Sunday, August 19, 2007

Saturday

Medical school is not a 9-5 affair, nor is it mon-fri. This is a truism to anyone who has been in school. Duhh! you say. I know. It's just a lot busier than I had imagined. Saturday is a perfect example. As an undergrad, you might write a paper for a few hours on saturday or do a little studying, but you generally had a good chunk of the day freee. Yesterday Aaron, Dan and I studied in the morning for nearly 5 hours. Our anatomy professor had compiled a review sheet with the weeks material in brief, and a list of review questions. We spent 4 1/2 hours going over it and we still hadnt' touched the last day's lecture by the end. I had promised mindy we would go and do something in the afternoon, so at 1330 we stopped and agreed to reconvene at 10pm in the anatomy lab. Mindy and I went to the world market to get some exotic cookies as a treat. This took far longer than we had anticipated because the highway is under construction. By 7pm I was back reading my old friends Netter and Moore. At 10, in the midst of a towering thunderstorm, Aaron, Dan, and I left to go take a practice practical exam in the lab. A lab practical is when there are different tags placed on the cadaver with a number and you have answer the questions regarding the tagged part. If it's a muscle, you might only have to ID the muscle, or just give the innervations, or the actions etc.. If it's a nerve, you might have to indicate what level of the spinal column it arises from and what kind of nerve fibers it contains. The ID"s are pretty straightforward, unless the cadaver looks like beef jerky, which was how we found them that evening. I did pretty well, I just made a lot of stupid mistakes which is usually the bane of my test taking. Got home at 1210, and went to bed.

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