Block 4: Off To A Rollicking Start

Monday morning started with me sleeping through my alarm. Really. On the first day of the semester. Off to a great start already. Luckily I naturally wake up early, around 7, so I wasn't late for class.

I had a dream Sunday night that I had a bad outbreak of a nasty virus that has turned out to be the subject of several lectures this week. A rather strange coincidence that my dream portended the subject of the virology lectures.

Just because I made it to class did not by any stretch of the imagination mean that I was awake. In the second lecture of the day one of my classmates asked the professor to slow down so he could copy his slide. I had no idea why since we had been given notes that were an exact copy of the lecture slides.

It was only last night that I realized this is what was written under innate immunity on the second slide:

h17ct klllng
hi nlkzti n
hn 1kc c kti n

And this on another slide:

k117lzktkv 7 c
k1h7t k 1c h 17c 71
1 h kl c 71

Needless to say I had to copy this section of the notes from a classmate! I guess that's what happens when I don't read the notes before class and am not awake for class. Not sure how the letters got all scrambled but that was quite confusing gobbledygook.

The amount of material in this block is, as promised by upperclass students, completely overwhelming. And very detailed. For example, in this same soluble protein lecture in the innate immune system series mentioned above, there is a sentence in the section on lactoferrin that says:

Contains a loop structure with a basic α-helical domain whose primary sequence is very similar to frog magainins.

Frog magainins??? Thank goodness for google! A frog magainin is an antimicrobial peptide. Who knew? And do I really need to know this level of detail to be a good practitioner? This is the problem with having researchers lecture to you-- they are so detail focused and not as clinical. Oh well, it's interesting at least.

I remember last year one second year describing her feeling of being overwhelmed in block 4 as feeling like she was lying at the bottom of a swimming pool staring up. This is not inaccurate. I've talked to several of my classmates who haven't even started studying yet because they don't know where to begin. So overwhelmed we're paralyzed. Vet school is fabulous!

On top of block 4, we also have a parasitology class. Both classes have weekly online quizzes. Our professor generously put up a mock practice quiz for parasitology. I got a 2/10. Yikes. I compared scores with my classmates and found several other people who made a 2, one with a 3 and one with a 4. I might have to crank up my studying. Sigh.