Passive Diffusion and the Exam...

Figure 1: Passive Diffusion

Do you know the feeling you get when you know you're about to walk into something scary and unfamiliar? Well, that is kind of how I feel right now, only I'm not really walking into anything except my first medical school midterm tomorrow morning at 9 AM (gasp!).

Maybe its the massive amount of information (over 568 pages of syllabus--pretty much all text with the occasional "cartoons," ) or maybe its being surrounded by so many talented and brilliant individuals, who are all stressing out, or maybe its simply taking a new type of test for the time. Whatever it is- it's got me feeling overwhelmed, wound up, jittery and distracted.

Here is just a side note: I have been staring at my massive syllabus and power point slides for way too long. It's odd how professors sometimes refer to those boring and/or complicated scientific diagrams and images as cartoons. For example, the image above is not a cartoon (but some scientists would disagree). When I think of cartoon, I think of Garfield or Sponge Bob Square Pants, not the binding site for Cox-2 or a picture of the Na+/K+ ATPase pump.

I suppose I should be studying and filling the last spaces of my brain, which has already exceeded its capacity, with more facts that will inevitably diffuse out of my brain (via passive transport) the moment I turn my exam in. See Figure 1 (above), which is not a cartoon. The image illustrates passive diffusion, in this case, the flow of information (the blue balls, disregard the oxygen label- this was the best google-generated image I could find) going from my brain out to the environment.

Despite the diffusion (its inevitable, since information will flow down the path of least resistance), I hope I can retain some of it. Ideally, I would like to remember most it. But I am up against the endless battle of learning more and more new facts and seeing more fun cartoons.

Hopefully, it will all come together for the test. But most importantly, I hope all this studying will form the foundation of the knowledge that I will draw on throughout my life as a practicing physician.

It's time to return to this fun task. Maybe if I'm productive (and chances are low), I might just see where I'm going tomorrow and prevent some of this passive diffusion.

And San Francisco's Indian Summer really does not help....nope...not at all.


Study time!!!!!

***
Image: http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/artificial-blood-8.jpg