Pathways to Disappointment || Digestion & Metabolism || SGU Term 2
Life Updates.
My plant babies have taken over. I promised myself that next week I won’t bring anyone new home. I’m obsessed with vining and climbing plants. I also bought two calatheas from Lowe’s and I didn’t know that they close at night and open in the morning!
My indoor veggies getting a start
DIYs. Wow, so every room upstairs has been painted! I really can’t respect my parents more because we used to paint my room every time we moved. After painting half of one room, I was tired. We are currently working on a wood paneling accent wall in the master. The TV is finally mounted!
DIY wood panel accent wall!
Mental Health. Something about the second module always exhausts me. I still love my morning routines, but slowly I stopped caring for myself. It started with giving up such small things as reducing my morning power hour to 30 minutes, but I look at myself now and I gained weight because tried to eat “faster” meals (frozen noms) and tried to squeeze out more work during my stretch breaks. Gaining weight isn’t always bad, but I know this body isn’t able to do the things I want to. I can see it’s easy in the pursuit of a career in medicine to sell off parts of you. I don’t want to forget who I am and what I love (animal crossing) because I’m a student.
Professionalism. We had a lecture about professionalism earlier this term. The scenario discussed a medical student who felt she wasn’t given the education she believed she deserved. It was painted in a way where students were quick to label her as “ungrateful” and “unprofessional” because she talked to her supervisor about possible solutions to help her learn. The facilitator quickly praised people who shamed the student. I felt really uneasy and quickly wanted it to be over. I feel like I don’t have the skills for conflict so I didn’t know how to tactfully discuss it. But it made me wonder if we’re being conditioned to just accept treatment without thought or question. Seeing how healthcare workers are being treated during this pandemic made me feel even more uneasy about this attitude. Even though we work in healthcare, we’re human. We have opinions and want to be considered like anyone else. I feel ashamed that we have to hide that.
DM Module
DM Study Schedule
I floundered a bit with my usual study schedule. The first week went well, but I realized I needed to dedicate way more time to practice. I mean this is the module that everyone warned me about. I couldn’t decide if it was worth it to rely on my whiteboard like past terms because unlike on the island, we don’t get whiteboards on tests. Eventually, I figured out how to type my mnemonics spatially so I use the comment box as my notes for the test. The entirety of DM felt like there wasn’t time for both learning and practicing.
DM Content
We started off with the familiar glycolysis and Kreb’s so I’m thinking “Okay, I love metabolism topics because I was a personal trainer. This isn’t so bad”. Very quickly piles of pathways fly in my face like a mobile of dumpster fires. Each pathway has its set of enzymes, cofactors, inhibitors, and stimulators to know. Oh and they all connect, but the connection is highlighted at the very end. The wonderful Dr. Trotz gives an amazing lecture at the end of the module to tie everything together. Oh, how I wish we started off with some version of this lecture! To my disappointment, I spent a disproportionate amount of energy on pathways and I feel like I paid for that on exam day. DM hype is all about pathways, but there’s a fair amount of anatomy, physiology, embryology, and histology that is equally tested.
Also, there are these “blue slides” in the lectures that are becoming more numerous. They are literally paragraphs, essays! I’m not complaining, but yeah it’s more work.
Outside Resources
I wish I had started on Pixorize or something like it right away. I realized I’m a visual learner or remember-er. It’s so much easier for me to remember an image. Yeah sure, I can learn the pathways fine but once you have 10+ and associated diseases, there’s a lot there. I also wish I utilized Boards & Beyond to learn topics more clearly and succinctly.
Edit from future Rainee: Physeo actually has a beautiful biochemistry pathway map that could save you time from writing it all out. First Aid also has a couple of pages dedicated to these pathways. Coming from someone who lives to rewrite pathways, do yourself a solid and focus more on practice questions. It was helpful to have one final version that I always referred to instead of stacks of papers. I could visualize the paper better that way!
Also, Dirty Medicine actually put out a bunch of biochem pathway videos that I wish I had when I was going through DM.
DM Timing
I’m exhausted! By the end of the module, I missed some live lecture attendance points because I couldn’t wake up. It starts slow, but ramps up very quickly!
Advice looking back
If I could do this over again, I would prioritize practice through anki or practice questions. This is the first module where there was an abundance of practice questions from other sources. I would also start Boards & Beyond and Pixorize as soon as applicable. I wish there was a catalog that documents which resources are available for the SGU content. What was helpful was having an ongoing list of things I tried to recall every day to hammer in rote memory.
Edit from Rainee in dedicated: SGU doesn’t test DM biochemistry as much after this BUT it has come up strongly in preparation for Step. I wish I had stored my favorite resources/notes away for future Rainee because it’s painful trying to remember!
Extracirriculars
I’m still facilitating PLG and AEP peer tutoring sessions weekly. It starting to feel overwhelming. Also doing this highlights that testing well on a subject doesn’t mean I understood them. It also takes hours to make these presentations. Doing both a PLG and AEP, I couldn’t exactly prepare once for both as I thought. On the flip side, both my partners for these tutoring sessions are really amazing and natural teachers. I like/don’t like that I’m uncomfortable and forces me to grow. Hopefully, I can improve as a tutor.
I’m also working on starting a club and writing a literature review that would hopefully add a publication to my name. Especially with Step 1 becoming P/F(**shudders**), I have this feeling that I’m going to need things to help me stand out. This feels like applying to medical school all over again.
Improvements for neuro
Balance: I need a day off! The burn out is real. I plan to really give Sundays to myself and my family with the exception for Anki because I can’t stand the mess of missing a day.
Anki overhaul: I’ve been creating too many anki cards and a separate profile. I hope integrating the cards I make into Zanki and limiting my card creation to 20 cards per lecture will help clear this up
Pre-reading will be a thing…again. I’ve focused completely on post-reads and let lectures be my first pass into the information. Many of the lecture slides have become like reading a book. When the professors start talking and don’t go off the slides (which is also great), I find myself reading instead of listening. So my usual breakdown is:
30 minutes for lecture and 60 minutes for post-read (making my one-page summaries and anki cards) —> 90 minutes
Now I’m breaking it into 10 minutes of pre-read (reading over the learning objectives and slides and also highlight things I believe will be important for anki), 40 minutes to watch lecture and create anki cards (I star things I want to put in my summary), and 20 minutes to create the summary —> 70 minutes
I’ve glanced over the first lectures of neuro and I’m already intimidated. I have a feeling this last block is going to kick my butt. It’s one huge block broken into three exams, so see you after the first exam!