Just Kicking In

A lot of people have been stressing about 3rd year pharmacy, but I haven't felt much difference between this year and last year. That was till this week though when the workload started to pile up. Not only did I have a lab summary due on Friday, I had to read 42 pages on gastrointestinal disorders by Tuesday! I tried spending most of Monday reading my textbook, but when I went to the Business School to read and eat, I caught up with Shen who was on his way to meet up with Jacqueline, who I hadn't seen in quite a while! So I decided I'd catch up with her too. We all sat together outside in the Quad just catching up with each other when Matt, another ex-Rutherford guy came by for a little while before he had to go to class!

 

For the record, I managed to read MOST of it, but not all! I spent the Tuesday morning rushing through answering my pre-workshop questions just in case the tutor picked on me to answer a question. She ended up doing just that! Thank goodness she asked me one of the easier questions!

 

Just before my workshop I caught up with Chen for the first time at the Grafton campus! We just had lunch and talked about our studies. He's studying medicine so he has a lot of interesting stories about dead bodies..

 

Each group was given a case and for ours we had to come up with questions we'd ask our patient. The group made me ask our patient, who was played by the tutor. I asked her

 

"Have you been vomiting blood?'

 

I was then told it's probably not such a good thing to mention blood to patients! I then asked if it would be such a good idea to ask if her stools were black. Apparently not...

 

The Wednesday MEDSCI lab was pretty interesting, we got to inject mice with two types of anaesthetic to test how long it'd take for them to lose their righting reflex (their ability to get back on their feet upon being placed on their back).

 

The tutor was demonstrating to us how to correctly handle mice and telling us not what to do. Some interesting things he told us:

- the record for most mouse bites in the lab is eight. After the first three the guy couldn't be bothered covering his bites with plasters

- There was a tutor who held up a mouse for a student to inject. The student missed the mouse though and injected the tutor's hand, causing her arm to go numb!

 

I was a little hesitant in handling the mice. I just couldn't get a good hold on them without them wriggling around! I was originally going to go first but because I couldn't hold onto my mouse, my other two lab partners went first and I injected their mice for them. When it came to my turn, it took maybe about ten goes before I finally got it still enough for my lab partner to inject the mouse! The final score:

 

Mice Injected: 2, Mice Dead: 0

 

Good job!

 

We'll be dealing with mice again next week!

 

And finally, all week I've beehaving this MEDSCI lab summary over my head! It's only 600 words, but who knew it'd take so long to type! I ended up doing it all on Thursday. It was due on the following Friday, but come Friday morning, I discovered I hadn't done the referencing correctly, so I tried fixing it up, but in doing so I missed my bus to uni! Because I only had one lecture that day, I decided not to go to uni at all. That's the second class I've missed so far this semester, and I will make sure it'll be the last one I miss!

 

One more week of uni to go, just one more...