Study Weekends are Fun!

Hello all! Phii here! Phii is my new online persona for the foreseeable future. Mainly because I can't shake the feeling that his wide eyed look most closely mirrors my state of mind lately. At any rate, I don't have anything particular interesting or funny to impart today. I just thought I give an update and didn't want to leave a Monty Python video on the top of my blog for too long. ~.^

I've been hitting the books hard lately and instead of making me feel productive it's been increasing my stress level almost exponentially. I mean, I was only half joking about counting down until finals in my previous post. I'm not joking anymore. I'm seriously starting to freak out. I know, I know, I've been through it all before (the last few months). But now half my points are set in stone and I know exactly how well I need to perform on the finals to ensure good grades in my first medical school classes. Add to that the constant advisements from everyone that the second half is hard because of, drumroll now, the head and neck in anatomy. My general unhappiness about my biochemistry study time from the first half of the term has led me to dramatically increase the time I've been sacrificing to it. I'm obsessively attempting to memorize every freaking detail since the midterm illustrated quite vividly how it is indeed possible to have a fifth degree multiple choice question in clinical vignette format render completely simple biochemistry concepts into almost an alien language. @.@ Now. Keeping count? Add to that the somewhat horrifying fact that histology is venturing into territory that is, while not unfamiliar, not among my current easily recallable knowledge. So it's as if an entirely new class has, like a nuclear missile, suddenly appeared on my radar. And it's beeping insistently for my attention. It's a shame I'm already engaged in a bloody two front battle. Ugh. Sorry for slipping into the war metaphors again. At least I managed to make them vague and not Star Trek related in some way.
The life of me is moving apace but I'm definitely feeling the pain of medical school fairly acutely.

And for a small glimpse into just exactly why there are so many acronyms in science/medicine!
ACAT = acyl CoA cholesterol acyl transferace
HMG-CoA = beta hydroxy beta methylglutaryl coenzyme A

And a short sentence (no, really) off of the back of one of the 55 notecards I made today! (yes, I counted)

"..phosphatidic acid reacts with CTP to form CDP-diacylglycerol which can react with phosphatidylglycerol (which itself is formed by condensation of glycerol 3-phosphate and CDP-diacylglcerol) to form cardiolipin, aka diphosphotidylglycerol which is a component of inner mitochondrial membranes..."

You get a cookie if you realized that I was studying lipids. Unless you have a PhD in chemistry (or molecular biology *grin*). Then, no cookie. Then you have to find mistakes to get the cookie. :p Shouldn't be too hard considering how fried my brain is after this long study weekend.

And on that note, until later!

Listening to: 夏目友人帳 音楽集 おとのけの捧げもの