Term 2 Midterms: Neuroscience

Warning: Long Post... Sorry!

Last midterm of the week was neuroscience! The neuroscience course is organized into modules. 7 modules make up the entire class. We had 4 modules worth of material on the midterm. The topics on the midterm were:
1) Neuroanatomy
2) Cellular Neuroscience
3) Developmental Neuroscience
4) Sensory Systems

Out of the 4 big topics, sensory systems had the most amount of lectures and most amount of questions on the exam. Developmental neuroscience consisted of about 4 lectures. Neuroanatomy and cellular neuroscience were taught early during the term and were covered on the unified quiz. Out of my three scores for midterms, surprisingly, neuroscience was my highest. Here are a few methods I studied for the exam and a couple of tips for future students.

Neuroanatomy: 
1) Buy a hard copy of the Neuroscience atlas. I used the Haines 8th edition and would highly recommend it for future students. I think SGU recommends the 9th edition of the atlas, but majority of my friends have the 8th and it works well too.
2) Go through the atlas and highlight the structures you need to know. I highlighted the pages as I prepared for small group discussion on a weekly basis. When it came time to prepare for the exam, it became a lot easier to flip through the atlas and quickly review the structures.

Lectures: 
1) Essential Notes! Essential Notes! Essential Notes!!! They are a life-saver for this class. The lecture slides are good, but the essential notes are gold!
2) Pre-read for the sensory system lectures. Sensory lectures are a lot of material that are compiled into a 50 minute overview. If you have pre-read the essentials, lecture will be more meaningful. I don't usually pre-read for all classes, but pre-reading for neuroscience helped me!
3) Red Glass Test: This is a clinically relevant test that is used evaluate a patient's visual field. It comes up during the vision lectures in the sensory module. I, personally, had a lot of trouble understanding this topic because I learned it incorrectly the first time. So, for future students, make sure you understand this topic well. We had about 2 or 3 questions on this on our midterm.
4) Developmental: This term, we had a visiting professor who taught 4 lectures on developmental neuroscience. Do not get too bogged down by all the small details. The questions on the exam are going to be straight forward. Think of developmental neuroscience as a story. To grasp the material thoroughly, I made a concept map.
5) Cellular: I relied on the essential notes and lectures made a lot of sense.
6) Pay attention in small group discussion because there are questions that will pop up on the midterm solely based on material covered in discussion session.
7) Do all the questions online (Sakai).
8) Sensory pathways: I drew each and every one out in different colors and then put it up on my wall. I ran through each of the pathways at least once a day until it was solid in my head.
9) During the sensory lectures, each pathway will go through parts of the brainstem. Some pathways are lateral. Some pathways are medial. I went through Haines atlas and highlighted where each pathway runs in each cross section of the brainstem.

This was a very quick exam. Typically we get a little over a minute/question in most classes. However, the neuroscience department added a lot of experimental questions (questions that the professors want to see how the students perform on so they can potentially add it to future exams), which are worth no points for our term. We had about 75 seconds per question. I am not sure if this will be the case for future terms. If it is, future neuroscience students, make sure you pace yourself. Neuroscience is a lot of material, but I think the clinical tests that are performed to determine a patient's neurological function are quite interesting. Our first module post-midterm is motor. Speaking of which, I should probably review today's lectures. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day! :)

Term 2 Midterms: Genetics/Immunology

Exam #2 during midterm week was Genetics/Immunology which are combined into one class called MIMG. The exam consisted of 80% genetics material and 20% immunology material. The teaching team for genetics is essentially the same professors that taught biochemistry during Term 1. I enjoyed the lectures from majority of the professors of biochemistry. So, I was glad that they lectured again in genetics. In addition, we had about 2 weeks of immunology before the midterm. I, personally, felt that the professor introduced a lot of new material just a few days before the midterm, which was a little overwhelming. The following are a few methods that I used to study for the unified and midterm. I hope these methods help future students succeed in MIMG.

1) Study the genetics slides like biochemistry slides. Genetics questions are going to be application- or fact-based questions focusing on the lecture slides.
2) The Patterns of Inheritance lectures were about 4 lectures and it is important to know each of the genetic principles that were introduced. For example, heteroplasmy is a term that is associated only with mitochondrial diseases. That is an association that is important to keep in mind. An exam question may state, MELAS is associated with which of the following principles? The answer choices will be 4-5 genetic principles and one of the answer choices will be heteroplasmy. So, the student needs to be able to identify that MELAS is a mitochondrial disease and associate heteroplasmy with mitochondrial diseases. This is a relatively easy type of question. It can become more challenging if the questions only gives a brief description of the disease or a list of symptoms and students will have to identify that it is a mitochondrial disease.
3) Make up mnemonics for the list of autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, and X-linked recessive diseases that we were instructed to know. One of the first things I did during the exam was write the mnemonics at the top of my white board (Each student is given a small white board during the exam).
4) I reviewed the molecular diagnostic lecture about 5 times because I knew it would appear again and again on the midterm. In addition, I skimmed through the problem set for this lecture.
5) Do all the online/sakai questions.
6) I skimmed through the problem sets for the lectures that I thought were challenging.
7) Immunology: We have a new course director and professor covering the immunology material. The lectures pre-midterm are straight forward, except for the complement lecture. We had less amount of time to review the complement lectures. So, I made a big, fat concept map of the complement pathway, associated deficiencies, and diseases about 36 hours before the midterm. That map, of course, went up on my wall for about 24 hours before the exam. The immunology questions on the midterm were either straight forward or very difficult. In retrospect, I probably should have started memorizing the complement charts a few days earlier while I was studying for physiology.

I hope this helps future students prepare for MIMG. SGU students have a 4-day weekend for Thanksgiving. So, I hope everyone is having a relaxing and enjoyable long weekend! :)

J's Mental Burnout & Exam Week

Midterms didn't go as well for me as they did for N. I did OK in neuroscience and genetics, but I need to do a lot better in physiology. The bright side is that I did well enough that I don't need to think about deceling. Aside from physiology being a hard test, I think a big reason for my poor performance was anxiety. I just didn't "feel" like taking the exam, if that makes sense. In fact I was really dreading it in the week leading up to the exam. There are several reasons for this, and to some extent they reflect what student life is like at SGU.

One huge disadvantage of attending such a large medical school is that you're around so many other stressed out medical students. Some of my friends were really negative leading up to exam week, gossiping about how the midterm was incredibly difficult last term, how many people deceled, etc. Others were so positive and overconfident that they came off as jerks. In fact, my roommate told me on several occasions how he completed over 400 practice questions for physiology.

No matter how disciplined you are as a student, hearing these kinds of things day in and day out does affect your mental health. I felt stressed out, I wasn't getting restful sleep, I was downing 4 cups of coffee per day, I hadn't gone to the gym in a week and a half, and my diet largely consisted of heat and eat food that I bought at IGA. I'm pretty sure that if I had centered myself mentally, I could have done a lot better on my exam. SGU isn't out to get you, neither are your professors, or your friends....medical school is just hard, and you can really be your own worst enemy during exam week. For finals, I'll really be trying to work on this aspect of myself. I'll let you know how it goes! -J

Term 2 Midterms: Physiology

To those that read this blog, I am sorry for the lack of posts for the past few weeks. We have been preoccupied with midterm week. Last week consisted of some ups, some downs, coffee, minimal sleep, and a lot of studying. On top of studying, SGU true blue campus faced intermittent internet loss and interruption of electricity for a few hours which led our AC to reset to off for a few days. I am so so glad that all those problems have been fixed. Although midterm week started off rough, it ended well! :)

After midterms, most students evaluate their scores and try to make changes on how they study to prepare adequately for finals. So, I thought I would dedicate the next few post to tips for term 2 midterms, how I prepared, and changes in my study plan for finals. Today's post will be focused on the Physiology midterm. I hope to have a post up about each one of the midterms by the end of the week! :)

Physiology
Physiology was our first exam of the week. The exam covered the first 5 units of material which include the following: cell, autonomic nervous system (ANS), pharmacology, muscle, and cardiac physiology. Our class accidentally got instant feedback on a score, which caused a lot of anxiety and anger. However, we had to remember that physiology was only one exam and we still had 2 more major exams (Genetics/Immunology and Neuroscience) for the rest of the week. Here are a few tips and methods I used to study for my physiology exam.

1) Cell, ANS, and pharmacology were all on the Unified quiz for Physiology. So, I thoroughly studied these units for a previous test. Therefore, it was easier to review for the midterm.
2) ANS: I had a huge table of all the drugs that we needed to know and put it up on my wall in my room. Because it was up on my wall, I looked at the chart several times a day and eventually I was able to identify names, functions, and category of drug. This is super helpful to learn the material because some of the drugs are applicable for the cardiac material as well.  For future term 2 students, the drug list is discussed in lecture only a few days before the unified quiz. So, start memorizing early.
3) Heart cycle: I hand drew a Wigger's diagram with each line in a different color and put it up on my wall in my room. A few days before the midterm, I read through the essential notes for that specific lecture to confirm that I had covered everything.  I also drew a complete pressure/volume graph with the potential changes that can take place (Clearly, my wall looked pretty snazzy last week, haha)
4) GRAPHS GRAPHS GRAPHS!!! I did not count how many graphs we had on our test, but WOW, it was a lot. KNOW GRAPHS.
5) I did a ton of MOTO questions. There are over 600 questions for the cardiac section. For future students, start working on those early.
6) For some reason, the material that was covered during the muscle section seemed like a blur compared to the amount of time that was spent on the cardiac lecture. So, I had to go over the muscle material quite a few times. I made a huge chart for muscle to help me understand the similarities and differences between skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscle.
7) Not only understand the content in each lecture, but know how to apply it to different clinical situations.
8) Sakai quizzes (practice quizzes that the department posts online) were also helpful initially to assess my understanding on specific topics.

Based on my midterm score, am I going to change anything before finals?
Although I did fine on the midterm, I still have areas that I want to improve upon before the final. So, my two key areas of focus are starting practice questions earlier and paying very very close attention to graphs that are highly emphasized in class.

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions. Our next post will be about the Genetics/Immunology midterm and hopefully will be up shortly. Hope everyone's week is going great! :)