What’s happening everyone!
So the day has finally come and gone. We are all officially 25% done our first semester and it went by so quick! Yesterday was the doomed "Block Monday” where everyone in the school writes a crazy amount of exams. I’ll give you a little rundown of how the day went for me. First of all, it wasn't bad. If you are someone who it okay at taking tests, this really won't be too scary. The idea of taking tests has always been exciting to me, but the same feeling is definitely not shared. I think the crazy amount of preparation we all did to get ourselves here eased everyones nerves a tad.
The day started off at 0800 with our first exam. All of EBS1 and MED1 took the same exams at the same time with the exception of histology, which is the extra class the MED1's have. It is important to note that all exams are taken on your own personal laptops. We use a program called ExamSoft which worked pretty well. A week before the exams we all had a mandatory tutorial and practice tests to ensure all of our computers are capable of functioning properly. In the event that something goes wrong, there is a whole IT staff here that helps with some of the easier to solve problems. After exams the results are posted latest 5pm on Tuesday (the next day). Some of the profs release the grades early, but they technically have until 5pm Tuesday to release them. I think I had all of my marks by Tuesday afternoon. When you get your results you will see both a percentage and a letter grade. At the school they don’t use a + or – system. So if you’re in the 80’s you get a B. That’s it. If you’re in the 90’s you get an A. This is very different from how my university did things back at home so it will be a bit of an adjustment. At the end of the semester however, your actual grade will be calculated off of a 4.0 GPA calculation. So regardless of the letter grade, everyone should be used to the 4.0 system.
Cell Bio
The first exam of the day was cell biology, one of the heavier courses that we are taking this semester. I think for cell bio most people were ready. I feel that a lot of effort was put into this class. If you come from a science degree background, then lots of this stuff you will have seen before. There are a few people in the class that majored in Cell Biology for their undergrad so obviously they didn't have to put in quite the same amount of work as everyone else. There is however a large proportion of material that is new. For this midterm we were responsible for fully understanding around 21 diseases and a number of drugs. To me this was the most fun to study and the material came easy. I had to put in quite a bit of work to get myself to a high enough level of understanding for the rest of the material though. From day one they are getting us ready for future licensing exams. This means that most of the time the questions are not first order simple questions. They all require multiple levels of understanding in order to be answered. I love when you read a question and about half way you start to think what the answer is but as you keep reading, anything you thought was the answer was actually still information being given in the question... This form of questioning gets you used to answering 2nd or 3rd order questions right away. Its something to keep in mind as you study. What I describe about this class is under the assumption that you have Dr. Last as a professor, which is likely to be the case. His slides are very detailed but he does a fantastic job of outlining what you need to know. There is a crazy amount of material, but its the big concepts that you have to focus on and make sure you understand. Make sure you don't forget the little things though.. he will throw a few simple questions that don't require a lot of thinking. When this happens, be happy and don't over think it. There is a abundance of material from old semester that you have access to and when you first arrive on the island its like a wave that hits you. I find certain people make it their mission to get every last practice exam, PDF textbooks etc, so you will likely hear of a lot of resources available. Best thing is to check them all out and decide what works for you. For cell bio I mostly focused on his slides and a comprehensive list of diseases that a previous student made. All of these resources are pretty easy to find, but I’m thinking about making a google drive or something with all of these things in them and if you guys want access to them just let me know. I’ll probably start doing that when I have a chance. I also went to all of the TA sessions for cell bio. If you study enough you shouldn’t be learning any new material here. I normally just listened while doing other things to absorb the material a second time. I also did a few practice problems that the TA’s gave us, but I didn’t find they helped to much. Others swore by them however. Best thing here is to give them a try and see how you like them. So study hard for this one. If you put in the time you will be rewarded with a great mark. If you put in the time and don’t get the mark you were hoping for, meet with Dr. Last and go over things. There are so many resources out there to help you succeed if you pursue them. Just know that nobody is going to hold your hand and make sure you do well here. If you want to be one of the ones two succeeds, you have to step up and do things for yourself. Be proactive. This goes for all classes not just Cell bio.
Anatomy / Anatomy lab
After Cell bio we had a short break then wrote the Anatomy written exam. The atmosphere during breaks is very diverse. Some are people study last minute while the majority take it easy. I support the taking it easy approach. You’ve just spent countless hours learning this stuff, so you essentially know what you know at this point. Cramming material for 20 minutes before an exam is a good way to psych yourself out. But if that’s your strategy, then go for it. There were mixed feelings about this exam. Some thought it was easy and some thought it was quite a challenge. There are three components to the exam. The Gross anatomy portion, embryology, and imaging (X-ray, CT etc). This means that there are three diverse sets of material that you were responsible for studying. It was more weighted towards gross anatomy, but you still had to be comfortable with all three sections to do well. While there were some that were unhappy, the class average was the highest its been in a long time. The best way to study for this exam I think is to do practice problems. I found we were taught the lecture in a very structured manner where we learned anatomy that coincided with the lab dissections. When it comes to the test, a huge proportion is clinical based questions. They will describe an injury and based on the description you must be able to understand what structures are involved, what those structures do, and what happens when they are injured in a specific way. This type of questioning is very real world and is the kind of question you will see on the USMLE. In order to be comfortable with this you either need to be so familiar with everything you were taught that you can apply it to clinical questions, or you get experience doing practical problems. Both techniques work, the only thing I can say is that if you do practice problems you can answer clinical question more quickly. Don’t get me wrong, if you decide to do practice questions you still need to know the material really well. Depending on how long it takes you to learn the material from the lectures, If you can grasp things fairly quickly and you find you have the time to do practice problems then DO THEM! I found this very very helpful. There are a number of questions banks to choose from. BRS is a little more basic. These are lower level questions then what will be asked of you but are great for solidifying concepts. In my opinion you should focus on UMich and Grays anatomy. UMich is a series of question created by the University of Michigan. You simply type UMich anatomy questions in google and you will find them organized into different categories. The other one is Grays anatomy. These are found in the Grays review book, not the atlas. These question are generally above what you will need to know for the exam. They are filled with clinical scenarios that really require you to think hard. I devoted about 5/6 hours total to answering all the questions in the relevant sections. I felt very prepared after doing this. Any clinical questions that were on the exam seemed simple. So in my opinion, if you have time, give them a try. Just don’t get frustrated if you aren’t getting them at first. You will learn quickly how to answer them well. When you turn anatomy into practical scenarios its lots of fun. I loved being able to apply what I learned in class into real world problems that you will see working in a hospital. If you want to do well and make studying fun, you have to find ways to enjoy learning the material even if its dull. This was one way for me to achieve this.
As for anatomy practical, I’m going to let you guys figure that one out on your ownJ There is a lot of variability that can occur, just know that you will get more then enough time to learn what you need to know to do well. If you use your time wisely and put in the work, you should be fine. There is always potential for difficult structures to be tagged, you just have to make sure you are comfortable with them all and it wont matter (not easy to do).. If you want to know more about the lab exam, feel free to ask me. Anatomy practical was the last exam of the day. The class was split up into three groups so it wasn’t too crowded for the actual exam. I was happy to know that the AC in the lab was working again, but was very disappointed when I found out that the room where we all had to wait did not have functioning AC… Hot hot hot.
Histology
Histology was the exam that only MED1 and EBS2 kids took. Many people went into the histo exam very unsure of what it would be like / how much we actually understood.. You will understand this when you take it. The unfortunate thing was that most people put this class on the back burner and left studying for it to the last day or two before the exam! I kept up with it through the semester but probably devoted 1/5 of the time that I gave to Cell and Anatomy. I did put in a lot of work in the later half of the week leading up to it. Normally I would advise against casting a class aside but I will say that it can work for Histo. No other class do I think this would be an plausible strategy. If you can, keep up with the material. There were people who did really well and some who really didn’t do so good. If you’re leaving it to the last minute, make sure you have some strategy to get the material in. For me I needed to saturate myself with histology pictures. TEM, LM, SEM imaging for all the structures we learned. I have a PowerPoint of pictures I made and I will try to put this into the drive eventually. Make sure you treat this course as a course. Don’t think its waste of time. If you don’t get that 70% you don’t pass, so make it easy on yourself and get through it the first time you take it. If you’re like a few others MED 1 students and you drop it after the first exam, then by all means there is nothing wrong with that. Just remember that you have until almost the end of the semester to drop a course without penalty, so if you have a chance of doing well stick with it!
Well guys that’s about it. We take two other classes (PD and Ethics) but we didn’t have assessments for block one (why I didn’t talk about them). Unless things change drastically, I’m unlikely to give a long synopsis after each block. For the most part, aside from content, strategies will all be the same. If you are a prospective student and have more questions, feell free to ask! For everyone currently in semester one who didn’t do as well as you hoped, its only block one. We have another month to get things on track. Nobody said you had to score 90’s.. I understand how frustrating it is to get kicked in the but by a one-hour exam after putting in 15+ hour days for 4 weeks straight. Just know that you have a ton of people who want you to succeed and will help out however they can. You put in the same amount of time as everybody else, so don’t feel like you are any less deserving. This is you’re very first medical school exam after all. Go easy on yourself. We are all likely to be in the same shoes at some point along our journey so keep buckling down and things will fall into place. Keep pushing and make sure you are there to catch someone else when they stumble down the line ;) Don’t get discouraged.
Fun things
After our exams all the students were pretty excited to have the night off. It was the first night since starting school that we could relax guilt free (sort of). Some people went straight to the beach, some went to dinner, and some hit the bars! One of the hotels / student residences hosts a block party after exams where they sell cheap drinks. Me and a few friends went for some Indian food then made an appearance at the block party. After a little while we all went to a club/lounge at the Marriott. The night started early so I headed home with a few others just before midnight! It was a Monday night after all and I did have class at 0800 the next morning :P Either way it was nice to have a break. Also, today I got to partake in a suture lab!! Yay for learning how to stich people up! Cant wait to practice some more.
Things I learned in the last two days
-Watermelons cost 40ec in Basseterre! How much do they cost elsewhere? No idea. Ill let you know when I find out.
-Those white birds that I was talking about a few posts back will hop up and sit down beside you at a table and wait patiently for you to give them food
-When you stab yourself with a scalpel don’t count on anyone having a Band-Aid. A piece of paper towel in a glove will do just fine :P Ouch.
Cheers,
Mike
So the day has finally come and gone. We are all officially 25% done our first semester and it went by so quick! Yesterday was the doomed "Block Monday” where everyone in the school writes a crazy amount of exams. I’ll give you a little rundown of how the day went for me. First of all, it wasn't bad. If you are someone who it okay at taking tests, this really won't be too scary. The idea of taking tests has always been exciting to me, but the same feeling is definitely not shared. I think the crazy amount of preparation we all did to get ourselves here eased everyones nerves a tad.
The day started off at 0800 with our first exam. All of EBS1 and MED1 took the same exams at the same time with the exception of histology, which is the extra class the MED1's have. It is important to note that all exams are taken on your own personal laptops. We use a program called ExamSoft which worked pretty well. A week before the exams we all had a mandatory tutorial and practice tests to ensure all of our computers are capable of functioning properly. In the event that something goes wrong, there is a whole IT staff here that helps with some of the easier to solve problems. After exams the results are posted latest 5pm on Tuesday (the next day). Some of the profs release the grades early, but they technically have until 5pm Tuesday to release them. I think I had all of my marks by Tuesday afternoon. When you get your results you will see both a percentage and a letter grade. At the school they don’t use a + or – system. So if you’re in the 80’s you get a B. That’s it. If you’re in the 90’s you get an A. This is very different from how my university did things back at home so it will be a bit of an adjustment. At the end of the semester however, your actual grade will be calculated off of a 4.0 GPA calculation. So regardless of the letter grade, everyone should be used to the 4.0 system.
Cell Bio
The first exam of the day was cell biology, one of the heavier courses that we are taking this semester. I think for cell bio most people were ready. I feel that a lot of effort was put into this class. If you come from a science degree background, then lots of this stuff you will have seen before. There are a few people in the class that majored in Cell Biology for their undergrad so obviously they didn't have to put in quite the same amount of work as everyone else. There is however a large proportion of material that is new. For this midterm we were responsible for fully understanding around 21 diseases and a number of drugs. To me this was the most fun to study and the material came easy. I had to put in quite a bit of work to get myself to a high enough level of understanding for the rest of the material though. From day one they are getting us ready for future licensing exams. This means that most of the time the questions are not first order simple questions. They all require multiple levels of understanding in order to be answered. I love when you read a question and about half way you start to think what the answer is but as you keep reading, anything you thought was the answer was actually still information being given in the question... This form of questioning gets you used to answering 2nd or 3rd order questions right away. Its something to keep in mind as you study. What I describe about this class is under the assumption that you have Dr. Last as a professor, which is likely to be the case. His slides are very detailed but he does a fantastic job of outlining what you need to know. There is a crazy amount of material, but its the big concepts that you have to focus on and make sure you understand. Make sure you don't forget the little things though.. he will throw a few simple questions that don't require a lot of thinking. When this happens, be happy and don't over think it. There is a abundance of material from old semester that you have access to and when you first arrive on the island its like a wave that hits you. I find certain people make it their mission to get every last practice exam, PDF textbooks etc, so you will likely hear of a lot of resources available. Best thing is to check them all out and decide what works for you. For cell bio I mostly focused on his slides and a comprehensive list of diseases that a previous student made. All of these resources are pretty easy to find, but I’m thinking about making a google drive or something with all of these things in them and if you guys want access to them just let me know. I’ll probably start doing that when I have a chance. I also went to all of the TA sessions for cell bio. If you study enough you shouldn’t be learning any new material here. I normally just listened while doing other things to absorb the material a second time. I also did a few practice problems that the TA’s gave us, but I didn’t find they helped to much. Others swore by them however. Best thing here is to give them a try and see how you like them. So study hard for this one. If you put in the time you will be rewarded with a great mark. If you put in the time and don’t get the mark you were hoping for, meet with Dr. Last and go over things. There are so many resources out there to help you succeed if you pursue them. Just know that nobody is going to hold your hand and make sure you do well here. If you want to be one of the ones two succeeds, you have to step up and do things for yourself. Be proactive. This goes for all classes not just Cell bio.
Anatomy / Anatomy lab
After Cell bio we had a short break then wrote the Anatomy written exam. The atmosphere during breaks is very diverse. Some are people study last minute while the majority take it easy. I support the taking it easy approach. You’ve just spent countless hours learning this stuff, so you essentially know what you know at this point. Cramming material for 20 minutes before an exam is a good way to psych yourself out. But if that’s your strategy, then go for it. There were mixed feelings about this exam. Some thought it was easy and some thought it was quite a challenge. There are three components to the exam. The Gross anatomy portion, embryology, and imaging (X-ray, CT etc). This means that there are three diverse sets of material that you were responsible for studying. It was more weighted towards gross anatomy, but you still had to be comfortable with all three sections to do well. While there were some that were unhappy, the class average was the highest its been in a long time. The best way to study for this exam I think is to do practice problems. I found we were taught the lecture in a very structured manner where we learned anatomy that coincided with the lab dissections. When it comes to the test, a huge proportion is clinical based questions. They will describe an injury and based on the description you must be able to understand what structures are involved, what those structures do, and what happens when they are injured in a specific way. This type of questioning is very real world and is the kind of question you will see on the USMLE. In order to be comfortable with this you either need to be so familiar with everything you were taught that you can apply it to clinical questions, or you get experience doing practical problems. Both techniques work, the only thing I can say is that if you do practice problems you can answer clinical question more quickly. Don’t get me wrong, if you decide to do practice questions you still need to know the material really well. Depending on how long it takes you to learn the material from the lectures, If you can grasp things fairly quickly and you find you have the time to do practice problems then DO THEM! I found this very very helpful. There are a number of questions banks to choose from. BRS is a little more basic. These are lower level questions then what will be asked of you but are great for solidifying concepts. In my opinion you should focus on UMich and Grays anatomy. UMich is a series of question created by the University of Michigan. You simply type UMich anatomy questions in google and you will find them organized into different categories. The other one is Grays anatomy. These are found in the Grays review book, not the atlas. These question are generally above what you will need to know for the exam. They are filled with clinical scenarios that really require you to think hard. I devoted about 5/6 hours total to answering all the questions in the relevant sections. I felt very prepared after doing this. Any clinical questions that were on the exam seemed simple. So in my opinion, if you have time, give them a try. Just don’t get frustrated if you aren’t getting them at first. You will learn quickly how to answer them well. When you turn anatomy into practical scenarios its lots of fun. I loved being able to apply what I learned in class into real world problems that you will see working in a hospital. If you want to do well and make studying fun, you have to find ways to enjoy learning the material even if its dull. This was one way for me to achieve this.
As for anatomy practical, I’m going to let you guys figure that one out on your ownJ There is a lot of variability that can occur, just know that you will get more then enough time to learn what you need to know to do well. If you use your time wisely and put in the work, you should be fine. There is always potential for difficult structures to be tagged, you just have to make sure you are comfortable with them all and it wont matter (not easy to do).. If you want to know more about the lab exam, feel free to ask me. Anatomy practical was the last exam of the day. The class was split up into three groups so it wasn’t too crowded for the actual exam. I was happy to know that the AC in the lab was working again, but was very disappointed when I found out that the room where we all had to wait did not have functioning AC… Hot hot hot.
Histology
Histology was the exam that only MED1 and EBS2 kids took. Many people went into the histo exam very unsure of what it would be like / how much we actually understood.. You will understand this when you take it. The unfortunate thing was that most people put this class on the back burner and left studying for it to the last day or two before the exam! I kept up with it through the semester but probably devoted 1/5 of the time that I gave to Cell and Anatomy. I did put in a lot of work in the later half of the week leading up to it. Normally I would advise against casting a class aside but I will say that it can work for Histo. No other class do I think this would be an plausible strategy. If you can, keep up with the material. There were people who did really well and some who really didn’t do so good. If you’re leaving it to the last minute, make sure you have some strategy to get the material in. For me I needed to saturate myself with histology pictures. TEM, LM, SEM imaging for all the structures we learned. I have a PowerPoint of pictures I made and I will try to put this into the drive eventually. Make sure you treat this course as a course. Don’t think its waste of time. If you don’t get that 70% you don’t pass, so make it easy on yourself and get through it the first time you take it. If you’re like a few others MED 1 students and you drop it after the first exam, then by all means there is nothing wrong with that. Just remember that you have until almost the end of the semester to drop a course without penalty, so if you have a chance of doing well stick with it!
Well guys that’s about it. We take two other classes (PD and Ethics) but we didn’t have assessments for block one (why I didn’t talk about them). Unless things change drastically, I’m unlikely to give a long synopsis after each block. For the most part, aside from content, strategies will all be the same. If you are a prospective student and have more questions, feell free to ask! For everyone currently in semester one who didn’t do as well as you hoped, its only block one. We have another month to get things on track. Nobody said you had to score 90’s.. I understand how frustrating it is to get kicked in the but by a one-hour exam after putting in 15+ hour days for 4 weeks straight. Just know that you have a ton of people who want you to succeed and will help out however they can. You put in the same amount of time as everybody else, so don’t feel like you are any less deserving. This is you’re very first medical school exam after all. Go easy on yourself. We are all likely to be in the same shoes at some point along our journey so keep buckling down and things will fall into place. Keep pushing and make sure you are there to catch someone else when they stumble down the line ;) Don’t get discouraged.
Fun things
After our exams all the students were pretty excited to have the night off. It was the first night since starting school that we could relax guilt free (sort of). Some people went straight to the beach, some went to dinner, and some hit the bars! One of the hotels / student residences hosts a block party after exams where they sell cheap drinks. Me and a few friends went for some Indian food then made an appearance at the block party. After a little while we all went to a club/lounge at the Marriott. The night started early so I headed home with a few others just before midnight! It was a Monday night after all and I did have class at 0800 the next morning :P Either way it was nice to have a break. Also, today I got to partake in a suture lab!! Yay for learning how to stich people up! Cant wait to practice some more.
Things I learned in the last two days
-Watermelons cost 40ec in Basseterre! How much do they cost elsewhere? No idea. Ill let you know when I find out.
-Those white birds that I was talking about a few posts back will hop up and sit down beside you at a table and wait patiently for you to give them food
-When you stab yourself with a scalpel don’t count on anyone having a Band-Aid. A piece of paper towel in a glove will do just fine :P Ouch.
Cheers,
Mike