First Formative Portfolio

We didn't have class today, so I spent most of the day reading and finishing my formative portfolio. Although there are nine competencies, we were only responsible for discussing four of them at this point: research, science knowledge, communication, and professionalism. I think that they'll add another two or three of them to the next essay that we write at the end of this block, and by the end of the year, we'll be discussing all nine of them. For each competency, we are supposed to discuss our strengths and weaknesses, and we are also supposed to come up with a learning plan at the end to help us work on our weaknesses. It wound up being a lot more work than I had expected it to be, but I'm pretty happy with the results. I meet with my PA to discuss it next Friday, so I'll find out then if she agrees.

Now I have to finish with my PBL objective for tomorrow. I'm going to be going over the Valsalva Maneuver test and the Cold Pressor test. The first one tests people's baroreceptor response (baroreceptors sense pressure changes in the circulatory system), while the second tests people's response to pain. I also need to look over histology slides for tomorrow. I realize as I do this that although I've learned so much in the last three weeks, there are still a lot of things that I don't understand very well. The histo is getting a little better though. I am starting to be able to identify more kinds of cells and structures now that I'm getting some more experience with it. I have a histo atlas too, and that helps, as does the histo website they asked us to look at.