Whoops, that was an exam

Fortunately it was a small exam. I really need to figure out how to remember drugs better, though. The same thing happened last year. I learned the concepts of drug therapy, and then ran out of time and just sort of glissed over the drugs. I wouldn't treat bacteriology this way! I just need to find a way to anthropomorphize ketamine, that's all. That way, when I am confronted with a table to fill out of five different drugs, I will remember which one is which, instead of staring at it dumbly, feeling all the information I knew running out the back of my head.

Pathology 1, me 1

After about a month, we got back our scores on the previous path exam, on which I got an amazing beyond-a-B A! And then we got back our scores on the most recent exam, which completely kicked my butt and handed me an amazingly low 64. Which once again puts me at the very bottom of the class. Granted, this was the section where I was horribly sleep deprived for most of the lectures, had no lab partner for half the labs (because she didn't "like the disgusting pictures"), and was called in for fifteen hours a few days before the exam. I shouldn't blame my lab partner, of course, but seeing as she obviously did better on the exam than I did, I feel a little bitter.

Oh well, back to work.

Immunology, you're not my friend*

*to the tune of Rubber Ducky

I came to the conclusion half way through the immuno exam that the only way I was going to survive the post-exam anxiety was to not think about it. Actually, I have this nice rationalization about how the professors gave us absolutely no direction for studying, and the exam was written a bit erratically and may have completely missed important points (that I knew) while focusing on silly little things (that I may not have known) like whether the membrane attack complex uses C5b, C6, C7, C8, or if it uses C4a, C6, C7, C8. The latter incidentally, and I got it wrong. Same thing with convertases of the classical and alternative pathways.

So I made chocolate cake.

Then I came back to it, and now I see: How could I have been so foolish? The right answer was so easy to arrive at, and so completely necessary to a sound understanding of immunology!

After all, the pathway goes along the lines of:

C1 cleaves itself. C1s cleaves C2 and C4. C4 is now C4b. C4b and C2b make C3.

Meanwhile, C4b2b cleaves C3!

C3b joins C4b2b to be C4b2b3b...did we mention C5 yet? Well, OBVIOUSLY C4b2b3b cleaves C5, and now we have C5b, which clearly shows why the answer to the other question was C5b, C6, C7, C8, and C9. And since this was the classical pathway, that's why you were wrong. The alternative pathway uses C3bBb. That's a B, not a 2. (sheesh, get it right)

But I was a silly student and didn't realize that we were supposed to know the alphabet in this new, convoluted form. I just had it summarized in my notes as "Legos."

Probably it would help if our prof used something other than the detailed diagrams from our textbooks. Lecture becomes exponentially harder to follow when you don't know which part of the twenty-piece jigsaw you're on.

(In case you were wondering what this was all about, the C#letters are tiny molecules in your bloodstream that eventually assemble themselves into the molecular equivalent of an awl, and then they go punch holes in bacteria. It's wonderful.)

Bad exams

Two exams gone badly, three to go...gosh, I may end up retaking every exam if I keep up like this. Pharmacology was bad, since I knew only half the drugs, and you can't predict their effects if you don't know what part of the nervous system they affect. I think I completely mucked up my essay on how beta receptors work too. It's sad, because I actually LIKE pharmacology. But I said that about neurology too. And anatomy. Apparently my study techniques are way sub-par this semester. I obviously have to stop having dinner when I get home, since that seems to suck two hours away from the evening.

That said, I'm going to go study now.