The Finite

On Saturday night, I returned to Lafayette and its decimeters of snow, subzero windchill and miles of bumpy paver sidewalks. Good then, that Audrey and Sherry were there to pick me up in exchange for some furniture assembly and enchilada removal. (Thanks again.) I was back in town to attend the beginning-of-semester meeting for the anatomy TAs on Sunday night and secondarily to help the Grille prep for the first opening of the semester during the afternoon. The rest of Sunday evening was devoted to trying to get Suspend to work on Bender.

The first day of the semester for any class, the professor follows several set paths regardless of what the subject is.

• Here is the syllabus. Hopefully, you remember X. We’ll go into more detail on X later on…
• Here’s an example of how my field of study has real-world applications! Look!
• I matter! Really!
• …
• Please don’t drop this class.

My schedule is slightly less awesome than I’d like. MWF of fall semester, I had two morning classes and two afternoon classes with a four hour break, which is somewhat inconvenient for napping. This time it’s three morning classes in four hours with highly optimized geography, all finished by 12:20. Biochem II, Genetics and Immunology. Respectively, hard, easy, legendary.

Regrettably, I am forced to use a meal swipe on what would normally be a lunch with Chris and Dylan on breakfast, just so I can focus for those three classes and not zone out and start on my screenplay again in lecture as I did last fall.

Tuesdays and Thursdays present a similar problem. I’m TAing at 9:30 for two hours, then 75 minutes of Principles of Public Health at noon, with a short lunch break until 3:00 Social Psych.

I’m actually somewhat of a fish out of water in Immunology. In what is actually a class reserved for Professional pharmacy program students, I snuck in with signatures and overrides. I was quite intimidated to be surrounded by my former TAs and some of my more successful lab partners. It was kinda like upgrading from Honors to AP classes. As the more committed students are retained and others turned away, you end up with more and more high-quality classes with stimulating questions, more relevant discussion and dream-shredding test curves.

Which scares me. I’m beginning to consider reading the book.

You probably already have system of studying by now. But I thought I’d share mine. I’m in a medical major so I don’t need to do math. I’m just supposed to remember long tracts of information and regurgitate them on command. It gets a little dull, I’ll be honest. It’s not as dramatic as materials science or fluid dynamics, but, oh, I’m not wild like that. Although I will admit that my notes are filled with profanity.

It helps, you see. The trick is to relate those long boring tracts of information to your own life. Especially for microbiology, which is just otherwise unrelatable.

Examples:

And use these fun mnemonic devices I’ve created. This one is for memorizing the pk_as of ionizable amino acids.

If all else fails, try answering questions in Haiku for attempted bonus points. Or Limericks if you’re feeling vulgar and you know the grader won’t be offended.

And let’s not forget caffeine for short-term cramming. Invaluable for several days at a time when you are irritated by pesky neurobiological functions like sleep, food or when you consider your cyclic adenosine monophosphate phosphodiesterase and amylo(1→4)to(1→6)transglycosylase levels just too high. Of course, there are the troubling behavioral and economic effects of caffeine abuse. When you overdose, you’ll know. I did earlier this week and couldn’t drink anymore because my hand tapping the desk was causing my stuff to slide off. Just don’t build up a tolerance too early, because you may need a turbo boost later in the week.

My caffeine system is pharmacologically the same as last year. However, what with it being winter and all, I’ve switched to all coffee, all the time. No more Rockstars. Not only does coffee have a higher caffeine density, it’s actually cheaper than energy drinks, especially considering the “$0.79 for 16oz after buying a $5 official Purdue University Residences coffee travel mug” deal we have here.

I quickly pour the stuff into a vitamin water bottle for actual transit, because I would rather not put my lips on something that I dirty up by hauling with me wherever I go.

But, wait, you say. Aren’t Asians supposed to love iced coffee? I never said I liked hot coffee. I hate all coffee. I just drink it for the few bio-effects of one tiny little alkaloid and try to ignore the grotesque taste and annoying adverse affects.

And that, children, is why we take all drugs.