How to Pay Attention in Class

After my first Physiology exam, I knew I had to start paying attention in class and reviewing on a regular basis. This semester we have computers in the lecture hall which means playing Freecell, Solitaire, and checking my email. These are all very tempting to do during lecture, and I needed a way to force myself to pay attention. Here's the solution: the course moderator has started to sit directly behind me so I really can't check my email and play games anymore. I think I'm getting a lot more out of lecture. I've started googling things that are pertinent to the lecture and find out how this information relates to the actual clinical cases. I'm not sure if the moderator totally approves of this. He just asked me today if I do it for all my lectures so I don't think he minds.

Downs and Ups

This week we had our first tests in Physiology and Parasitology. They say everyone fails at least one test and this was the week for me. I felt prepared for the Physiology exam, but apparently I was wrong. I hate tests that have less than 40 questions since the margin for error becomes quite small. There were 33 questions and too many that I could only eliminate to 2-3 choices. Most of my guesses ended up being wrong, I changed answers (always go with your first gut feeling, I know I know), and one I was just too stubborn to put the right answer. I must say that if there was ever a test to fail, this may have been the best one. It's only worth 16% of my overall grade so I can still somewhat recover from it...hopefully.

Let me tell you that failing this test rocked my world. Any confidence I may have had before Tuesday was wiped out. It was especially hard because it was Physiology which is our biggest class this semester. I was starting to think that this semester may be easier than last, but I was wrong about that too. Physiology!! It's basically the foundation of all of medicine!! It was hard to study and feel prepared for my Parasitology exam today after that.

But thankfully I did well on today's exam. I am just waiting for the results from the essay portion. Taking Parasitology in undergrad is definitely helping now. Today's exam has given me some confidence back, but I'm still shaken from Tuesday.

I have a friend that I started studying with last semester, and it's funny because we excel in classes that the other one does not. I failed Physiology when they did very well, and I did well in Parasitology today when they did very bad. I highly recommend for future vet students to find someone whose strengths are your weaknesses. Studying together usually helps both as one person can explain what the other doesn't understand. It didn't work out this time though.