Unexpected Break after Line 9!

Today's commute was interesting. School buses are out again! School begins for MoCo and DC, though traffic wasn't horribly bad except for when a car decided to break down on CB Pkwy in one of two lanes.

Class today was about hematology and hematopoeisis. Ironically, I actually did hematology centrifugation in high school! So I understand the basic concept.

That being said, we had a 1 hour break between the first and second part of lecture. It's kind of weird, but the M1s had another class while we piled out and semi-studied for 30 minutes and then waited awkwardly outside for their lecture to end. Could have been scheduled better, but meh. Anyways, apparently the textbooks are now ours to keep from the locker based on the finders/keepers rule and the cleanout deadline. Score!

Test on Thursday. Hope I don't get flattened.

Case Studied

Still studying a lot. Being in the scary lecture hall is not fun. I thought I was going to fall down simply by walking down the stairs. We had speeches for nominations for class council. For the record, I was not one of them. Listened to a speech from Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine from Virginia. Enjoyed free pizza from Domino's. Billw as apparently $650, which consisted of about 65 pizzas...

Case Studies was interesting. A lot of these things were things I would have seen in the field to some capacity. That being related to pre-eclampsia and my sensitive case regarding an OB patient, which I will never tell you so as to pique your interest and then be let down over, sure brings back a lot of feelings. It's nice to know we have a few comedians in our class. Overall, not too hard, but made you think.

Hardcore Studying Time

I've managed to get the first lecture of 4 down pat. It's the actual implantation and development that irks me. That being said, there's a lot of review sessions. Tomorrow there's a class-held review from 10-12, and another from 4-7 held by students.

I managed to find the whiteboard clean and inhabited solely by one lonely red marker. Looks like I can draw the entire development cycle on the board without bothering anyone! Hurray for visual learning!

Classes for the undergrads start in a little under two weeks. It's going to be packed then.

Also, I revisited the School of Business this morning. Apparently, they have some awesome booths on the second floor for studying. Some being at least 10. Looks like a great place to hunker down and study as well, since it's closer to food and parking.

Stat(s)!

MNTS 2012 has these notes in an outline form, which initially threw me off, but in the end, I figured out what was going on. That being said, class let out on time, so I went for a walk, got some junk food, and came back. That was a fun class about post-translational modifications though. This afternoon is 2 hours of lecture and 2 hours of problem solving workshop. Glad I got most of the workshop out of the way, but I didn't read Lecture 18, so I'm feeling a little short on that.

Anyways, I've had a few questions regarding stats. I'm going to give guesstimates. If you've followed me on SDN, you'll know them more accurately, because I have posted them. Anyways, these are approximations, +/-0.2 pts. There's no closet 4.0 GPA, and I don't want to just turn into a categorical benchmark.

sGPA ~ 3.4, BS in BINF, 2009
cGPA ~ 3.6, downward trend, bad senior year.

MCAT > 32

several years EMS experience
~100 hours shadowing at local hospital
1 year out-of-school research.
Several summers/years of university research.

Also, for some reason, the applications demand my SAT score. Let's just say it's > 1400 for the 1600 SAT, and > 700 for the Writing SAT II when it was around. Who knows if it's still there?

2 years of applications, 1 interview per year, 1 waitlist 2nd year -> rejection

There's no major skeletons in my closet. No drug use, no arrests, not even a driving violation. No alcohol-related incidents, since I am a teetotaler.

Fire!

I made it out of lecture okay. No, there was not an actual fire. I'll get to that in a few. We were talking about membrane constituents and membrane transport. Basically, transmembrane proteins, integral proteins, lipid-linked proteins, attaching the membrane, and then discussing RNA translation of proteins and then their associated transport into mediums like the ER and mitochondria via SRPs and chaperone proteins. Fun, fun, fun.

After buying the usual, I come back to find the fire alarm going off. It was solved in short order and I'm back to not panicking or standing around awkwardly because my backpack is heavy and my foot is dying.

One thing I'm sure people ask is: do you really study X hours a day? In college, it was probably X = 2. And I did OK. Not great, OK. Nowadays, X>=5. No joke. There was no magical weaning into studying. Day 1, I began studying 5 hours a day. Considering Day -2 to -365, I was working at a job, it's not like I had practice doing so. There's just so much material, it doesn't seem reasonable studying less than that. Take an hour to review each lecture's notes, spend half an hour re-reviewing previous notes, spend half an hour doing problems, and so on, and within 5 hours, you'll go "Wow, I just studied for 5 hours."

It's not a tough transition, at least for me. I didn't enroll here to party or play video games all day, and my study schedule reflects that. In the past, I'd play LOTS OF VIDEO GAMES. Lots being defined as I could probably go semi-pro and win some game tournaments locally.

Nowadays, I study, maybe sneak in a 5 minute break every now and then, but it's a big difference from 2 weeks ago when I could basically play video games all day if I had wanted to.

Studying just feels like a natural part of your schedule once you get here, I guess.

Black-jackpot!

I got Blackboard access and course access at around 11AM, during class, so I managed to get the problem sets and at least peruse them. Unfortunately, sending out e-mails takes up more time than managing this blog, so that's my first strike. Gotta look over as much of the problem set as possible. There's 7 questions and they're all styled in such a way as to require a calculator, so I'm doing mental math like crazy. I'm going to get a Graduate 15 at this rate with all the Taco Bell I'm consuming. Still looking for a place, probably going to stay on campus and study till 8. Class in half an hour, time to study.

$4?!

Compass is checking in after lunch. Forms are done, didn't get my ID card though, because I was added so late :(

That being said, found the food court. Taco Bell :)

Unfortunately, the $2 Meal Deals are $4 here. Lecture #2 was pretty fun. I liked the lecture a lot, and got to see a lot of the med campus today. Prepping for Lecture #3 at 1PM. Lots of learning about osmosis/water pressure/hydrostatic effects.

Won't have Blackboard access till tomorrow, so the only way for me to "Gambatte!" is to read the syllabus carefully. Not sure if I'm going to have a roof over my head, because Pathways is at 3PM, and my housing check is at 2:30 and is a 15 minute walk from campus :(