three day weekend..

ahhhh yes, now i remember. after 2 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of struggling to get back into the medical school pace, i now remember how much i enjoy spending a saturday night at home studying. oh joy :) three day weekend= 3 days to catch up and learn everything for our test on tuesday. or, as a good friend of mine put this wednesday after a day of lectures:

two more days to go..then the train will stop so i can run and catch it. -Julia

Round 2

i thought filling in my time during break would be difficult. but i found that watching my DVD's of ER seasons and reading novels worked out just fine :) well that and copious amounts of alcohol, friends, family, house/dog sitting, sleeping, and some others...

i had a great time off but now it is sunday afternoon and time to prep myself for tomorrow, our first day back to school.

haha, not. I am sitting in my new place deciding where i want to put my laundry basket. thats right, i moved out of the house. 7 months at the parents place was enough. dont get me wrong, it was nice to have dad make me coffee in the morning and sandwiches for lunch but it was hard being away from school, its resources, and of course, my classmates.

tomorrow starts the first day of a very lonnnnnng 6 months. I will be in school from January 4th to June 14th with a week of at the end of march for spring break. During this time, I will go through 5 blocks. They are:

IDIT- Introduction to Disease, Immunology, and Therapeutics which is basically lectures on microbiology, pharmacology, immunology, and pathology.

Blood and Lymph- exactly what it sounds like with the including histology, pharmacology, pathology, microbiology

Neurology

Behavior, Med, and Psychology

and lastly, musculoskeletal.

All sounds fascinating as well as terrifying. im pretty nervous for Neuro as is it rumored to be the most difficult section of our first year curriculum.

ok, enough of the computer. i am going back to doing nothing for my last day of vacation. need to be in class tomorrow at 9. but, im actually pretty excited to go because my school is opening up a brand new building especially for the medical students we will be in a brand new lecture hall, will have all new break out study rooms, a new common room, etc. i am looking forward to seeing it all after a semester of waiting for it. hope it lives up to everyone's expectations!!

something to look forward to when tomorrow is OVER!

Email recieved from out student government recreational leaders

subject: POST MCBM SHINANIGANS- DO NOT DELETE...unless youre booooooooring

So here is the deal. Thursday night following the MCBM final we will be meeting up at Piano Piano. It's a bar with a dueling piano show so if you've never been to one then it is definitely worth checking out because they are usually pretty darn entertaining. Doors open at 6 and the piano guys start up about 8 (but you can show up whenever). Your college ID will get you to the front of the line should there be one and since its Thursday night that means $3 CORONA and $5 Jager!!!! There is also a $5 cover but just in case we cant get it waved (because we are awesome desperately poor health professions students) be prepared for that.

We have also be told that on Thursday nights the bar holds a "biggest group contest" with the bar buying a round for the winners. To date the biggest group has been 16...we think we have this one in the bag.

So come out and join your classmates for a good time at:



AND DONT FORGET YOUR DD OR FRIENDLY LOCAL YELLOW CAB DRIVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our Endless Love,
E and A

Follow up email:

UPDATE: NO COVER!!!!!!!! that $5 now stays in your pocket!
$3 Corona
$5 Jagerbombs (gross...but maybe you will feel like an undergrad again and remember that at one point life was good)

almost there!!

i am getting lazy and don't feel like writing. more so, i dont feel like staring at my computer screen any longer than i have to since i have been looking at it for aprox 8 hours a day...for 4 months straight. and 8 is low ballin it...

my first semester of medical school is almost over. i am done with classes (today was our last day of lectures) and they give us two days off to study, then we have our last exam Thursday morning. these 2 days are more like, "haha, we expected you to have learned all this stuff in the past 2 weeks but know you havent so here are 2 bonus days to stay up and cram." i, however, am taking the high road and going to bed early. well, maybe not since I will be waking up at 8 to start my glorious day of staring at my computer screen some more.

have i mentioned that medical school could be known as 'death by powerpoint'...

Another biochemistry dosey...

jaundice refers to the yellow color of skin, nail beds, and sclera (whites of the eyes) caused by deposition of a protein called bilirubin. (FYI bilirubin is what makes your poo brown and your pee yellow- technical medical terms i know). Jaundice is not a disease but a symptom of many diseases.

jaundice in premature newborns is elevated because a certain enzyme to break it down does not reach adult levels until about 4 weeks after birth. thus, premature babies may turn yellow.

to solve this problem, i am taught to shine a blue fluorescent light on them to convert the bilirubin into a more water soluble form which can be excreted through urine.

moral of the story...
Yellow Baby+ Blue Light= health

haha

the hungrier you are, the longer you will live

During a lecture on the metabolism of fats in our diet in our biochemistry class, my professor cited a study. This study was conducted over 20 years and had two sets of cohorts, regularly fed monkeys and then monkeys that were given 1/3 less calories than the 'control' monkeys. The monkeys who had their calories restricted lived longer healthier lives.

"the reason i bring this up is because we are talking about fats...and most of the calories we are taking in come from fats. i wish i had known this 20 years ago but you guys have no excuse so ya know...raise your children right and ya know, i guess its better to be a little bit hungry. hey, the restriction part does not mean malnutrition."
-Prof B

I PASSED

and i didnt just pass....i did really well :) above average well.

feels good, feels damn good!