Skeletal Muscle/Biochem Seminar, Clinical Research Grand Rounds, and Anatomy Office Hours

We had a ridiculous amount of reading for seminar today, and I didn't even come close to getting it all done. That seems to be a general pattern for this entire block. There is supposed to be a 30-page reading assignment limit per seminar, but someone forgot to tell these people about that. On the bright side, we did not have FCM this morning. There were actually three seminars. The first one was on the embryology of muscles, and it was fairly good. The second one was contrasting muscle contraction in skeletal muscles versus cardiac muscles. It was led by the same prof who taught us about muscles last fall in the cardio block, and she was awesome as usual. Her seminars are always really interactive and interesting.

The third seminar was by a biochemist, and it was quite possibly the most painful lecture I've ever sat through. You have to understand first of all that "lecture" is a four-letter word at CCLCM, and that's exactly what this was. It was the kind of thing that I'll laugh my rear off about later, but I didn't think it was very funny while I was sitting through it. ("This is the structure of ATP: it has phosphate groups on it," and "Now we will talk about the TCA cycle. It's called a cycle because it goes in a circle.") Even the course director walked out of the room about halfway through. But since there were no questions and the presenter could just keep zipping through that powerpoint, at least we got finished half an hour early.

We had a class meeting right afterward, but I wanted to go to the Clinical Research Grand Rounds, so I missed the class meeting. The seminar was about different kinds of clinical trials. It was a little over my head actually.

Afterward, I went back to Lerner and printed out all of my evaluations. I can't remember if I mentioned that our second formative portfolio essays are due on Thursday afternoon. I haven't started writing the essay yet, but I've been organizing my evidence for the past couple of weeks. So it shouldn't be too big of a job to actually write the thing, assuming that I don't have problems with getting the reference software to work. I don't know what it is about RefWorks, but I always have some kind of problem with it whenever I try to use it.

At the anatomy office hours, Dr. Drake reviewed the cadavers with a couple of other students and me. We're finishing up with the legs. It figures: just when I finally start learning all of the structures, we go on to something else and I don't know anything all over again. Next week we're starting on the head to go along with our neuro block. I keep telling myself that things will get better next week....