I knew it had been awhile...
But I didn't realize it'd been THIS long. School has started and has been keeping me VERY busy! I forgot what it was like to be a full-time student. And running a household on top it, is sometimes overwhelming. Playing around on the internet is practically nonexistant, but hopefully I'll get back to updating here more regularly. I keep waiting for a "routine" to appear in my life, but who am I kidding. I'm learing there is no such thing as routine in this program. Lots of people have been asking about what kinds of classes I'm taking and what else I'm up to, so here's a quick run down for the semester.
1. Developmental Anatomy, aka Devo, is a 1st year med school class where we learn about how all the systems of the body develop. We don't take Gross Anatomy (whereas the med students do), so it's a lot of memorization and very little application.
2. Medical Genetics, aka Topics, is a 2nd year med school class, which is basically an introductory genetics course for the med students. Fortunately, it's a lot of review for me and should be a fairly easy course.
3. Genetics and Human Disease, aka GHD, is through the school of Public Health, and is the most challenging course by far. The content is a bit hard to describe, but is combination of genetics and statistics.
4. Ethics in Research, is the most boring class by far. I can appreciate the need for an ethics class, but I'm afraid there is very little course content that is applicable to my program. This is required by the grad school and is tailored to PhD students who will be doing research and working in a lab.
5. Approaches to Research, is a class taught only to the 6 of us, and is preparing us for our thesis projects. Lots of research methodology, statistics, etc.
6. Intro to Genetic Counseling, aka Intro, is exactly what you'd think. We've only had a few sessions so far, but this should be an interesting and helpful class.
7. Psychosocial Practicum is also specific for our program (my class and the 2nd year class take this together, both years). It's basically a discussion and role play based course to help teach and strengthen our counseling skills. It should be fun and interesting, but I'm not looking forward to being videotaped and critiqued!
8. Journal Club, which is not really a club and not technically a class, but is a required component to the program. It's basically a weekly seminar where we will read and present journal articles to the group. Occasionaly this is replaced with Case Conference where an interesting patient/case is presented to the group.
9. Sign-Out Conference is also a weekly activity where the pediatric doctors, residents, etc, and the Genetic Counseling students who are on the pediatric rotation present the cases for the week and discuss any issues or ideas and possible diagnosis.
And in between all this, we're apparently supposed to find time to study and maybe even catch a meal or a few hours of sleep! LOL! I really am enjoying it, but I'm pretty worn out. I've got to start getting more sleep...waking up at 5:30am to make it to class by 8am is killing me!!!! And I don't typically get home until 6pm-ish. Chance tends to work late, so dinner is usually around 9 or 10pm, which means we don't get to bed until midnight or so.
I'm hoping to catch up on a lot of studying and homework this weekend. I've got my first presentation on Monday (all about ethnic carrier screening for B-thalassemia!)and my first Devo exam in less than 2 weeks. Chance's dad stayed with us a few days and my grandparents came to visit from out of town, so it was great to have our first visitors. And Chance's dad is coming back next weekend, and his brother and sister-in-law are coming the weekend after that. I know I won't be getting much done with they are here, so fingers crossed for a productive next few days!
So, on that note, I'm off to sleepy-town! Next post soon....
1. Developmental Anatomy, aka Devo, is a 1st year med school class where we learn about how all the systems of the body develop. We don't take Gross Anatomy (whereas the med students do), so it's a lot of memorization and very little application.
2. Medical Genetics, aka Topics, is a 2nd year med school class, which is basically an introductory genetics course for the med students. Fortunately, it's a lot of review for me and should be a fairly easy course.
3. Genetics and Human Disease, aka GHD, is through the school of Public Health, and is the most challenging course by far. The content is a bit hard to describe, but is combination of genetics and statistics.
4. Ethics in Research, is the most boring class by far. I can appreciate the need for an ethics class, but I'm afraid there is very little course content that is applicable to my program. This is required by the grad school and is tailored to PhD students who will be doing research and working in a lab.
5. Approaches to Research, is a class taught only to the 6 of us, and is preparing us for our thesis projects. Lots of research methodology, statistics, etc.
6. Intro to Genetic Counseling, aka Intro, is exactly what you'd think. We've only had a few sessions so far, but this should be an interesting and helpful class.
7. Psychosocial Practicum is also specific for our program (my class and the 2nd year class take this together, both years). It's basically a discussion and role play based course to help teach and strengthen our counseling skills. It should be fun and interesting, but I'm not looking forward to being videotaped and critiqued!
8. Journal Club, which is not really a club and not technically a class, but is a required component to the program. It's basically a weekly seminar where we will read and present journal articles to the group. Occasionaly this is replaced with Case Conference where an interesting patient/case is presented to the group.
9. Sign-Out Conference is also a weekly activity where the pediatric doctors, residents, etc, and the Genetic Counseling students who are on the pediatric rotation present the cases for the week and discuss any issues or ideas and possible diagnosis.
And in between all this, we're apparently supposed to find time to study and maybe even catch a meal or a few hours of sleep! LOL! I really am enjoying it, but I'm pretty worn out. I've got to start getting more sleep...waking up at 5:30am to make it to class by 8am is killing me!!!! And I don't typically get home until 6pm-ish. Chance tends to work late, so dinner is usually around 9 or 10pm, which means we don't get to bed until midnight or so.
I'm hoping to catch up on a lot of studying and homework this weekend. I've got my first presentation on Monday (all about ethnic carrier screening for B-thalassemia!)and my first Devo exam in less than 2 weeks. Chance's dad stayed with us a few days and my grandparents came to visit from out of town, so it was great to have our first visitors. And Chance's dad is coming back next weekend, and his brother and sister-in-law are coming the weekend after that. I know I won't be getting much done with they are here, so fingers crossed for a productive next few days!
So, on that note, I'm off to sleepy-town! Next post soon....
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