Block 1 Exam Preparation

I’ve ventured beyond the realm of sanity and experienced what studying excessive amounts of biological information can do to an individual. With the block 1 exam only two days away, I’m wrapping up my review and realizing that I’ve become an even nerdier nerd. Here are some reasons why I think my perception of reality has been altered by studying for this test:

  1. The “F word” isn’t a constant (as it is in the expletive sense). The “F word” now refers to filamin or filagrin or fibrillin or fibrin or fibronectin or a whole plethora of other words which I can’t generate at the moment.
  2. I think the carpet in the 3rd/4th story study rooms at Baylor Med looks like skeletal muscle sarcomeres. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go look at room 405.
  3. Trapezius has taken on an almost divine role in my life. If it’s not on the practical, I may quite possibly fail out of despair. Furthermore, I have a series of “default answers” for anatomy/histology questions.
    1. What muscle is this? – trapezius
    2. What is the intermediate filament of the cell at the pointer? – vimentin
    3. What is this muscle’s function? – medial rotation
    4. Why does process X occur the way it does? – because every species that did it some other way is dead (kudos to Stuart)
    5. What could this nucleus belong to? – endothelial cell
    6. Why does the body adhere to “the more – the less?” – because God asked I.M. Pei for a consult
    7. What are the 800 functions of astrocytes? – this question is invalid since we learned only 750 functions.
  4. Due to the immense amount of material we have to know, I’ve decided to pretend several muscles don’t exist. Let’s take those poser rhomboid muscles. They’re just stealing trapezius’ thunder. 😉
  5. “BOOM! HEADSHOT!” now refers to the sound of a natural killer “owning” an antigen (aka, a “nub”).
  6. If I spend more than ten seconds trying to assess an inheritance pattern for a given pedigree, I assume consanguinity (inbreeding). I don’t think this actually works in real life patient assessments. 🙂

On a more serious note, this block has gone by a lot quicker than I imagined. Six weeks… I still can’t believe it. It seems that the further I get into education, the quicker time flies. I’ll be 22 next week… and then 30 (hopefully married with two sons – Tassadar and Agamemnon), and then wow… a grandparent. Oh well, time to continue attacking this material like a macrophage (so much for being “serious”).

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2 COMMENTS

  1. “Why does process X occur the way it does? – because every species that did it some other way is dead.” AWESOME

    Tassadar and Agamemnon – story behind the choosing of these names?

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