Week 9: Finishing Block II

Didn't touch the TV this week, didn't even spend much time to eat, slept five hours a day, and the rest of it was reading. From Saturday morning all the way through Friday at 8:00 am was spent intently learning - oh basically how to identify any histological specimen in the human body. The thing is that up to Saturday we only looked at the four types of tissues: epithelium, muscle, nerve, and connective tissue, but suddenly by this week we also needed to know 11 more organ systems. The result? I decided to read yet another 400 page atlas of histology (this is in addition to the 400/1200 page histology text that was too dense for me to finish, and also our genetics textbook), and did so over Saturday and Sunday. Throughout the week during Disruptions we found some cool quizzes at Blue Histology (check it out and try for yourself - what can't you tell that the inset picture above is the adrenal cortex with left to right showing the capsule, the zona glomerulosa, zona fasiculata, zona reticularis, and the medulla? Oh didn't you know that the three zone respectively produce mineralocoricoids such as aldosterone, glucocorticoids such as cortisol, and sex hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, and DHEA? Yeah, that pink bubble gum colored image should have told you that), that we did ad nauseum to try to get the hang of identifying organs. On Tuesday was my group's presentation of the Endocrine system on our intranet, and by Thursday all our presentations were done and we had become "masters" of system-wide tissue identifications -- right.

Regardless Friday at 8:00am came around too quickly and the brain dump began: 1.5 hours of NBME shelf exam questions, 0.5 hours of genetic online research, 1.0 hour of histology recognition, 1.5 hours of genetics free response. By 1pm it was over and hopefully we have all passed. I was spent, but at least Block II is now over! A two week break buffers the start of Block III