Best Laid Plans

Amazingly, the best laid plans of mice and men (and medical students) are actually going pretty well for me. That or I'm in complete and utter denial about how screwed I am for monday's upcoming path test. I was recently accused of being replaced with an alien clone for my apparent lack of panic for said test.

I should be so lucky. The alien probably wouldn't need to study. And I'd get to leave the planet! How cool would that be? Even if I did have to leave as an attraction in an alien circus. Aaaand here we have an odd specimen indeed from a small planet called Earth. It's a second year medical student. Behold! It does tricks! *holds up photomicrograph*

"Er, liquefactive necrosis with infiltrating gitter cells?" *rattles cage hopefully*

*crowd oohs and ahh's* Come back tomorrow to see it identify cytoplasmic inclusions!

Hmm, something tells me I'd have a pretty short run as a main attraction. Maybe I'll stick to my initial plan of medical school. But I digress.

I wanted to throw out a 'thank you!!' to the path department for their merciful scheduling of this last week. Not only do we not have path class lab today or tomorrow the blocked out the time in the master schedule so no one else could give us class during their time. How great is that?? The physio and neuro departments should take note of this. And the last two path modules have been relatively light. Environmental was a breeze and the immuno path section is 99% review from Immunology. So all you term 2 people out there - make sure to learn your immuno well! Otherwise it WILL come back to haunt you. I'd be seriously scrambling if I hadn't paid attention in immuno last term. Because essentially, the majority of the immuno class was summed up in path in three hours of lecture. Truly. Just when I think they can't condense massive amounts of material into smaller packages... they do. I'm continually impressed. And this is not to imply that we have to know the material in any less detail this time around. I was actually surprised they gave us the three hours of review that they did. Something tells me though that we won't be receiving any mercy for the second and third exams so I'm going to enjoy it now while I can. ^_^'

For reasons best left unsaid the following has been running through my head as of late:

Anyone remember this old cartoon? Good times.

Back to my multiple of slides on necrosis and things that colonize you and then eat you little bits at a time. Ah, tissue tropism, how disturbing you are.

Listening to: 風と丘のバラード

Hello Term 4

Greetings anyone who is still checking my defunct blog! I am still alive and am well into the 'dreaded' term 4. I thought I'd make an entry about my initial term 4 impressions since our first test is in a little over a week and no doubt after being through that particular fun my opinions will be overshadowed by the test itself. Because really... I like this term! A lot. I know, it's a surprise to me as well. Granted, I enjoy histology related things and path in general but this term has been built up and built up by upper term students to the point where we've been led to believe they were going to line us up and shoot us. Well. At least not until the second test.

Don't get me wrong. The schedule is just as exhausting as promised. And I know that I'm still happily in general path and systemic is where it becomes difficult. What can I say? I like it. The classes are really interesting. The professors don't waste time on boring things *coughthirdtermcough* and it just finally feels like 'medicine'. I learn a new horrible way you can die every day. It's great!! ^_^

Awful way to die # 47: amniotic fluid embolism (also doubles as 'reason not have children' #542)

Yes, I'm strange. Why do you ask?

Anyways. So, a bit about 4th term. Classes are in the am and held in charter hall which is much nicer than Bell Hall. We have a whole stage! Nya, nya! And the seats are a bit more comfortable if a tad smaller. Path lab is mon-thurs from either 1-3 or 3-5 depending on how early you signed up your group. Additionally, we have CPD (communication & physical diagnosis) lab twice a week for an hour and a half each. So as you can see there is considerably less free time available to us compared to the first three terms. By the end of the week I'm usually barely conscious. And I've heard people speak of functioning of 2-3 hours of sleep (I'm not personally capable of such a feat for long periods of time).

How lab is set up is somewhat up to the discretion of your group. They assign modules of slides for particular days and each group decides how to split them up among themselves. The slides are just pictures with captions (sometimes lacking even that) and you are responsible for researching and presenting your slides for the week. In my group each person presents about 2-3 times each week. For each image you have to come up with it's identity (amazingly, sometimes this is even tricky), the pathological disease, morphological/structural changes (gross and histological), etiology, pathogenesis, symptoms/signs, investigation/course, highlights and a clinical vignette or two. Every group has a slightly different format but they look something like this:

They take a fair amount of time to make and prepare to present so it's a pretty big drain on the afternoons during the week, especially if you have to present two or three days in a row. See how the time just vanishes like smoke?

As important as the slides are there are clinical tutors (MD's) who are assigned to each group (they rotate weekly) to ensure that no one is passing on incorrect information or leaving out important details. And just to make their advice that much more vital they are the folks who are writing the test questions! I'm only slightly disturbed by this fact. Apparently they spend time every day writing questions based off of our lab sessions.

So that's path lab. Incredibly time consuming both in its duration and in preparation. Time will tell how useful it is for our test.

CPD lab so far has consisted purely of the 'communication' side of things. We've been let lose on standardized patients to practice our dubious history taking skills. For the most part it's been interesting. In my group we've all come to know our respective styles very well. I'm the 'exam style person'. Which is the nice way of saying I interview in a rapid fire fashion. :p And on the other side of the spectrum there is a guy in my group who takes forty five minutes to get a history. And everybody else falls somewhere in between. We've developed quite the camaraderie among ourselves since we change tutors every lab session and each tutor seems to what the history taking in a slightly different way. It's been interesting to say the least. But for the most part it's been amusing if maybe not an excellent use of our time at this stage. Better now than at the start of clinicals I suppose.

All in all, my initial impressions of this term are as follows:

FUN but TIRING

Listening to: 犬夜叉～完結編～ 遠い道の先で

So.. fourth term

Is so far living up to it's expectations. That is all. *runs away*