Information for Exam 4

Here is the information you need to know for our exam tomorrow.

General info

Exam 4 will be available all day on Wednesday, 12/14/22 (from 12:01 am until 11:59 pm). You’ll have 2 hours to take it once you open it, and you’ll need to submit it by 11:59 pm. The password is Bakingiscool1.

Exam breakdown

Here’s the breakdown by content:

  • Endocrine disorders – 14 questions
  • Bone, Joint, and Muscle – 13 questions

Best of luck (though you won’t need luck, you’re smart as heck).

Please let me know if you have any questions or difficulties. I’ll monitor the exam at midnight for a while, and then I’ll check throughout the day tomorrow in case there are any issues.

The Great Pathology Bake-Off!

I’m so excited!!

As you know, we had a bake-off in General Histology this year, and it was SO much fun. I asked Cecilia to float the idea by you all to see if there was any interest in doing one in our course, and the response was very positive – so full speed ahead!

If you’ve seen the Great British Baking Show, you know how cool it is to watch people bake things that resemble other things! So for our bake-off, the mission is to bake something – anything, cookies, brownies, cake, beef Wellington – that resembles something we learned about in this course. It could be a cell from a leukemia or a lymphoma (my personal favorite), or anything that you feel inspired by. You’ll get 5 extra credit points for bringing a baked good to our bake-off!

The event is scheduled for Monday, December 12, during our class time (8-9:55), in room 2-530. We’re scheduled to have an exam review during that time, which I’d still like to do, using Kahoot as usual – but that will only take about half an hour and I’ll pick questions that are particularly useful for the upcoming exam. After that, we’ll all hang out and admire each other’s amazing baked goodies. I’m sure we’ll eat a lot of them – but I’ll bring some bags for sharing.

I’m also providing drinks (milk, almond milk, sparkling whatever I can find), as well as some stuff that I hope will give a little GBBS vibe: gingham, tablecloths, etc.

Please come and hang out, if you are so inclined, whether you’ve baked something or not! I’ll bring plenty of my own baked goods so that there’s enough to feed a crowd 🙂 It’s early in the morning, so I’m not sure how many of you will be coming – but I’m hoping we’ll get a pretty good turnout so that we can get together one last time as a class and have a little joy in spite of the stress you’re facing with finals week(s).

Let me know if you have any questions! I love you all and hope to see you there!

Exam 3 scores are posted!

You guys did very, very well, as usual! The mean was 28/30 (or 93%). Scores are up on Canvas now.

I’ve released your scores to your Examsoft student portal – but it sounds like that may be something that you guys don’t normally check. So here are the most recent instructions I have on how to access your portal – I got these from Examsoft last year, so hopefully they still work. If not, let me know.

Info for Exam 3

Here is the information you need to know for our exam tomorrow.

General info

Exam 3 will be available all day on Monday, 11/28/22 (from 12:01 am until 11:59 pm). You’ll have 2 hours to take it once you open it, and you’ll need to submit it by 11:59 pm. The password is Fullofturkey1.

Exam breakdown

Here’s the breakdown by content:

  • Anemias – 8 questions
  • Benign leukocytoses – 3 questions
  • Acute leukemia – 3 questions
  • Chronic leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma – 7 questions
  • Hemostasis – 3 questions
  • Bleeding and thrombotic disorders – 5 questions

Hematology and coagulation study guides

    

In case you’re interested, I have a few books on blood disorders and coag that students have found helpful in the past:

These are all for sale but I don’t want you guys to have to buy them. If you would like a copy, drop me an email and I’ll send you a link so you can download them for free. They are NOT required – so just use them to help you study (if you feel you need help).

Why did Stephen Hawking live so long with ALS?

We’ll talk about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease, tomorrow. It’s a pretty fast-progressing disease of motor neurons, with most patients dying within 5 years.

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with ALS when he was 21, and he lived until the age of 76 (he died in 2018). What?? Here’s an article from Scientific American that talks a bit about some of the reasons he may have beaten the odds like this.

Also – there is new research showing that inherited cases of ALS are caused by buildup of a toxic protein called SPOP within neurons. AND there are drugs that can inhibit or get rid of this protein (in mice, but hopefully soon in humans too). This research is so exciting, because it may lead to greater understanding of what goes on in the sporadic cases of ALS, which are much more common than the inherited versions. There is hope!

Ted Talk: Stroke of insight

This is one of those blow-your-mind TED talks. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher, had a stroke. But it wasn’t an ordinary stroke. Because of her training, and her insight into the way the brain works, she actually watched – calmly and with curiosity – as her brain functions shut down, one by one. Not only that, but she felt she attained a new level of consciousness beyond left brain/right brain – and said it was lovely. Totally fascinating.

How about you – have you seen any TED talks that you found fascinating? If so, I’d love to know. It’s great if they’re about medical stuff – but I’m interested to hear about non-medical ones too.