Back in Auckland once again!

Wil:

Well... and so i'm back in the wonderful land of Auck. Woo! I'm very happy to be so.

I am sooooo ridiculously tired. Our flight was delayed 1.5 hours because they'd lost a screw somewhere behind some panel and had to call in the engineers to come find it -_-
In the end they couldn't find it and just told everyone we're going to fly anyway. Ha!

So yeah, semester 1 has come to an end. I'm quite relieved! I didn't think I could work harder than I did last year in Health Sci but I certainly proved myself wrong! Whether or not my results will reflect that will be another story. Let's discuss each exam:

1. PHCY256 (Biopharmaceutical chemistry): I think those fortnightly 'End of Module Tests' (EMOTs) actually were good things after all. I certainly didn't have to study nearly as hard as the other papers for 256 as I had studied the subject to quite a reasonable depth by the time study leave came about. Woo! I guess that's one of the main objectives of the EOMTs.
The questions were quite predictable and I was able to answer all questions with a relatively high level of confidence (except one question about Thin Layer Chromatography *yikes* I never liked TLCs...)

2. PHCY231 (Biochemistry): Despite having only had 17 lectures in the entire semester for this paper I felt there was an awful lot to learn (or more like memorise!). But what do you expect of biochem? Anabolic pathways, catabolic pathways, drug detoxification, inhibition of regulatory enzymes, activation of regulatory enzymes, influences of hormones etc etc Just a whole lot of memorising! For only a 7 point paper I felt that I spent too much time studying.
Being such a small paper overall it wasn't hard to predict (almost bordering on being psychic) what was going to be in the exam - there wasn't a lot to choose from! As long as you had all the pathways memorised then you were fine - and I was! I'm hoping for a good mark in 231 too!

3. PHCY254 (Physical Pharmacy A): Okay this is where it starts to go down hill (just a tiny bit mind you). The format for this years exam changed a little bit from previous years and the questions were a lot less predictable. Fortunately, I enjoy physical pharmacy as a subject in its own right and enjoyed studying for it. I'm just a bit bummed that it might not have been my best exam! I'm glad this exam didn't ask questions on very specific points that I hadn't fully studied.

4. PHCY251 (Physiology for Health Sciences): 32 multiple choice questions and 10 mini essays. Studied squat for it and still managed to successfully wing through most of the questions. Huzzah!
It's suffice to say that if I get anything higher than a B+ then i'll be quite happy!
But I do have to say that some of those mini essay questions were horribly written. Also, some sub-questions (of the bigger overall essay question) were allocated a big mark (>5) but you could only write very little on it (i.e. just a bit more than a sentence or small paragraph). So depending on the question it was either very easy to get marks, or very easy to lose them.


Ah well I can't wait to get my results back.

It's sort of time to relax now that holidays have arrived but I still need to do my community placement! As you know, that's sorta playing on my nerves a bit. Getting a bit anxious...

Oh! and we also have a group assignment to do for our NZ Health System module! Which reminds me - I need to email out information to my group partners!

Ugh it's late. Normally I would be in bed by now. I really hope my suprachiasmatic nuclei forgoes my temporarily adopted need to wake up at 6:30am every morning and let me sleep in for once! I don't think it has received the message that exams are over...


Blah

I love cheese. Nom.


I'll ttyl. Come visit me once you're done with exams.