Melissa's Bio

Melissa's Diary

I realized today that I haven’t managed to post for a while…things have been going along at full speed. Right now I’m in the middle of a 4-week stint of anatomy dissection. That means that I’ve been spending extra time in the anatomy lab trying to get the dissections completed on time and trying to learn all of the structures. The lab is starting to smell (not just formaldehyde now) and I really don’t like spending more time in there than I have to! Fortunately, my group managed to get done on schedule today so I’m home free for a couple of days. The whole experience is interesting and I don’t believe that you can learn anatomy sufficiently without human dissection, but I’ll be glad when it is over. Most days are okay, but I’m tired of the smell (and have a hard time getting it completely out of my hair!).

I’m currently preparing for another anatomy test (next Monday) over the abdomen, pelvis, and all of the associated structures (along with some of the embryology). I have a completely full 3-ring binder that I’m trying to get into my head. This time I’m attempting to study plenty for the exam and still keep up with the other classes. For most of the other exams I’ve had to cram so much that I wasn’t able to keep up in everything else. That ends up being a vicious cycle as there often isn’t much time between tests. Right now I’m keeping up so we’ll see how long it lasts.

Our last biochemistry exam was 2 days after a histology exam, not leaving much cramming time in between. I did some studying of both for a few days, but had to give up the biochem to better prepare for histology, which tends to have harder tests. Our biochem professors give us objectives for each lecture that they use to make their test questions so I make a point to make up study sheets covering the objectives to study from. We also have access to a few years worth of old exams that I have used at the later end of studying to help me figure out what things I still need to work on. Considering the short time frame to prepare this time I decided to use the old exam questions to actually prepare for the test: look over the questions to know why the right answers are right and the wrong ones are wrong. Being a former teacher, this method completely went against my grain, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Boy, my ways are changing: I did notably higher on this exam despite the lack of time! Next time I’m going to use the same basic method even if I have more time!

There have been some glitches since I last wrote.

1) One of the biochemistry professor’s lectures have been driving me nuts! He yells when he teaches and he doesn’t really teach but rather reads to us off of the computer screen (that we have projected in front of the room and can read quite well on our own) and goes off on the same tangents each day. In light of this, I decided that my time is better spent elsewhere for that lecture time. I’ve managed to skip the last 4 lectures, going to the library to study instead. Unfortunately, lots of other people have been skipping, too, so the lecture hall has been noticeably emptier, prompting me to return to class today. I think I can manage to tune him out so that I can be present in the lecture hall without obviously ignoring him.

2) Being at an osteopathic school, we are learning Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM). At our last practical quiz I was assigned to be graded by the notoriously picky professor. On the practicals we’re supposed to be graded based on our manipulation techniques alone, although most of the professors will ask questions as you go along. This professor asked me a bunch of questions that I answered to his satisfaction, but he had one question that I couldn’t. His wording of the question didn’t make sense, and I told him that I didn’t understand what he was asking me. (I ran the question by a number of classmates later and no one else understood it either) Once my partner and I finished our practical, he told me that I had done all of the manipulation correctly but because I couldn’t answer that question I’d have to re-do the practical the next week (with an 11% grade deduction)! I was really mad, but had no one to complain to because this professor is the course coordinator. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d told me that I needed to work more on my OMM techniques, but to be told that I’d done it all correctly and still had to re-do it seemed ridiculous! I’m sure its not the only time I’ll think someone in this process is being unfair, but it still was frustrating.

Good things have been going on, though. My class had elections for class president, etc a couple of weeks ago. The president is our liaison with the professors and administration, so the administration tried to make us take the decision quite seriously, along with those of the other officers. It was an interesting process with some fun campaigning and even lunchtime speeches. We ended up with a great group of officers, but I truly felt that we would have been okay electing any of those running. The class will be having a community service project (to be decided) along with social events. We’re still a pretty cohesive group, so the environment here is staying pretty nice.

Well, I’m off to study some more!

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