Midterm Exam Day

This has just been a weird week. Everyone seems a bit off kilter in the class. The hurricane messed people up I think. Not in the physical sense (it did little damage up the mountain where most of us live), but emotionally, psychologically... It changed our study schedules abruptly, and interrupted that normal flow, crescendo pattern, to the exam during the week before.  I can't really explain it, but you can certainly feel it. I too feel more tired, more nervous, more under-prepared this time.

0903 AM - The fever blister I had started this morning is  at bay for the moment. Dousing with alcohol is a time tested wives tale method for me...and it seems to have worked again for the moment. I don't remember being this stressed by exams before. I felt moderately ready for every other exam series, but not today. I just walked out of cardiac phys and feel pretty good about how I did there, but I have had working experience in that area, so I should have done well. Not as well as I would have liked (never do), but ok for the format and content. I was dismayed to find many errors in both the root and answers. Example: stroke volume of the heart is measured in cc's or ml (milliliters) not cc/min or ml/min...that's cardiac output. So #1 is over..on to the beast..#2 biochem. This is the one that we are all worried about...

 10:43 AM - I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my PA experience actually can help me. It did. This biochem test could have been a disaster - It covered sooooo much stuff....all of carbohydrate digestion and metabolism (Kreb's cycle etc) and all the disease entities of carb metabolism and storage (McArdle's, Von Gierke, Pompe, etc) plus everything you always wanted to know about enzymes. It's the minutia that kills me, and always has (since organic chemistry "days of disaster"). But the prof was kind. I liked him before. I like him even more now. Is it appropriate to kiss a professor? There was more gross overview content, disease specific presentations that I could identify by key presentation features and reason from my knowledge of anatomy/phys, physical diagnosis and laboratory studies. Again, I didn't set the curve, but I did OK..."NAGAIWHL" (my phrase for life: "not as good as I would have liked") but good fine for this phase of my education. One more to go...genetics and molecular biology. I wish my brother was here to take this exam...he knows his "funny looking kid" stuff and genetics.

1:15 PM - It is done. Genetics kicked my butt. I think I got an environmentally stimulated 22 p deletion! Besides being the most difficult, it was the last.  The last one was the most difficult and the one most draining. I really don't have much energy left, particularly after a long night of study. I'm sure there is devastation in the wake in terms of exam failures but, for the moment, I'm not one of them. Time for a nap. And I think it's a holiday tomorrow.