And We're Chugging Along...

Last Thursday we had our Histology practical. During the practical, slides are projected on to a huge screen and then there is a corresponding question. We were tested on 50 slides of cardiac muscles, smooth muscle, skeletal muscle, nervous tissue, epithelium, and every cell you can imagine in the human body. To give you an idea, above are only 4 slides of epithelium out of the dozens we needed to know and be able to recognize. Some of the questions on the practical were purely "identify this structure" and some were second order such as "what does this structure secrete?" Even though it was a little challenging because all of these structures pretty much look the same, we all feel we did pretty well.

Of course, we spent the weekend studying NON-STOP for Mini II. It’s hard for me to gauge if Mini II was more difficult than Mini I because I felt MUCH more prepared for this exam. Still, the exam was riddled with questions focused on details which often get lost when you’re trying to learn the “big picture.” It is so frustrating when you spend HOURS memorizing everything about the clotting cascade, glycolysis, TCA/Kreb’s/Citric Acid Cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation only to be asked the most minute detail on a slide that the professor barely covered or said in passing. I’ve quickly noticed that the way to survive at Ross is to literally MEMORIZE everything. There is no “big picture” here. Regardless, I feel I did MUCH better on this exam. I’ll find out in a few days when my answers and the exam key are sent to my e-mail.

When the Mini concluded at 4:00 PM, we headed on down to the Portsmouth Beach Hotel. Of course, as naïve first semesters, we were expecting to have lunch. However, when we got there, it seemed the only lunch being served was beer. I saw TWO guys sitting at one table and there were literally about 20 empty Kubuli bottles on their table. Also, the beach was full of half-naked, drunk med students soaking up the sun they hadn’t seen in weeks. It appears that students live by the motto “work hard, play hard” - at least I hope they worked hard! So, for future first semesters, apparently the party is at the Portsmouth Beach Hotel after a Mini.

At this point, we were still hungry so we started walking down the beach toward Coconut’s Beach Hotel to see if we could eat there. Well, despite the brightly painted orange hotel and the numerous signs advertising the Coconut’s Beach Hotel, we found it COMPLETELY deserted once we’d reached it. I asked a local if he knew if the restaurant would be opening in the evening, to which he informed me that Coconut’s closed down FOUR years ago. I should have known. Rookie mistake….

By this point, it was too late to go to the beach (the sun sets here at around 6:00 PM) and we still hadn’t eaten. We couldn’t bear to eat from Tomatoes AGAIN so we grabbed some Mexican taco/pizza thing (similar to the Mexican pizza from Taco Bell but better!) and headed home. Gabe went home to shower and sleep. I came home and watched Sweeney Todd. Not quite the "fun in the sun" beach day I had planned. Still, I was super happy to do ANYTHING that didn't involve studying!!

So, yeah, today unfolded a lot differently than I had planned but that is life here in Dominica. Hopefully, this week’s material won’t be too bad so we can have the “day at the beach” I had originally planned for this Sunday. Of course, chances are we won’t be going to the beach this weekend because time spent not studying is, well, time wasted. I must say that I’m starting to get mentally worn out and I'm pretty sure I'm running out of memory space for mnemonics. At this point, I need a mnemonic to remember the days of the week! So, I’m really hoping we can all get our work done throughout the week so that we can take a day to ourselves. We REALLY need it.

Below are two pictures of the beach by Coconut’s Beach Hotel highlighting Cabrits in the distance and the large rocks lining the shore. The other random picture is of a spider I caught in my room. It took me like 20 minutes to catch this thing using all sorts of contraptions. I found it to be a pretty big spider so I measured it after I caught it. I find it quite unsettling that I found a (1.5 in) spider chillin’ out in my room. Once more, that’s life when you live in a jungle.