Hell Week

Mon-Physio Midterm #3
Tue-Physio Final
Thur-Biochem Midterm #3
Fri-Biochem Final

My grades in physio have been steadily falling all block and came to a glorious fiery conclusion in today's final. I study very poorly for physio. A warning for future NYMC physio students: it is not enough to passively read transcriptions all block and then try memorize it right before the test.

I hit the gym today for the first time this week. There is a very sufficient gym on campus, <100m from my front door. There's a cardio room with treadmills and ellipticals, a locker room with showers, and a surprisingly nice weight room.

EKG lab: After Dark

We don't have as many labs for physio as we did for histo, but they're much more entertaining.

Here Dr. Messina is testing the diving reflex of a classmate while he's hooked up to an EKG machine

We have less than a week until our next biochem/physio midterms and we're freaking out big time. Our first block midterms covered 12-15 lectures, but there will cover 60. I'm pretty sure these are not going to be my best grades at NYMC.

Last week we had both a blood drive and Student-Faculty bowling, a wonderful tradition where I learned Dr. Lerea is a secret bowling sleeper. I will treasure these happy memories as I try to memorize my face off.

Follies great and small

It was my birthday this week. After much ardent persuasion I got almost all of the AMP students to come out for ice cream at this awesome homemade sweet shop in Tarrytown.
Norm is giving us serious Face.

I was surprised so many people came because life has become Difficult. Everyone is spending so much time studying that they can't even afford to go to class, and half of the people in class are actually studying or reading scribes.

I guess there are some people with their act together. These must be the people responsible for Follies.

Follies is an annual sketch comedy concert put on by a mix of MS1s and 2s. All of the money from tickets ($3) went to the Children's Cancer Fund. I'd seen some of the videos from last year's performance so I had high expectations.
There were teacher impersonations, music videos, public service announcements, a cappella (NYMC's own Arrhythmias) and tons of "That's what she said"-style humor. When I walked out my face hurt from laughing so much.

The Baddest Mother on Campus

As I was checking my mail today a HUGE red-tailed hawk swooped down and took a swipe at a blue jay less than 10 feet away. I used to associate red-tailed hawks with literature from my childhood but now their name will strike fear in my heart.

Everyone has to make a 10-15 min presentation for their section of biochem at some point this trimester, and mine was today. I had to talk about weight-loss drugs like Olestra. I couldn't resist making one slide about incontinence:

Block 2 dun dun duuuun

We didn't understand how easy we had it block 1.
Well, duh, of course we did, we only had class two days a week and had gobs of time to study a class the med students mostly ignored in favor of anatomy. I guess we just couldn't appreciate how much worse it was going to get.

Biochem and physio are hard. They're cool, and so far the lectures have been much better than histo's, but there is a lot more information and a LOT more thinking. Our first midterms were last Thursday/Friday, and until that week I had seriously never locked myself in a room and crammed for 12 hours.

The tests went well, and my preparations would have been easier if I hadn't spent three class days at Emory, so these classes aren't impossible. I just don't think I'm going to be slipping off to NYC much in the next 3 months.

Also: because I had to memorize Krebs cycle intermediates I had to dump some early 90s cartoon theme songs from my memory. Sorry, Darkwing Duck.