Melissa's Bio

Melissa's Diary

I’m now 2 weeks into my second semester. It is interesting to see how differently this one is starting out. It seems that many of my classmates are easing into the coursework and studying, my study partner and me included. We’ve taken off a couple of weeknights (nearly unheard of for us) and when we are at school studying, there really aren’t that many other students there with us. Overall, we’re starting out this second semester much more laid back than last semester. We’ve had to pick up the pace this weekend because we have a test Tuesday in physiology.

Unfortunately, I already feel all neuroed-out! We have a semester-long neuroanatomy class and we’re also covering neurophysiology right now in physiology. This means that we’re having 8 hours of neuro lectures & 2 hours of neuro lab each week. In the first neuroanatomy lab we covered the surface anatomy of the brain--pages and pages of structures to learn! It was quite overwhelming, but the professors assured us that they were trying to expose us to the structures, not learn them all in one day. The next neuro lab consisted of looking at slides of spinal cord and brain sections and identifying where some of the different spinal tracts are located. All I know right now is that this class is going to take a lot of work on my part!

Our clinical skills class is a fun addition to the classes. They bring in different specialists to tell us about their specialty. For example: last week a dermatologist came and taught us about different dermatological lesions and this week we learned how to do some of the basics of a patient examination (taking blood pressures, pulses, using a stethoscope, etc). We also had a role-playing session to practice doing a patient interview. This basically consisted of asking what problem brought them to the doctor & asking them questions to gather more information. I’m not big on role-playing, but it certainly was a nice break from the normal lectures.

I’ve been resisting completely throwing myself into schoolwork thus far. Last weekend I stayed home for much of the weekend and got to spend some time helping my daughter work on her diorama for school. (Oh, to be in second grade again!) This weekend I had to make myself spend more time at school, but not all of it was study time. On Saturday, there was a baby shower for our pregnant classmate who is going to have a scheduled C-section in a couple of weeks. We had a good time, and she got a bunch of good stuff…including 4 of the same toy! After that I made myself sit down and study physiology. My preferred study spot in the library has been cold (its by a big window, so it transmits the cold from outside), so I have to move the furniture away from the window to have any chance of staying warm. My study partner and I really don’t want to have to go looking for somewhere else to study, but we may have to give in if it doesn’t get warmer soon.

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