On to the next one

Third was a tough, tough semester, but thank God I passed.  It is considered by many students to be the toughest on the island.  Microbio was really a struggle.   But hey struggles help you reaffirm your motivation for embarking on the journey in the first place.  I excelled in micro in undergrad, but this was a whole different beast entirely.  We are expected to know which media to grow the microbes on, classifications (oxidase, catalase positive or negative, etc.),  which toxins they produce, and signs and symptoms, whether a virus is single or double stranded, enveloped or non- enveloped, segmented or non-segmented, etc.  For microbiology I would recommend relying heavily on sketchy micro, picmonic, or making up your own mnemonics.  With microbiology, you can not simply understand the concepts like with physiology, you are forced to come up with some creative way to distinguish the features of a specific bacteria, fungi, or virus.   The first block, fundamentals, was also heavy on the conceptual fundamentals of pharmacology, such as drug distribution and absorption.  Our other blocks were renal physiology, GI pathology, and reproductive physiology (why do women have to be so complicated?).

Boiling Lake

We made it to the summit of Boiling Lake.  The fog is the background is from the sulfur gas rising from one of two Sulfur boiling lakes of that size in the world (according to our tour guide).  It was worth the couple days of sore legs afterwards.