy or insanely difficult. There isn't really a middle ground of "eh" people (at least that I saw), and that's a bit of a concern. I didn't think it was bad, but wondering if I missed some sinister effect. But hopefully, we'll see tomorrow.
For now, it's bedtime!
Showing posts with label genetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genetics. Show all posts
Aug 30, 2007
Aug 24, 2007
Bad Blogger
Yes, I'm still using the word "blog" despite the current chic hatred of it to describe things that are, by best definitions "blogs" since they lack better definitions.
So I haven't been updating all that much, at least not for all that's been going on, because well, all that's been going on!
Parasitology and genetics, as mentioned previously, are cool little two week classes that then deliver a final right in your third week. Pressure's on, baby! It's nice because you're only focusing on those two, so I'll tell you a little bit about them before bed.
Genetics is apparently highly variable, with some terms being really easy and interesting, and others having dull instructors and insanely difficult tests, so your mileage may vary. I don't want any angry emails.
Our instructor this term is a pretty cool guy from Newfoundland (that's an accent I haven't heard) who seems to do some solid genetics review without attacking anything too suicide-inducingly difficult. Now, the test may prove that wrong, but so far, I'm enjoying it well enough, particularly since the instructor likes to pepper his slideshow with oddities like Gattica movie posters and weird Radioactive Man style comics from the 50s where everyone has giant heads, like they've been infected by Toxoplasmosis as fetuses. Feti?
Which brings me to parasitology. Parasit is a bit scattered, and definitely high yield with a very lot of information crammed into a not very lot of time, but personally, I find it fascinating, perhaps even fascinating enough to investigate more thoroughly if I didn't think such an approach could land me dying near stagnant water by worms exploding out of my orifices, which is definitely on the top ten list of ways I don't want to go.
The instructor is cool, from Kenya, has done endless amounts of work in a bunch of countries, and fills his lectures full of interesting stories, like the 3-legged DDT carrying donkey that fell in a river and cured the village below of river blindness by wiping out the fly population (no word on what drinking DDT did to the villagers though), or the way in which the "Don't Feed Cysts to Dogs" song was passed on through 1000 miles of African villagers as a method of preventing cystic hydatid disease, which causes your liver to swell up with disgusting giant cysts until you look like you're pregnant with twin sets of quintuplets... if quintuplets were WORMS!!!
In the death and misery department, the little stuff seems to have the medal, but in the "holy crap, that's disgusting department", we've been studying nematodes for the past couple of days, thus reinforcing the list of countries I'd pretty much decided against ever visiting back in high school biology when I first got an inkling these awful creatures existed.
The only problem with parasitology (other than being high yield, thus high study time), is that it makes you intensely paranoid. I did perfectly well in Grenada for a term, but on day 2 of parasitology, sent the SOS email: DEAR MOM: SEND FILTERS WITH MESH OF FOUR MICRONS OR LESS... NOW!!!!
And no, Grenada doesn't have the really frightening exotic illnesses, but even a lecture on the complications of dysentery is enough to make anyone run for the nearest brita filter.
I'm still in "med student" mode though. Parasit is right before lunch, and after watching a series of slides in which giant Ascaris worms were shown both as "pooped" spaghetti, and, in horror movie fashion, crawling out of a sleeping/comatose girl's nose and mouth simultaneously, my response was: "So... lunch?"
To my credit, lunch did NOT consist of spaghetti.
if you google "Ascaris" you can find some appetizing pictures, though I wouldn't recommend it for people who don't have a strong stomach, and should be sufficient to scare most people off any field of medicine that comes within a 50 mile radius of those things... Unfortunately, they're relatively common... So just climb in your bubble, stop eating meat, uncooked vegetables, drinking water, playing in soil, or being bitten by bugs, and move to Alaska... but stay away from polar bears... they have parasites too (and big giant teeth and bad tempers, but it's the parasites that'll get you).
So I haven't been updating all that much, at least not for all that's been going on, because well, all that's been going on!
Parasitology and genetics, as mentioned previously, are cool little two week classes that then deliver a final right in your third week. Pressure's on, baby! It's nice because you're only focusing on those two, so I'll tell you a little bit about them before bed.
Genetics is apparently highly variable, with some terms being really easy and interesting, and others having dull instructors and insanely difficult tests, so your mileage may vary. I don't want any angry emails.
Our instructor this term is a pretty cool guy from Newfoundland (that's an accent I haven't heard) who seems to do some solid genetics review without attacking anything too suicide-inducingly difficult. Now, the test may prove that wrong, but so far, I'm enjoying it well enough, particularly since the instructor likes to pepper his slideshow with oddities like Gattica movie posters and weird Radioactive Man style comics from the 50s where everyone has giant heads, like they've been infected by Toxoplasmosis as fetuses. Feti?
Which brings me to parasitology. Parasit is a bit scattered, and definitely high yield with a very lot of information crammed into a not very lot of time, but personally, I find it fascinating, perhaps even fascinating enough to investigate more thoroughly if I didn't think such an approach could land me dying near stagnant water by worms exploding out of my orifices, which is definitely on the top ten list of ways I don't want to go.
The instructor is cool, from Kenya, has done endless amounts of work in a bunch of countries, and fills his lectures full of interesting stories, like the 3-legged DDT carrying donkey that fell in a river and cured the village below of river blindness by wiping out the fly population (no word on what drinking DDT did to the villagers though), or the way in which the "Don't Feed Cysts to Dogs" song was passed on through 1000 miles of African villagers as a method of preventing cystic hydatid disease, which causes your liver to swell up with disgusting giant cysts until you look like you're pregnant with twin sets of quintuplets... if quintuplets were WORMS!!!
In the death and misery department, the little stuff seems to have the medal, but in the "holy crap, that's disgusting department", we've been studying nematodes for the past couple of days, thus reinforcing the list of countries I'd pretty much decided against ever visiting back in high school biology when I first got an inkling these awful creatures existed.
The only problem with parasitology (other than being high yield, thus high study time), is that it makes you intensely paranoid. I did perfectly well in Grenada for a term, but on day 2 of parasitology, sent the SOS email: DEAR MOM: SEND FILTERS WITH MESH OF FOUR MICRONS OR LESS... NOW!!!!
And no, Grenada doesn't have the really frightening exotic illnesses, but even a lecture on the complications of dysentery is enough to make anyone run for the nearest brita filter.
I'm still in "med student" mode though. Parasit is right before lunch, and after watching a series of slides in which giant Ascaris worms were shown both as "pooped" spaghetti, and, in horror movie fashion, crawling out of a sleeping/comatose girl's nose and mouth simultaneously, my response was: "So... lunch?"
To my credit, lunch did NOT consist of spaghetti.
if you google "Ascaris" you can find some appetizing pictures, though I wouldn't recommend it for people who don't have a strong stomach, and should be sufficient to scare most people off any field of medicine that comes within a 50 mile radius of those things... Unfortunately, they're relatively common... So just climb in your bubble, stop eating meat, uncooked vegetables, drinking water, playing in soil, or being bitten by bugs, and move to Alaska... but stay away from polar bears... they have parasites too (and big giant teeth and bad tempers, but it's the parasites that'll get you).
Aug 14, 2007
Biochem tomorrow
So I finally get to conquer my demons and be done with them.
I feel really really well prepared for this exam, and I think I can say with confidence (which seems like an oxymoron) that I feel like if I can't pass the exam with the amount of work that I've done, practically no one could... not because I'm any kind of genius, but just because I've worked SO hard, done so many flashcards, incorporated so many ideas, that I currently feel like if suddenly tests were put in front of me, I'd do a heck of a lot better in biochem than I would in anatomy, and hey, no embryo.
I still have the stomach jitters... no twitchy sleepless crying jag sorts of things but a general unwell, lightheaded nervous stomach that comes and goes, that I'm hoping gets knocked out permanently with the test tomorrow.
It's not simply a matter of whether I pass or fail or any of that; I simply don't LIKE feeling the stress sick. It's decidedly unpleasant regardless of the outcome, and I think by learning to get over it and deal with it, I'll be a lot happier in medical school and a lot happier in my future career as a doctor. But I think I'm okay, and I think I'll be okay. The fact that I've already slept the last two nights and have eaten perfectly regularly up to this point already puts me FAR ahead of the disastrous end to last term. I'm beating this bitch, one way or another.
I wasn't ballsy enough to do Carnival/Spicemas today because I needed flashcard review, but doing the Carnival parade yesterday (pictures pending) put me on much better terms with the island again, and I remembered that I actually do like this place quite a lot, and there's no other experience like it, and being terminally pissed off for the next year and a half, even when given fairly good reason, is a waste of energy. Anything can be either an amazing time, a learning experience, or a reason to appreciate what's ahead, or perhaps a combination of all of them, and though I know there's going to be times where I'm miserable, like I said above, I think I'm okay right now... I'll give more details on yesterday at a later date, because it's not really going with the flow of my thoughts right now, which are more in the direction of prostacyclin (keeps the blood cyclin'), due to the cards I've been studying.
I went to class this morning, registration restrictions be damned, and genetics doesn't seem like it'll be too bad (we did mitosis/meiosis today) and parasitology not only seems like a class that lends itself to flashcards, but seems fascinating, if disgusting. We do more in parasitology than most American medical schools, but considering I like weird things that do weird stuff, and am thinking in a Doctors without Borders direction, it seems highly relevant and pretty cool, so it doesn't bother me that we're taking it. I'm bummed that I have to miss tomorrow's classes to take the exam, since so far I like both instructors for the courses, but I've got friends backing me up, so it should be all good.
I'm going to pass the exam, and I'm going to finally be a *real* second termer, so that's saying something.
I feel really really well prepared for this exam, and I think I can say with confidence (which seems like an oxymoron) that I feel like if I can't pass the exam with the amount of work that I've done, practically no one could... not because I'm any kind of genius, but just because I've worked SO hard, done so many flashcards, incorporated so many ideas, that I currently feel like if suddenly tests were put in front of me, I'd do a heck of a lot better in biochem than I would in anatomy, and hey, no embryo.
I still have the stomach jitters... no twitchy sleepless crying jag sorts of things but a general unwell, lightheaded nervous stomach that comes and goes, that I'm hoping gets knocked out permanently with the test tomorrow.
It's not simply a matter of whether I pass or fail or any of that; I simply don't LIKE feeling the stress sick. It's decidedly unpleasant regardless of the outcome, and I think by learning to get over it and deal with it, I'll be a lot happier in medical school and a lot happier in my future career as a doctor. But I think I'm okay, and I think I'll be okay. The fact that I've already slept the last two nights and have eaten perfectly regularly up to this point already puts me FAR ahead of the disastrous end to last term. I'm beating this bitch, one way or another.
I wasn't ballsy enough to do Carnival/Spicemas today because I needed flashcard review, but doing the Carnival parade yesterday (pictures pending) put me on much better terms with the island again, and I remembered that I actually do like this place quite a lot, and there's no other experience like it, and being terminally pissed off for the next year and a half, even when given fairly good reason, is a waste of energy. Anything can be either an amazing time, a learning experience, or a reason to appreciate what's ahead, or perhaps a combination of all of them, and though I know there's going to be times where I'm miserable, like I said above, I think I'm okay right now... I'll give more details on yesterday at a later date, because it's not really going with the flow of my thoughts right now, which are more in the direction of prostacyclin (keeps the blood cyclin'), due to the cards I've been studying.
I went to class this morning, registration restrictions be damned, and genetics doesn't seem like it'll be too bad (we did mitosis/meiosis today) and parasitology not only seems like a class that lends itself to flashcards, but seems fascinating, if disgusting. We do more in parasitology than most American medical schools, but considering I like weird things that do weird stuff, and am thinking in a Doctors without Borders direction, it seems highly relevant and pretty cool, so it doesn't bother me that we're taking it. I'm bummed that I have to miss tomorrow's classes to take the exam, since so far I like both instructors for the courses, but I've got friends backing me up, so it should be all good.
I'm going to pass the exam, and I'm going to finally be a *real* second termer, so that's saying something.
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