Potassium Balance Seminar and PBL

Today was the last day of school for this block, and it was a short one since we didn't have POD. Our seminar was about potassium balance, and I had the same small group facilitator for my problem solving session that I worked with yesterday. Today's session went pretty well too, although potassium isn't as interesting as acid-base is. Again, we worked on several problems together as a group of eight, and the facilitator mostly let us work them out ourselves except for when we got stuck.

PBL probably should have been cancelled today, because we really didn't do much of anything. We just had the one learning objective presentation, and then we spent some time going through the parts of the nephron as a group and discussing how the week had gone. We also talked about how we were functioning as a group and what we wanted to do next block. Then we got out half an hour early, and that was it. We have the next two weeks off for winter break. I am now officially halfway through my first year of medical school, and 10% of the way through my MD degree. Pretty incredible. On a not so happy note, they actually gave us homework (SAQs and CAPPs) to do over break. I'm planning to do mine this weekend before I leave town. We also have a ton of anatomy reading to do for Jan. 8, which is our first day back. I don't think that I'll get through all of that. It's going to be a totally insane amount of work in anatomy next block. I wound up getting a book out of the library that has about 100 pages describing the anatomy and physiology of the musculoskeletal system, and that's what I'm planning to read for the first three weeks of next block.

I'll post a few times over the next two weeks, but it won't be regularly since we don't have classes. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone reading this.