Final Lab Practical-Check!

     Today we had our final lab practical.  There were 200 structures pinned and it was straight identification.  We had the lower limb and the brain that was our "new" information and that took up around 60 points of the test and the rest was cumulative.  I definitely reviewed a lot, but I was surprised how easily most of the answers came to me.  It is pretty cool to see how much you have learned during the semester.  This practical is worth 25% of our entire anatomy grade so it's a big deal for all of us!  I am so happy to have it out of the way but I think I am going to miss cadaver lab!

    The rest of our finals are next week.  Monday we have our Intro to Disease Mechanism final, Thursday is our Anatomical Techniques final, Friday is our two part Anatomy final, and Monday is our histology final.  After that, we get around two weeks off and then we start the summer semester on May 15th.  The way our Anatomy class is organized is that 50% of our grade comes from lab and the other 50% comes from lecture.  Our two part Anatomy final for lecture consists of a normal test and then a microanatomy final where we are shown structures under the microscope and we have to identify them.  All semester we have had lectures with different pathologists who have shown us microanatomy of the organ systems.  We have been tested on it before on our other exams, but for this we have to know everything we have been shown so far.  If you need any of us, we will be studying our lives away until next Monday!

        But I think we deserve to celebrate a little because we have one final out of the way!!  This is our class with our awesome instructor Carrie before the practical!

Regional Pathologists' Assistants Conference

This past weekend was the Regional Pathologists’ Assistants Conference hosted by UPMC at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh.  We were excused from class on Friday to attend so the majority of our class went.  I only attended Friday’s lectures which I found pretty interesting and useful.  There was a lecture on congenital melanocytic proliferation in children, grossing techniques for skins, cytogenetics, gross evaluation of colon cancers, an interesting case study, and the last was on pancreatic cancers. The second day one of our instructors Carrie presented on Uveal Melanoma and two second year students gave a lecture on Placenta Pathology.  The other second year students had posters prepared and hanging in the room on cases they had grossed during their rotations.  It was pretty neat to see where I will be this time next year in my training!  The conference was a great opportunity and we were lucky it was so close to Morgantown so we could all attend.

Last blog post I wrote about how we turned in our brackets for a little class competition fun!  Our winner was my classmate Stephanie!  She knows nothing about basketball so she copied Obama’s bracket and only switched two games and beat us all!

Well we have three weeks of classes left this semester!  It is a little crazy with our exam schedules but a break is so close and so needed!  This week we have Intro to Disease Mechanisms and Anatomical Techniques on the SAME DAY!  I think everyone in my class will agree that these are our two hardest classes so wish us luck!