One more module down! Hallelujah. GI was a bit of a tough one. This module didn't seem particularly well organized, with a huge emphasis on pathology and what go wrong with your digestive system and too little time spent on physiology/how everything actually works. Like, no one actually knows how the liver works...glucose gets taken up and broken down by magic. Bile gets made by magic. Coagulation factors get made by magic. Blood gets detoxed by magic. That's about all I can tell you.
Anyway. GI was run by a jolly Belgian fellow whom everyone is already sorely missing who loved to refer to his wife as "my internal medicine who I've been sleeping with for 34 years." Interesting character. He made the module a blast though, and we all love him for how much he cares about the students. Too many quizzes in one week? BOOM let's cancel the weekly R&A. Too many active learnings during miniboard week? BOOM let's make some disappear.
In terms of the actual nuts and bolts of the last month, here's a few of the more noteworthy happenings
- Exams on exams on exams. Two biweekly exams and one miniboard keep a girl busy.
- Learning allllllllllll about fatty acids and amino acids and insulin and glucose and cholesterol and nutrition. Suffice it to say, I'm much more concerned about what goes into my body.
- ex: it takes only 2 drinks/day in women and 4 drinks/day in men over 10-12 years to achieve a significant risk of liver disease. Fun stuff. [not that I'm much of a drinker, but still]
- speaking of alcohol...hitting up happy hour at Fuego with a bunch of classmates to decompress after our last lecture exam. Can you say frozen pumpkin margarita?
- beasting* my GI miniboard! [*and by 'beasting' I mean probably doing about average compared to my class...but it was still a personal best for yours truly]
- Starting our endocrine/reproductive module. It's one of the shorter ones we'll have, which makes me sad as this is definitely the material that most interests me, but so far we're off to a good start.
- This past weekend was the open house/ribbon cutting ceremony for our student-run free clinic, which provides wellness services to the homeless population of Mobile. In addition to being a semi-regular volunteer at the clinic, I'm also on the development committee; it's been really rewarding to watch some of the changes and events we've been planning over the past 10 months come to fruition.