[null, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BY8KSWPJso0/UGefJ2t1P2I/AAAAAAAACts/DejrLGDYSsA/s400/Grand+Rapids+Art+Prize+Chinese+Lanterns+1.jpg", "src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BY8KSWPJso0/UGefJ2t1P2I/AAAAAAAACts/DejrLGDYSsA/s400/Grand+Rapids+Art+Prize+Chinese+Lanterns+1.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Grand Rapids Art Prize Chinese Lanterns", "rendered_width": 400, "rendered_height": 300}, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VODzwS31ToQ/UGefKtQ3VWI/AAAAAAAACt0/VX1m1vZRQ74/s400/Grand+Rapids+Art+Prize+Chinese+Lanterns+2.jpg", "src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VODzwS31ToQ/UGefKtQ3VWI/AAAAAAAACt0/VX1m1vZRQ74/s400/Grand+Rapids+Art+Prize+Chinese+Lanterns+2.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Grand Rapids Art Prize Chinese Lanterns", "rendered_width": 400, "rendered_height": 300}, null, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4DrW08KD7BQ/UGTjuAvTOeI/AAAAAAAACtU/j_QD3OZwvoM/s640/Super+Big+Boggle.jpg", "src": "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4DrW08KD7BQ/UGTjuAvTOeI/AAAAAAAACtU/j_QD3OZwvoM/s640/Super+Big+Boggle.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Super Big Boggle", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 480}, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://eurekapuzzles.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/bigboggle1.jpg", "src": "http://eurekapuzzles.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/bigboggle1.jpg", "formatted_filename": "bigboggle", "rendered_width": 227, "rendered_height": 320}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kocx92p5tGE/UFC4Er-WXCI/AAAAAAAACsk/9hghNP_Qc2c/s640/Mediasite+Serve+Down.png", "src": "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kocx92p5tGE/UFC4Er-WXCI/AAAAAAAACsk/9hghNP_Qc2c/s640/Mediasite+Serve+Down.png", "formatted_filename": "Mediasite Serve Down", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 312}, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fUlNJVflDGc/UEo0LanTBOI/AAAAAAAACro/xLlugk_odXc/s640/Praying+Mantis.jpg", "src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fUlNJVflDGc/UEo0LanTBOI/AAAAAAAACro/xLlugk_odXc/s640/Praying+Mantis.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Praying Mantis", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 480}, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YmpfqzijGEc/UETWmXp8OHI/AAAAAAAACqM/iBP9tEvOy44/s640/Studying+9-3-12.jpg", "src": "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YmpfqzijGEc/UETWmXp8OHI/AAAAAAAACqM/iBP9tEvOy44/s640/Studying+9-3-12.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Studying", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 480}, null, null, {"document_url": "http://jintus.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/", "unformatted_src": "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NnM3xTnnp60/UBasm2SuQXI/AAAAAAAACf8/lAcazhcmt5o/s1600/Justin_Lake_of_the_Clouds_Michigan_Sm.jpg", "src": "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NnM3xTnnp60/UBasm2SuQXI/AAAAAAAACf8/lAcazhcmt5o/s1600/Justin_Lake_of_the_Clouds_Michigan_Sm.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Justin Lake of the Clouds Michigan Sm", "rendered_width": 320, "rendered_height": 213}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]

Art Prize 2012 Chinese Lantern Photos / Good Day

So, this happened while I was studying at school last night (Friday): Art Prize is currently going on in downtown Grand Rapids, and this was one cool entry. I don't know how many thousands of Chinese lanterns were released, but there were a LOT. It was definitely a unique sight, and these photos don't come close to doing it justice. Give me a break, though; they were taken through the window with my iPhone. Some of these might do a better job, though. If you want to read more about it, click here.

Though there were no magical nighttime displays this evening, today has been pretty great, as far as Saturdays-before-exams go. I went to bed at 10:30pm last night with the worst headache I've had in months and slept for 11 hours. When I woke up, it was still there a little. Luckily, it went away with a little acetaminophen and hasn't reared its head again yet.

After a few hours studying at school, Wife showed up and we studied together till about 5:30pm. We've been trying out a new church lately, and a couple weeks ago found out that they offer a Saturday night service. Considering the schedules of medical and nursing students (and the frequency of late-night studying...), we thought it'd be a good idea to try it out.

Tonight's service was pretty good, though we're still getting used to the difference in style between it and the church Wife and I attend when we're back home. After church, we grabbed a bite to eat at a local Thai restaurant called the Rak Thai Bistro. Food was awesome and the service was fast. Wife even quizzed me on some flashcards for a while before we put away the study stuff and just had some good conversation.

And now, we're here, ready to get back at it:

And yes - that thing on the left side of the photo is my backpacking pillow. It rolls up really small, so I keep it in my locker, breaking it out just in case I need a 15-20 minute power nap. It's going to be a long night, so I'm sure I'll be glad I did. All right, time for some Physiology...
Posted by Justin at 9:31 PM 1 comments Tags: Art Prize, Nicole, photos, Studying


Super Big Boggle

This came in the mail today: In other words, the world just became a whole new place for me. You see, I'm a boggle nerd. Ridiculously so. Everyone says that all med students are nerds at some level, but few are so into something that is so regularly mocked for its inherent nerdiness as I am into Boggle. And now this is sitting in my lap - a 6x6 alphabetical grid of awe full of new twists on a game that was already awesome.

My well-aged Boggle game (safely at home with Wife, and therefore unavailable for photographing) is from 1979, according to the box - six years older than me, shown here in all its red-nail-polished-model-hands glory.

And it's great - tons of words in that 5x5 grid. The new Super Big Boggle not only has more cubes, but it has multiple cubes showing two letters (th, qu, etc.) that are commonly used together. It also throws a curveball in there with the black cube that signifies a blockage - you have to go around it.

Yup, I like Boggle. If you're on an iOS device and you want something like it, I'd highly recommend Word Seek if you're going for all-time high scores and global rankings, and Scramble With Friends if you're up for some individual, head-to-head play. I haven't played since med school started, which is a big deal for me... Probably bigger than not running since about the same time.

The problem is, I now have this sitting here... SO... Anyone up for a study break? Another small problem: I have an exam on Monday. Big distraction + exam = extreme need to self control. We'll see...
Posted by Justin at 7:53 PM 2 comments Tags: Boggle, Break, fun


Today I Learned...

So, my younger brother had jaundice (was jaundiced?) when he was born, and today I learned why! I probably should have learned it yesterday when we actually had the lecture, but I didn't fully get it till I went back over it today. It seems really cool to me - but you might not get it probably won't get it won't care about this if you haven't had Biochemistry or a child/loved one with jaundice (who was jaundiced? Hmm...). If that isn't you, free to turn your brain off for the rest of this post.

My brother must have been deficient in either UDP-glucuronyl transferase (which would have caused the jaundice directly), or UDP-glucose dehydrogenase (which would have caused it indirectly by blocking the production of UDP-glucuronic acid, a substrate for the correct conjugation of bilirubin).

Since bilirubin is a natural product of heme metabolism (recycling of red blood cells, and therefore the hemoglobin they contain), if the production pathways for the enzymes responsible for bilirubin modification for excretion from the liver aren't fully-developed at the time of birth (as the mother's circulation would have been purifying the baby's blood in the placenta before birth), bilirubin will accumulate in the liver.

When it gets high enough in the liver, it will start leaking into the blood serum. Since it's yellowish in color, when it enters the skin capillaries it will color the skin and sclera of the eyesyellow. The reason they probably put my brother under UV lights to treat it is that bilirubin gets broken into manageable pieces by UV light, allowing the liver to send the pieces to the kidneys for excretion until its bilirubin-enzyme handling system is up to snuff.

Cool, huh? Back to studying...
Posted by Justin at 9:20 PM 3 comments Tags: Biochemistry, Travis

All Studied Out

Today was a big day - but I guess I can't really think of a time in the past month when I couldn't say that. Four hours of lecture, two hours of studying / prelabbing, two hours of Anatomy lab, one hour of Bible study, two hours of Anatomy Directed Study Group (it was cut short by an hour, otherwise it would've been three hours long), and 3.5 hours of studying later, I'm writing this post. Lots of hours.

The good news is that in the middle of all that the infamous Biochemistry exam came in for an official regrade - and I passed! Whoop whoop! I've been putting some solid effort into Biochem since that exam put the fear of the Light into me, so we'll see how it pays off when I take the next quiz 7.5 hours from now...

Whoa. That's soon. I should go get some sleep.
Posted by Justin at 12:35 AM 5 comments Tags: Biochemistry, Studying


Going Home!

This week was crazy busy, starting off BLAMMO on Monday with double Anatomy exams, continuing with solid lectures through two really busy days yesterday and today. I'm finally caught up on watching lectures, so this weekend I have the luxury - yes, I understand that it's incredibly sad that I use the word "luxury" for what I'm about to describe - of going back through this past week's material without having to play catch-up at all.

My interview with a prospective student happened today - and actually, given the confidentiality of it, I think that's all I can say. I'm not able to provide any indication of whether it went well or poorly, per MSU CHM's rules. What I can say is that it was a lot of fun interviewing someone on behalf of the school, as I remember exactly what it was like to be on that side of things a year ago. It's hard to believe that it was a whole year ago - that is, until I think about the fact that I've only been in school for about a month. It feels much longer than that...

Which is why I will be heading home to visit Wife this weekend! She's had an insane week this week as well, and we are both in some serious need for quality time with each other. I'm still going to have to study for a large part of each day, but it won't have to be the intensive exam-prep-studying that happened the last time she and I hung out:

Anyhow, I will be taking the train home on the morn. Hooray! Looking forward to it very much.


Posted by Justin at 9:52 PM 3 comments Tags: Break, crazy, Nicole


Big Days

Post-written pre-post addendum: I understand this post is huge. It turned out way bigger than I planned. Apparently, I've got a lot to say. Read on if you've got the time. I promise I won't be offended if you give up halfway through...


I've got some big days coming up. Today was my chance to get ahead caught up a little bit, which I have successfully done. Last night was spent reviewing Physiology notes and watching Biochemistry lectures until the wee hours of the morning while most (all?) of my fellow classmates were out partying it up. I don't say this out of self-pity. On the contrary, I get the most revitalization by being able to have some quiet time to myself, doing things at my own pace. I love getting out in groups from time to time, but after the stresses of exam preparation, some solid alone time is fine with me. I wouldn't mind seeing Wife more often, but I think that goes without saying at this point. She would normally have been able to visit me last night, but she is incredibly busy preparing for three exams this week, and her clinical rotation in Grand Rapids was cancelled this week. :(

Today I got up at about 9:00am after a healthy six.five (hey look, that's a new way to do it) hours of sleep, made some coffee, got a bowl of cereal and sat down to stream some lectures. I made it through four hours of lecture in just under three, then made my way to school for a two-hour Clinical Skills class where we reviewed the video of my first patient interview. My fellow classmates did a great job critiquing me, and I think I'll do much better in round two, which comes this Thursday - one of the reasons the next few days are going to be big.

Tomorrow morning, we have the standard four hours of lecture, only this time two of them will be Integrative Clinical Correlations. These are classes where a patient comes in and has their case presented to the case by their physician. The pathology/symptoms experience by the patient always ties in with what we've been learning in class in some way, and those intersections are highlighted by a faculty member throughout the patient presentation. At the end, we are given the opportunity to ask the patient questions related to their experience. There has only been one so far, but it was a really interesting way to see how what we're learning has a real-life application, and thus a slew of real-life consequences to failing to learn it all really well. It's a good way for us to be reminded that there's more to all this studying than just doing well on tests.

Tomorrow afternoon I have two hours of Anatomy Lab, in which we are starting the Head and Neck section - reportedly the most difficult (volume much?) of the year. Our lab is thankfully a prosection-based lab, which means that we don't have to do any of the cutting and sawing ourselves. While I don't mind working with my hands, I think we are actually better able to learn the anatomy by being able to focus just on learning the structures. Plus, there's a dissection elective if you find yourself feeling shortchanged by not being able to do the cutting and pulling-apart yourself.

After lab, I have my first Physician Mentor Meeting. Basically, students are split up into groups of 8-10 or so and assigned a mentor that they stick with for their first two years. I haven't met mine yet, but I've heard he's pretty great. I think we get to shadow him in his practice (not sure what kind of doc he is yet), as well as just discuss a wide variety of topics involved with becoming a doctor. So, that's for an additional two hours tomorrow. That brings Wednesday's total to a whopping 8 hours spent in structured activities, completely outside of the normal 4-8 hours that I usually spend studying on my own.

Thursday just gets a little rougher. Judging from my schedule, I have just shy of ten hours of scheduled activity, including: three hours of lecture, an hour of Biochemistry exam review, a talk on the History of Vaccinations and the Modern Vaccine Debate, a twenty-minute standardized patient interview, a two-hour Histology lab, and a two-hour Round Table meeting in which students meet with faculty to discuss curriculum concerns and plans.

Friday brings three more hours of lecture, an (optional) Biochem help session, an interview (I'm the interviewer!) with an applicant (remember that?), an organized lunch with the Interview Day students, followed by another two-hour Anatomy Lab. Oh, I forgot to mention - it takes a solid 1-2 hours to prelab for each of these labs. Yeah, it's going to be a big couple days...
Posted by Justin at 5:30 PM 4 comments Tags: med school, Schedule


The Rush

Today is as great as Friday was abysmal.

Today, I spent almost 3 hours taking exams - one hour and forty-five minutes on the lecture exam and an hour on the lab practical exam. The lecture exam was by far the most difficult, and though I felt well-prepared going into it, I was still a little shaken up by what happened on Friday. The nervousness was unfounded though; I passed, and was just a couple points shy of "mastery level."


With Anatomy, they combine our lab and lecture scores, weighting the lab scores twice as heavily. If you don't do well under pressure, then lab might be a little harder (I'll explain why in a minute), but I enjoy that sort of thing. Another point for emergency medicine as a specialty? Possibly.

Lab practical very interesting. We have about thirty cadavers, and there are sixty questions on the practical, which means about two "stations" per body, one student at a station at a time. At each station, a notecard stating something like, "Name the structure / bony prominence / vessel indicated by the yellow pin." If it has a red dot on it, that means you have to specify "left" or "right." For example, the card for a pin marking the left brachiocephalic vein would have a red dot on it because there's also a right brachiocephalic vein, but the card for a pin marking the brachiocephalic artery wouldn't have a dot on it, since there's only one.

Anyway, you have 45 seconds to write the name of the marked structure down on the station's corresponding line on your sheet. After 45 seconds, a tone sounds and you have to move on to the next station, whether or not you finished writing. After sixty stations, you get an additional 45 seconds to frantically make any completions or changes to any of your answers. There were actually two stations that didn't involve cadavers. At one, there was a vertebra in a cloth bag, and we had to identify the region of the spinal column that it came from based only on touch. At another, one of the proctors had a box of notecards beside him. We had to draw a card, show it to him, then on his body palpate the structure whose name was written on the card. He then wrote whether or not we got it right on our sheet. The possible structures we'd have to palpate were the inferior angle of the scapula, the vertebral prominens (spinous process of C7), the xyphoid process, or the manubriosternal joint (angle of Louis). Those weren't too hard, so that station was sort of like a break - though his vertebral prominens (the card I drew) was WAY less prominent than my own, so it took me a second to feel it.

The lab exam was really stressful for a lot of people, but I enjoyed it. Well, all except for the part where I completely forgot that the oblique pericardial sinus was a thing, thought about putting "pericardial space" instead (which I later found out would have been right...) and ended up putting inferior-middle mediastinum. I don't know if they'll take that... Technically it's right, just not as specific as what they were going for... With that aside, it was a bit of a rush, putting to the test my brain's ability to rapidly recall this massive amount of information. Nerd fun.

I got tripped up by a couple other questions on the lab practical, but overall I think I probably did better on it than I did on the lecture exam, which is just fine. I'll find out in a couple of days. In the meantime, I've had some catching up to do. I sort of let myself get behind in Physiology and Biochemistry to prepare for Anatomy. I'm now caught up with Physio, but have some work to do still in Biochem...
Posted by Justin at 11:25 PM 8 comments Tags: Anatomy, exams



So, this happened today:

I took a Biochem exam. I thought I did just fine, not quite as well as I'd done on the three most-recent practice exams I took yesterday - but still fine. Note: the practice exams are actual exams from previous years. Here are the practice exam years and my scores from yesterday:

2011 - 90%
2010 - 90%
2008 - 92%

2012? 68% Unfortunately, that's two questions beneath the pass/fail mark. No clue how it happened, other than that apparently the exam was harder than I thought. The questions were different, but I hadn't thought they were that different. I missed 10 out of the 32 questions, when the most I had missed on those three previous practice exams was 3.

I spent half the day today feeling terrible. I haven't scored that low on an exam since Quantum Theory - and I still have no clue why it happened, as we don't actually get to review the exam for almost a week; we get our scores after taking the test because we are allowed to write down what letters we put on the scantron sheet onto a separate piece of paper and take it with us. Then, when they post the answer key (just the answers, no question content), we can see how many we got right/wrong. I plan on meeting with a prof to figure out exactly what the heck went wrong. I've got a solid base in Biochemistry, and the practice exams show that I understand the material. We'll see what I find out after I meet with her.

I spent the second half of the day bucking up and muscling my way through a ton of Anatomy - which I'm still doing, and will continue to do until I sleep tonight. It's 10:21pm right now. I took that Biochem exam at 8:00am.

It's been a long day.

All I can do now is try as hard as I can to make sure nothing similar happens when I take my two Anatomy exams this Monday. Wish me luck.


*Note: Today, I put up my actual scores. I probably won't do that in the future, regardless of if I do well or not. The simultaneously great and terrible thing about blogging publicly is that sometimes when people meet you, they find your blog - and read it. I'd rather be defined / judged more by my attitudes and reactions to events than by my test scores, regardless how negative or positive those scores might be.
Posted by Justin at 10:29 PM 4 comments Tags: Biochemistry, exams


Gotta Love Technology - Mediasite Down

Technology can either make or break a situation.

Case in point: I attended my attendance-optional lectures (you can stream them live online or watch them later on as you wish) this morning as I have been faithfully doing all semester. Until today, I've just been making notes whenever the lecture went too fast so that I could go back through the lecture online (where it gets posted for streaming later on) and review the parts that were a bit fuzzy.

In today's Anatomy lecture, it came to a point where I was writing "Watch Again!" on almost every slide. The lecturer was just reading the notes off the bottom of each slide (which we get in our coursepacks) and offering little to no explanation of said notes other than rapidly circling different areas of cardiac lymphatics along the way. I decided it would be more productive to leave and catch up on some studying from yesterday's material while the lecture finished, then come back to it when it was online and pauseable / double-speedable (sometimes other students ask questions that, while they might be interesting, have nothing to do with what we need to be learning right now...).

When I went to access the lecture online, what did I find? This: I called the Mediasite tech support, and the phone rang 21 times before I hung up. I then called the IT department for MSU CHM, and they said the Mediasite people probably weren't answering because their server is down - but that it "should be up soon." When I asked what "soon" meant (as in, five minutes, or two hours?), she said it should be up in the next five minutes. It is now about ten minutes later and I'm still enjoying the pretty grey-and-white text box featured above.

Technology is currently breaking this situation. Normally, Mediasite streaming of lectures is awesome. Regrettably, today isn't normally... On the plus side, I had time to write this post because I couldn't do what I really needed to, so... That's cool. I guess.
Posted by Justin at 12:32 PM 3 comments 

First Med School Exam & Abraham Verghese

I successfully passed my first med school exam - Physiology! It actually turned out to be much harder (in my humblest of opinions) than the practice exams - and as such, much harder than I was expecting. As such, my score was lower than I had gotten on the practice exams - an 87% on the first one before studying and a 100% on the second one after studying. Regardless, I passed.

Let me explain what I mean by "passing." At MSU CHM, the first two years are done Pass / Fail. That means that, as long as you get at least a 75% in each class, you pass. Yeah - it's that hard. We throw ourselves at this material for about 10-14 hours every day of the week, all in an effort to get above a 75%. For most of us (and yes, I'm including myself in this) we do this because even though it doesn't matter to our academic record if we get a 75% or 80% or 95%, it matters to us. So even though I scored enough above the 75%-mark to be comfortable, there was still a little part of me that was pissed that I didn't perform at the same level I was used to in the undergraduate level. I know, I know - I need to think of it as Wife said it. "Honey, this is med school. You passed. That's really, really good."

I guess I'm still convincing myself of that.

In other news, Dr. Abraham Verghese, MD is coming to the Lansing campus to present a World View lecture on Monday, October 8th 7:30pm-9:30pm. I'm very strongly considering attending (I can go for FREE as a med student), but there's just one problem. My electric bike is awesome, but I can't exactly bike from Grand Rapids to Lansing - a distance of 68.2 one-way via the highway. Time to find a med student to carpool with... Anyway, check out the video below if A.) you want a great example of Dr. Verghese's speaking style and story, and B.) you'd like to understand some of what makes me happy and proud to be attending a school that puts such a solid emphasis on training physicians to see patients as more than just malady-carriers in need of a treatment/diagnosis. Enjoy!

Posted by Justin at 12:21 AM 6 comments Tags: Abraham Verghese, exams, MSU CHM


My Quiet Space The first two semesters at MSU CHM (called "Block I"), you pretty much have lecture for four hours straight each morning with a 5-10 minute break in between. It's 10 if the professors are running on time, but sometimes they go a little over and it comes out of the break.

Anyway, between lectures a lot of students tend to just sit in their seats and wait for the next lecture to begin. At best, some might get up and go to the bathroom or refill a water bottle. I was that way for a while too - until I remembered two things. One - just outside of our lecture hall is a patio area with an awesome, sunlit view of downtown (pictured above). Two - it will soon be WINTER outside, and this peaceful, colorful view will become much drearier.

Ever since the first week of classes, I've been making an effort to go stand out in the sun and enjoy the outdoors a little bit. Even if it's raining, there's a covered portion that I go stand under and just enjoy the peace that is inherent in the outdoors. I like big spaces, and there's nothing bigger than outside - something that is lost on you sometimes when you're surrounded by towering buildings. So, in the last ten minutes of every weekday hour between 8:00am and noon (EST), you can imagine me standing at the railing in the picture above, breathing deep breaths and smiling before heading back inside to be tackled by tackle another lecture.

One last note: my Physiology exam was this morning, and it was much more difficult than the practice exams that they gave us last week. The practice exams were helpful review, but I feel like they chose MUCH trickier questions for the actual exam... They allow us to write down what answers we filled in on the bubble sheet, and they release the correct answers online later this evening, so I won't find out my grade until after I get out of Anatomy lab around 5:15pm. Cross your fingers for me, or (as the Germans would say), "Drucken die Daumen!" (Push the thumbs!)
Posted by Justin at 2:07 PM 1 comments Tags: Break, exams, photos


First Med School Exam Tomorrow

Tomorrow Morning at 8:00am I'll be sitting down to take my first med school exam - this one in Cell Biology and Physiology. These past two weeks have absolutely flown by, a perception aided in absolutely no small part by the breakneck pace at which the lectures learning occurs. Hopefully, I will actually be sitting down before 8:00am, as MSU CHM is instituting a new exam policy whereby they close the doors to the testing room promptly at 8:00am. If you get there thirty seconds late, you fail the exam - unless you have a valid excuse as to why you're late. And no - having your watch be three minutes slow is not considered a valid excuse, as they no longer recognize the times shown on watches. They only go off of cell phone clocks now, so they might let you in if your cell phone shows you as being on time.

Tomorrow's exam isn't supposed to be insanely difficult. That status is being reserved for the two Anatomy exams (lecture and lab) being held a week from tomorrow. And possibly for the Biochemistry exam this coming Friday. That's right - technically we have four exams in the next week. Granted, Anatomy is only one subject, but from what I hear the lab exams are sufficiently different enough in style and content that they might as well be considered as for a completely separate class.

Anyway, yesterday was Wife's birthday (she's now 24 years old!), so she came to Grand Rapids and we spent some time together, studying for ~8 hours, then hitting up Bonefish Grill. VERY tasty, though not the cheapest option on the menu. Suffice it to say, we each got an appetizer and bounced. This morning we tried out a church near downtown GR (Ada Bible Church), which turned out to be pretty cool. It was a little different, as randomly today happened to be the very first day that service was being held at the building we went to. They just finished building it, so the service was a little non-standard. Anyway, Wife is now on her way back home, and I'm getting cozy with a study room on the third floor of the Secchia Center.

The plan for the afternoon is to brush up on Physiology stuff (I'm still a little blurry on some of the most recent Embriology that got vommed all over us in impressive shock-and-awe fashion in the last lecture), then attempt to get caught up with Anatomy. I feel good about Physiology, as yesterday I took a practice exam before studying to figure out my weak areas and managed to pass it, so the outlook is good for tomorrow's test. And so I ask myself - ready to buckle down? Absolutely.
Posted by Justin at 12:04 PM 5 comments Tags: Anatomy, exams, Nicole, Physiology, Studying


The Rooftop

I like heights, so the rooftop here at the Secchia Center is an incredible place for me to unwind. It's open to students and faculty during lunchtime on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I checked it out today, and (even though it's a little cloudy out) it was SO NICE. I brought my sandwich up there and ate while people-watching from a falcon's vantage point. Note: other than stitching together, no enhancements were done to the below panoramic photos...

Interactive Panorama:

Compiled Panorama (13,099 pixels wide):

Compiled Panorama (small version - only 4,000 pixels wide):

This little guy was also hanging out on the roof with me, so I snapped a shot of him as well... Posted by Justin at 1:52 PM 1 comments Tags: MSU CHM, panorama, photos


The Beast that is Anatomy

Anatomy is easily the most intense class of the first semester at MSU CHM. It's a six-credit course with multiple two-hour sections of lab (one to three lab sections per week, most weeks having just two) each week. The pace is faster than any class I've ever taken, and I'm still trying to figure out ways to keep up with everything. Right now it seems like every person I talk to is either behind or getting behind. Weekends look like they're going to be our saving graces. In all premed classes, you would only have lecture every other day, giving you time to study before getting new material. Now, we have lecture for four hours every morning, sometimes doubling up on a subject. For example, we might have one hour of Physiology, one hour of Biochemistry, then two hours of Anatomy.

Don't get me wrong - I am loving how much I am learning. I would never have thought it possible to learn as much as I have in such a short period of time. I don't do much other than go to lectures, eat, sleep, and study - but I am learning so much! Anatomy lab was a lot of fun the other day because I prepared well beforehand, so it wasn't as stressful to find all the objectives. Actually, let me explain that really quickly.

In anatomy lab, we are given several pages of objectives for each official lab period. Basically, these are structures that we have to find and take notes on or describe. There are also a lot of supporting questions designed to further our retention of the anatomy that we are studying. The bodies are arranged in two rows that run the length of the room, and they remain covered to prevent excessive drying when not being actively studied by students. The bodies have been dissected beforehand to different degrees and in different positions to facilitate viewing certain structures in certain bodies. For example, one body might be deeply dissected and in the supine (face-up) position to facilitate viewing the anterior portion of the spinal cord. Or, a body might be in the prone (face-down) position with only the external skin and fascia removed so as to allow students to view the extrinsic (and maybe some intrinsic) back muscles.

A lot of the lab objectives can be completed before going in to lab. Many questions are things that can be looked up in anatomy atlases ("The nerves extending from which thoracic vertebrae innervate the iliocostalis muscle? The splenius capitis? Multifidus and rotatores?" or "What are the inferior and superior points of attachment for the semispinalis muscles, and what type of action do they cause when contracting unilaterally?") and written in beforehand, leaving me free to roam about the lab and find all the structures on my lists.

Anatomy is a completely different experience, both in lecture and in lab. Nothing is graded aside from quizzes and exams - which means no lab reports! However, this actually makes it that much more important that I stay committed to doing everything. There's no way to know what's going to be on the next lab quiz or exam, so it's important to learn it all...

Speaking of which, I've been writing more than I expected already, and I still have several hours' worth of lecture slides and prelab pages to go through in preparation for tomorrow... Oh, for the days when sleep didn't come at a premium! Don't worry though - I'm loving it as much or more than any of my fellow classmates, which is (in my book) a very good sign! :)
Posted by Justin at 9:39 PM 3 comments Tags: MSU CHM, Studying


Studying on Labor Day That's right - it's a holiday that many people in the U.S. get off, but not med students. I guess it's good practice for when we're doctors someday, as hospitals don't exactly get to close, but still. Two quizzes tomorrow - one in Anatomy and one in Biochemistry. No clue how they're going to go. I've crammed so much knowledge into my head in the past week, it's impossible to know what they're going to pick for such a short quiz...

Luckily, I got a solid 8.5 hours of sleep last night, and the thermos in the above photo is stocked with home-roasted coffee goodness. I'll probably put in a solid 8-10 hours today before calling it quits. Already finished my Histology prelab (due Thursday at noon), and I plan on getting a jumpstart on the online Physiology homework set (also due Thursday) when it opens up tonight at 6pm.

This past weekend was a TON of fun. I rode the train from Grand Rapids to Holland on Saturday morning, then went back to bed there for 4.5 hours and woke up at 1:30pm. Apparently, I was carrying a significant sleep deficit. So, I studied till 8pm and took the rest of the night off to celebrate Wife's birthday! If you clicked on that link, you'll notice that Wife FINALLY has a new blog going! So, if you want to follow our lives at the same time, you should keep up with hers as well. It should be interesting as we attempt to live life somewhat separately for the next two semesters. I think her design and title, "Tiny Wife Big Life," are very cool. VERY cool. That might have something to do with me drawing up the design on my iPad... Maybe a little.

All right, time to get back to learning about things like accompanying veins (venae comitantes), arteriovenular anastomoses, diaphragmatic foramina, venous layers (tunica adventitia, media, and intima), and the like. Wish me luck on my first quizzes!
Posted by Justin at 12:20 PM 8 comments Tags: MSU CHM, Nicole, Studying

The Tags This is me. Click for more. Read my interview here! They Like! You Like? I Tweet Posts.

Follow @jintusblog They Read. You Read? Visits since 7-14-2012: