Extremely Thankful This Thanksgiving

One of the biggest things I am thankful for this year is getting my first choice for P4 year rotation cluster of Baltimore! On Tuesday right before we all headed off in our separate ways to enjoy Thanksgiving with our families and friends, e-mails were sent out to all P3 students notifying us of where we would spend our last year in pharmacy school. As I had mentioned in my earlier posting I was very anxious to see where I would end up, especially since there were rumors going around that some people would not get any of their top 3 choices. So when the e-mails were sent out on Tuesday lots of drama was to be seen. Some like me were ecstatic to get their rotation assignments, while others were caught by surprise due to their unexpected assignments. A quick peek at Facebook revealed who was sticking around in Winchester and who would have to move out come May. In a few weeks we will be deciding on the exact sites we want to go to within our rotation clusters.

But before I can get too excited about this upcoming May, there are a couple of weeks left in this semester and there is still all of spring semester too. When we return from Thanksgiving break we will have one more week of classes that will involve papers and presentations but thankfully no more tests (the university has a policy that professors are not allowed to give us tests the week before final exams). Some final exams will be cumulative and some will not be. Whenever I sit down to study for my cumulative finals it amazes me how much we covered in a semester and how quickly we have reached the end of the semester.

As always many, if not all, of our final exams will be on Perception, a computer program that locks you out of all other programs while it is in use. Since most of the exams are multiple choice, Perception can tell you what your grade is as soon as you submit your answers. I have mixed feelings about this. Sometimes I like having a period of not knowing how I did because the exam was hard and I have the mentality of "ignorance is bliss". But then again many other times knowing how I did instantaneously makes me feel like I can move on, past how I did (good or bad). Another good point of Perception is that it allows professors to see how students do statistically on exams. For example they can look at one specific question and see that only 25% of students selected the correct answer. This causes professors to evaluate whether or not the question was fair or not and if they deem it to be an unfair question then they may toss the question out. In this case I would say technology can be a student's friend.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

In the midst of midterms

It has been a while since I last wrote, but it has been a busy last few days. Right now as P3s we are in the midst of our first round of midterms. So far we have had 2: one in our ICARE Endocrinology/Reproduction (ICARE Endo/Repro) class and another in ICARE Infectious Disease. The ICARE Endo/Repro exam was all about diabetes and a little about hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism and adrenal gland issues. Our ICARE Infectious Diseases exam was all about bugs and drugs. Whoever came up with the naming scheme for the various microbes out there did not think of us poor students who would be required to learn all those names.

Both of these exams were computerized exams. In undergrad I never had computerized exams, so it took some getting used to when I first got to SU. I am the kind of test taker that underlines, circles and crosses things out on my exam, so not being able to do that was a big change. At first I was intimidated by not being able to use my good old techniques for taking tests. However, they do give us scratch paper to write things on during the exam if we want to. I remember after my first computerized exam I felt better about taking tests on a computer. Honestly though, I would prefer the old paper and pencil versions. A benefit or drawback (depending on how you think you did) of computerized exams are that you get your grade as soon as you click a little button labeled “Submit” and then your grade pops up with all the mistakes you made. And then immediately you proceed to chastising yourself for stupid mistakes made or rejoice in the fact that you did so well.

So that’s it for now, sorry it’s shorter than normal but I’ve got more exams to study for.