Hey guys!
Hope everyone is doing well! Its been a while since my last post. To be honest, time has been going by pretty fast and we have been pretty busy here. Its crazy that in just over 4 weeks I will be finishing up my last exam. Three weeks and I start exams! My title says so close yet so far. The reason why it says this is due the fact that I fully understand the amount of work we are going to have to put in to get to the end. Block three is in two short weeks and finals start very soon after. Our finals are obviously cumulative and two of my classes are NBME style exams. If you don't know what that is, I'll talk a little more about it closer to exam time. I don't want to scare myself too bad tonight. So while the end is in sight, it is not going to be the most fun path to traverse. It will get done though and it will make our 2.5 week break so much better and well deserved.
I think I left off last blog talking about my impending weekend plans. I'm happy to report that I did nothing. The weather was quite bad on Saturday so the beach day as pushed to Sunday. The fact that there was a lot of rain also made the hike route a compete mess, so the hike Sunday was cancelled. My Saturday was spent studying and when it came time for me to decide if I wanted to go to the beach Sunday, I figured that sleeping in would be the better thing to do. My Sunday pretty much consisted of cleaning the house and studying. Not the most exiting weekends, but I felt less guilty when I headed off to class Monday actually having achieved some academic betterment.
Last week was another typical week (most weeks seem to be pretty typical). In anatomy we started on the head and neck. I've enjoyed these past few days in anatomy. I studied neuroscience for 5 years and actually got to dissect a real human brain for the first time! Kinda pathetic really. We started this block with the neck which was very interesting. There is a lot going on in quite a small area. It was cool to see the structures that make up all those surface anatomical features we see in everyone we look at. We also got to learn a little bit about some of the emergency procedures such as the tracheostomy and emergency cricothyrotomy. Its these things that I find very interesting. We then moved onto the structures of the face and ended with the removal of the brain. Next week we open up the palate area and work on the brain a bit more. I've been told that this section is one of the easier sections to do well on, so I'm hoping that it works out to be true.
Histology and Cell Bio have nothing super exciting to report. More pictures of tissues and more diseases and drugs. I'm really looking forward to later semesters when we get to learn the pharm and path of all these diseases. Its when things start to get really interesting in my opinion:)
In PD we have finished cardiac exams. Tomorrow we have an open lab to practice our skills then on to musculoskeletal examinations Tuesday. After that we are pretty much done with PD except for the exam. The practical PD exam will be my first exam. I either test out on the 7th or 8th of December! So its coming up real quick. I have really enjoyed PD so far. It is a good intro into some of the more practical aspects of medicine and its making me look forwards to the more advanced ICM class in future semesters.
Outside of class the island has been treating me well enough. Days are sunny and hot, everyone moves slow, I can hear the ocean moving around, airplanes fly by and I imagine being on one of them, I watch cruise ships sail by every other day and imagine sitting by the pool. All the same really. I say this but I really have no issues being here. It feels more and more normal each and every day. I don't think that after Christmas I will be too sad to return. I'm trying to remember if anything interesting happened this weekend. Friday there was a big celebration put on by the Hindu student association for Diwali. I didn't actually go, but I heard it was great. There was great Indian food, dancing, singing, stand up comedy etc. I would have loved to have gone but It didn't work out. I will definitely be going to their next event whenever that is. Saturday I studied for most of the day then went to see a move with a few friends. When I got home we felt like watching another movie so we watched Big hero 6 until 230 in the morning. Today was the same minus the movie. So studying. Actually this morning I went snorkeling. The ocean was a tad rough which made the visibility pretty poor, but it was still nice to go for a swim and float around in the ocean for a bit. I took some underwater pictures but have yet to look at them. If they turn out good Ill post em.
That's it for now. I have a medical ethics test tomorrow so I have to do a tad more studying. I also don't have internet at home for some reason so this might be getting posted in the morning when I get to school.. Also I will be sure in the near future to do a post about all the things you should do before coming to the island for all the new students starting in January! I had a ton of questions when the time came close to leaving so I will be sure to go over a few things that I wish I knew. Also keep sending me questions if you have them. I'm always willing to help out!
Things I learned this week
-I've accumulated sooo many 1 EC coins. I need to do something about that.
-I'm running out of laundry detergent and I have to figure out if I want to spend the extra money and get liquid stuff or just stick with the old school powder.
-We ran out of gas this week. Like propane. My landlord was quick and got a new tank delivered. We got a 100lb tank for about 50 American.. Which is a pretty good price. That should last us for another semester at least especially since its just me and my roommate using it.
-Crabs can climb windows. I heard a knocking / scraping at my window the other night and I decided to investigate. It was dark out and light inside so it was hard to adjust my eyes. When I focused I saw this huge crab hanging onto my window. It scared me really bad because it looked exactly like a giant spider.
- A few sneaky uncooked noodles in a big pot of noodles ruins the whole thing (pretty much)
Cheers,
Mike
Hope everyone is doing well! Its been a while since my last post. To be honest, time has been going by pretty fast and we have been pretty busy here. Its crazy that in just over 4 weeks I will be finishing up my last exam. Three weeks and I start exams! My title says so close yet so far. The reason why it says this is due the fact that I fully understand the amount of work we are going to have to put in to get to the end. Block three is in two short weeks and finals start very soon after. Our finals are obviously cumulative and two of my classes are NBME style exams. If you don't know what that is, I'll talk a little more about it closer to exam time. I don't want to scare myself too bad tonight. So while the end is in sight, it is not going to be the most fun path to traverse. It will get done though and it will make our 2.5 week break so much better and well deserved.
I think I left off last blog talking about my impending weekend plans. I'm happy to report that I did nothing. The weather was quite bad on Saturday so the beach day as pushed to Sunday. The fact that there was a lot of rain also made the hike route a compete mess, so the hike Sunday was cancelled. My Saturday was spent studying and when it came time for me to decide if I wanted to go to the beach Sunday, I figured that sleeping in would be the better thing to do. My Sunday pretty much consisted of cleaning the house and studying. Not the most exiting weekends, but I felt less guilty when I headed off to class Monday actually having achieved some academic betterment.
Last week was another typical week (most weeks seem to be pretty typical). In anatomy we started on the head and neck. I've enjoyed these past few days in anatomy. I studied neuroscience for 5 years and actually got to dissect a real human brain for the first time! Kinda pathetic really. We started this block with the neck which was very interesting. There is a lot going on in quite a small area. It was cool to see the structures that make up all those surface anatomical features we see in everyone we look at. We also got to learn a little bit about some of the emergency procedures such as the tracheostomy and emergency cricothyrotomy. Its these things that I find very interesting. We then moved onto the structures of the face and ended with the removal of the brain. Next week we open up the palate area and work on the brain a bit more. I've been told that this section is one of the easier sections to do well on, so I'm hoping that it works out to be true.
Histology and Cell Bio have nothing super exciting to report. More pictures of tissues and more diseases and drugs. I'm really looking forward to later semesters when we get to learn the pharm and path of all these diseases. Its when things start to get really interesting in my opinion:)
In PD we have finished cardiac exams. Tomorrow we have an open lab to practice our skills then on to musculoskeletal examinations Tuesday. After that we are pretty much done with PD except for the exam. The practical PD exam will be my first exam. I either test out on the 7th or 8th of December! So its coming up real quick. I have really enjoyed PD so far. It is a good intro into some of the more practical aspects of medicine and its making me look forwards to the more advanced ICM class in future semesters.
Outside of class the island has been treating me well enough. Days are sunny and hot, everyone moves slow, I can hear the ocean moving around, airplanes fly by and I imagine being on one of them, I watch cruise ships sail by every other day and imagine sitting by the pool. All the same really. I say this but I really have no issues being here. It feels more and more normal each and every day. I don't think that after Christmas I will be too sad to return. I'm trying to remember if anything interesting happened this weekend. Friday there was a big celebration put on by the Hindu student association for Diwali. I didn't actually go, but I heard it was great. There was great Indian food, dancing, singing, stand up comedy etc. I would have loved to have gone but It didn't work out. I will definitely be going to their next event whenever that is. Saturday I studied for most of the day then went to see a move with a few friends. When I got home we felt like watching another movie so we watched Big hero 6 until 230 in the morning. Today was the same minus the movie. So studying. Actually this morning I went snorkeling. The ocean was a tad rough which made the visibility pretty poor, but it was still nice to go for a swim and float around in the ocean for a bit. I took some underwater pictures but have yet to look at them. If they turn out good Ill post em.
That's it for now. I have a medical ethics test tomorrow so I have to do a tad more studying. I also don't have internet at home for some reason so this might be getting posted in the morning when I get to school.. Also I will be sure in the near future to do a post about all the things you should do before coming to the island for all the new students starting in January! I had a ton of questions when the time came close to leaving so I will be sure to go over a few things that I wish I knew. Also keep sending me questions if you have them. I'm always willing to help out!
Things I learned this week
-I've accumulated sooo many 1 EC coins. I need to do something about that.
-I'm running out of laundry detergent and I have to figure out if I want to spend the extra money and get liquid stuff or just stick with the old school powder.
-We ran out of gas this week. Like propane. My landlord was quick and got a new tank delivered. We got a 100lb tank for about 50 American.. Which is a pretty good price. That should last us for another semester at least especially since its just me and my roommate using it.
-Crabs can climb windows. I heard a knocking / scraping at my window the other night and I decided to investigate. It was dark out and light inside so it was hard to adjust my eyes. When I focused I saw this huge crab hanging onto my window. It scared me really bad because it looked exactly like a giant spider.
- A few sneaky uncooked noodles in a big pot of noodles ruins the whole thing (pretty much)
Cheers,
Mike