October 18

This past week was our fall break. It came just in time. The first 8 weeks of school have been very challenging, in many ways. I have been sleep deprived and my brain has overheated a few times. We have taken 18 tests, drawn blood on each other, half-way dissected our cadavers, learned most of the complete physical exam, and have had units in Physiology, Immunology, Microbiology, Pathology, Radiology, half of Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Prevention (granted most, if not all of these, have been introduction units).

I have frequently had the feeling that there is no way that I can possibly remember everything we are learning, and yet we are told to trust the system and everything will turn out great. I guess I just have to trust them. Everyone that has completed the program seems to be doing great.

Because I haven't done a very good job of keeping the blog updated, I figured I would give a sample of what our days are like. Here is what tomorrow is looking like:

4:00am - Wake up, shower, get dressed, study for the microbiology quiz until 5:45am. Drive the 5 miles (7 minutes) to school, fill up my water mug, put my lunch in the fridge, and find an empty study room where I will study until 9:00am. Class normally begins at 8:10am, but tomorrow we start later, for some reason (thank you!). At 9:00am I will boot my computer and wait to be told I can start the quiz. The quiz will consist of 20 - 25 multiple-choice questions, 15 - 20 of which will likely be something that only a microbiologist would know the answer to. Upon submitting the quiz I will immediately be given my score. If it is above a 70% I will have successfully completed the Microbiology section and will be very relieved.

10:10am - Second class of the day begins. Tomorrow it happens to be an introduction to Ethics in Research and Writing/Student Presentations (that should be interesting). The lecture will go until 12:00 at which time I will heat up my lunch and relax for the next hour.

1:10pm - Third class of the day begins. This will be a lecture from the one-and-only Peggy Robinson (the microbiologist who wrote all the microbiology quizzes) on the Principles of Infectious Disease. It will go until 3:00.

3:10 - We will end the day with Anatomy lecture on the Back and Spine. This will prepare us for anatomy lab on Friday where we will dissect our cadavers back and spines. This lecture will go until 5:00, where we will be out for the rest of the day.

The rest of the week we will have many lectures and I will spend my out-of-class time studying for next Monday's Hematology exam and Wednesday Anatomy Exam. We also have three assignments due on Thursday (all on hematology stuff, I think).

If you are interested in what we did over our fall break you can check out Ashley's blog at ashleyrutledge.blogspot.com.