Test on Monday

Sorry I missed you guys a lot. Been studying, focusing, studying again. The nutrition SDLs aren't so bad to remember, except for one where the note set was 17 pages long and read (looked like, too) a textbook.

Basically, the topics we learned in this half of the course:

Nutrition
Vitamins and Minerals
Pathways
Amino Acid Precursors
Diabetes

More Nutrition and Glycolosis

Things are shaping up. The Self-directed learning portion of the course is provided as an online-lecture style. You browse slides at your own pace while a lecturer talks. Unfortunately, it doesn't read word for word and as a result, listening to it isn't helpful as it simply confuses you, and reading it seems to take up a lot of time.

MNE seems to be short stick, with most of the morning being devoted to classes while the afternoons for free studying. That's fine.

I'm sorry I've been so terse, it's just that I really don't have that much to say in day to day life. My bagels are the same as always, tasty and chocolatey, but the professors we have are fantastic!

Just a study day...

Not much else today... studied, embettered myself, read the news.

The one ring to rule them all!

Someone was nice enough to bring the SMPs and M14s donuts and coffee! A lot of donuts. At least 15 boxes. Fantastic motivational support and a great study break. Hopefully I'm ready for this test.

Hostage Taking at the Discovery Channel Building

Apparently there's a hostage taking at the Discovery Channel building in MoCo. Studying and listening to the dispatch. Other than that, studying hard for the test. Nothing else of note in a study day.

The Re-View

Today's the last day of classes before our MCP final, and to top that off, we have 3.5 hours of back to back review. 2 hours of professor-mediated, 1.5 hours of student-mediated. This is going to be a long day. Planning on studying till 3 and then attending the super-long review. Wish there were more practice problems.

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.

No one tells me nuthin'

So I arrive on campus to find several thousand new students and convocation. I parked along the wall of the parking garage, and I hope I don't get towed, ticketed, fined, or burninated. That being said, A LOT OF PEOPLE ON CAMPUS TODAY. Took me half an hour to find parking. So I go on my way, buy some Subway for dinner and lunch, and go to put some snacks in my locker, because it'll be easier to store food in there than in my car. And I find someone else's stuff. Granted, I do have a locker partner, but he's in the SMP as well, so I'm pretty sure he wasn't here last year and taking Renal Physiology in February.

Yup. So I left a nice (that's not sarcastic, I actually left a nice) note telling the owner to email me so he/she/it/dinosauria can reclaim the stuff by emailing me, and if they don't respond by Thursday, the textbooks are getting repossessed, and the notes are being recycled (because trashing them is so environmentally unfriendly.)

Anyways, I go to the library and sign out a room for 2 hours. Imagine to my joy when I find the room's window covered with paper. Someone's been in there studying, and hasn't reserved the room. Their stuff is there, but they aren't. So I sign out another, thankfully empty, room. Drama.

Anyways, getting some studying done.

Some more studying...

Listening to lectures and running through problems... probably going to head to campus early tomorrow to just hunker down and work, and fill my locker with food. Not much else to say about my day in relation to the SMP.

Studying is my day job.

Studied from about 10 to 8 today. Big exam tomorrow. Hoping that I know everything.

Food is allowed in the library!

Cogito ergo nom.

Studied most of the afternoon/night. Got all but 20-23 in. Good times. Basically, you can take food into the lounges and study rooms. Today was the first time I went to the library because it looks pretty packed on weekdays, and I didn't realize you could take food and drink in, carrying around my water bottle and all. Plenty of whiteboard space and private study rooms to work in. Food consists of vending machines unless you want to go even further away from the library, and most of it is closed on the weekends, unfortunately.

Attack of the Whiteboard!

I've been busy scribbling away on the whiteboard since this morning. That was fun and it was nice to see exactly what I was missing. Got most of the first few lectures down pat after a good amount of headscratching.

Anyways, I promised I'd get a photo of the School of Business' rad studying area.

Here it is!



It's about 3 floors of booths, and it's aesthetically relaxing, allows food, and offers enough space for 6 people to study per booth comfortably. Those Business people have it nice. I want to mooch.

Edit: Also found the undergraduate student commons. Comes with printers and study rooms that are sadly marked "UNDERGRADS ONLY." Why all the hate?

Argh, my head!

Well, this afternoon's lectures were a bit more in-depth look at proteoglycans and system biology, which is apparently a very cool subset of Bioinformatics, right up my alley. We were introduced to biomarkers and their implementation, as well as the practicality of sensitivity and specificity. Then, we basically learned about how Mr. Mass Spec (if you get this reference, +1 cookie to you), in recent years, has been able to ionize larger-sized molecules, like proteins, into gaseous forms and fire them at detectors so we can analyze large-scale proteins by cross-referencing their molecular weights with known sequences, using trypsin as a reagent to cleave some of the protein bonds. Very cool stuff.

Problem-Solving Workshop was only half-full today. Half of me wants to believe that they are slackers and the other half wants me to believe that they are hardcore and have mastered the material. At this point, though, I'm pretty focused on my game alone. Gotta study, gotta study!

That being said, I got a migraine and had to find some medicine from the book store.

Seriously, if you're reading this blog, please leave a message. It's kinda weird talking to myself and I'm sure in another medium, such as out loud, would be considered a precursor to psychosis or insanity.

One week to the test...

It's amazing to think about, but my test is next Monday, and then I have the final the week after that. Looking at my current material and comparing it to previous tests, I can see that the previous tests had a bunch of material on the citric acid cycle, none of wihch has been covered in lecture so far, or any time in the rest of the class. I'm not sure what to think of that...

Anyways, tomorrow looks to be a long day: Lecture from 9-11, then a 2 hour break, then lecture from 1-3, and problem solving workshop from 3-5.

Basically, the problem workshops are set up for various conceptual problems the lecturers assign to us. Most of them are a page to two pages of questions, focusing on mathematical calculations that normally require a calculator to do. Calculators aren't allowed on the exam, but the exam normally offers whole number answers easy operations like log(1/100) or simple numbers like 100mmols of 0.20M sodium hydroxide.

Each problem set covers a single set of topics, normally linking to medically and biologically related topics to establish a foundation. One such previous question which was of great consternation to many people was determining why the bicarbonate buffer system is so effective at maintaining a normal pH of 7.4 when none of the given pKas come anywhere close to that value. These problem sets make you think and understand the concepts. It is recommended (read: required) that you do the problem sets before the workshop. In most cases, the problems won't take more than an hour to complete, and if you're stuck, you can always phone a friend or check previous years' MNTS to see if the problems have been done before. In most cases, the workshop should only take about an hour, but the extra hour is provided just in case you need it. I wouldn't say you'd need to go to a workshop if you already know how to do the questions and master them, but if you're a bit wonky, it never hurts to get refreshed.

Well, today was another study day, as usual. I know people will be fishing around my blog, so if you need to contact me to ask me questions about the SMP, I'd be happy to answer at compass@studentdoctor.net

See you tomorrow!

Saturday is a day of work!

What can I say, I'm studying relatively efficiently on my weekend. Cracked my textbook open, started reading, and realized that a lot of this stuff really is supplementary to the lectures, and proceeded to skim through the information. I've gone back to my habit of making index cards for things I don't seem to remember and then cracking the entire index card box open to play recitation solitaire. I managed to get most of the problem workshop done, but life without a printer is pretty terrible, so I will probably pick up a cheap one tomorrow.

In regards to my AMCAS, this is for future applicants. If you submit your AMCAS and get into the SMP, you will not be able to add your classes directly to your primary application anymore. Make sure DEFINITELY to send either the adcoms office or mention in your secondary that you are in Georgetown's SMP program while waiting for secondaries, especially if the schools pre-screen.

One other study tactic I have been doing for the past three days is to simply print out one of the exams, find problems that I should know the answer to, and attempt to answer them. If I get them right, hurray, highlight the answer, move on. If I get them wrong, boo, highlight the number, and come back on another pass in a day.

Anyways, since today isn't a class day, I'd like to talk about MNTS a bit more. I mentioned a bit in passing but I thought I'd make it a bit clearer.

Basically, a student takes notes and diagrams and uploads them to BlackBoard for download about 1 or 2 days post-lecture, and delivers them to your mailbox. Furthermore, ALL of the previous years' MNTS are available for download, so if you need MNTS notes ASAP before then, you can go ahead and use slightly outdated but nevertheless high-quality notes. The MCP class has approximately 250 pages of MNTS notes, which is enough to fill a 3" binder. Printing them out 2 to a page is doable. If you really want to save paper, 4 per page is somewhat acceptable, but you're going to get eyestrain. Some of the MNTS notes are interspersed with humor and commentary, which can either be great or a bore depending on the day of the week. Another important point is that different people take MNTS notes, so depending on the quality of the note-taker, you may have an additional awesome study resource or great paper airplane material. For the most part, though, MNTS are pretty good.

Well, that's about it for my Saturday. Study, study, study!

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.

That's not a binder...

I still don't have access to BlackBoard, so I've been getting lectures from med students and friends. I think I already have ~100 pages in slides, problem sets, and generic notes. And I'm still missing Day 2's problem set. By the end of this class, my note set will be 400 pages long, apparently, unless I digitize stuff. I'm thinking about dropping my loose-leaf notebook, or at least turning it into a 50 page notepad, simply because it isn't as practical as either computer notes or scribblepoint handouts.

The good news, though, is that I've followed most of my schedule to the dot. I also FINALLY understood the Michaelis-Menten equation. I was pretty dumb to skip understanding the derivation, because apparently understanding that made everything so much easier.