Panini-19 x Med School || Endocrine & Reproduction Summary || SGU Term 2
Life Updates
My plant babies. I’m loving these quarantine hobbies. To be honest, I was intimidated by gardening or anything plant-related because I’ve killed cactus in my life. Well, I’ve started my fall garden indoors! I ordered these vegetable variety seeds off of amazon. It’s still over 100F where I live, so I’m doing what the internet says and starting my seeds in little greenhouses. I feel strangely accomplished seeing my sprouts get taller every morning. Sadly, the two plants I put outside seemed to have caught on fire - or that’s at least how they look. It’s strange having to take into account that we live in a dessert because the summers are so hot but I hear the winters are quite cold.
Upcoming DIY projects. Painting my plant pots went a lot better than I anticipated, despite lacking artistic skill. My plan is to tackle epoxying the gym before we start building the deadlift platform! And maybe finally mount the TV.
Sanity = Morning Routine. My brain doesn’t wake up with me. The feeling of investing in myself first before anything else kind of makes me feel special. Like dang Past Rainee, you really looking out for me. So I wake up about 5 minutes before class starts. Log in and turn the volume down (why don’t Mac’s have a volume mixer?). Love doing my skincare routine. I have 8 oz of lemon water while listening to motivation and science research podcasts. Then I do a quick 5-minute yoga stretch and 5-minute mediation. I make coffee and by then it’s around 7:30 AM and I’m finally ready to open my emails, messages, social media. It’s been really helpful to have these 30 minutes dedicated just to me because it’s so easy to put off taking care of myself until the very end of the day.
ER Module
The summer before
I’ve mentioned this before, but I started watching the previous term’s lectures and the M1M2 deck about 2 weeks before the start of class. I thought dipping my brain into the content without pressure might let the information seep into my brain. Well I’m not a coffee filter and that didn’t work out. I robotically learned things and didn’t comprehend the concepts. However when I had to go over the information in pace with lecture, it clicked way faster because of the sense of familiarity. Also, SGU swapped the order of the lectures so the things I learned didn’t come up until 2 weeks into the module. One regret, I wish I reorganized my Term 1 notes for the cumulative test we have at the end of the year.
ER Study Schedule
I still love the 3 pass rule and my Pomodoro timer. I start and end my day with Anki. In the morning, I do about ~70 cards from the premade M1M2. I like the premade deck because there are some details that I usually don’t catch on my own and it’s something I can use for STEP. At night, I complete ~70 cards from my homemade deck.
On Mondays I watch about a week or so worth of lectures. I have such a hard time sitting still and listening to professors in regular speed. With the speed at 2x, I really have no choice but to give it all my attention. Most of the other days, I dedicate most of my time to post-reads). Post-reads for me are making my anki cards and my one-page summaries. Each lecture I try to summarize in a page or less which forces me to pick what I think might be important and its a good reference for the review.
What I changed. I have learned that I need to pencil in break times. I’m starting to see myself burn out. By the end of the week, I’m too tired to focus. It’s really a marathon, not a sprint.
ER Content
ER was true to its name of a fair balance of Endocrine and Reproductive. The endocrine portion went into depth with female hormone cycles and hormone synthesis pathways. Felt like a little tip of the hat to the mess of mechanisms I’ve heard we’ll learn in DM. The new aspect for me was connecting the cycles to which cells and relation with other hormones. The reproductive section tied in the anatomy that I’ve come to know with a high emphasis on nerves and blood supply. Of course, embryology. Nothing really helped me learn this more than the M1M2 deck. Someone brilliant put in a gif of the female and male embryology and it' was really helpful to visualize. Ninja Nerd YouTube has become close to my heart because those hormone pathways can be convoluted! I have encountered the female reproductive many times, but it was apparent I never understood it. I made a playlist of videos that helped me here.
A helpful mnemonic I saw for remembering Gs, Gq, steroid pathways
ER Timing
It’s fast. You really have to pick up the same speed you left off on in Term 1. It was about 1.5 weeks Endocrine and a quick cut into 1.5 weeks Reproductive. I started to see the topics are starting to tie in from Term 1. I felt like I was constantly behind in ER, even at the points where I wasn’t.
Extracirriculars
I’m trying to beef up my application so we’re on the executive board this term for a club and trying to start a nutrition club. I honestly feel like just school is a lot, but I feel pressure to compensate.
Advice looking back
I don’t regret having a summer. My deep-fried brain truly needed it. I started studying 2 weeks before and I still feel like that’s a good place to start. Maybe 3 weeks before I’d watch Mama Doctor Jones “I didn’t know I was pregnant” react videos or if I was daring watch some Ninja Nerds Videos. They were super interesting and had topics that we went over like didelphys uterus. As always, I wish I understood lymphatics, blood vessels, and innervation better. It makes sense that it’s always addressed because problems will manifest as disease, but I realized that I never really understood anatomy from MSK!
Anyways onto Digestion & Metabolism! I’m actually incredibly interested because of my rampant digestive issues. See you in a couple!