It’s Over…for now

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The semester is over and I’m finally back home! The last few weeks of the semester were a blur with exams, practicals, and finals. But happy to say I passed this semester and I can’t wait to return in January.

Practicals are structured similar to the way they were in undergrad for me. They included stations and time limits. The questions would be about structures photographs, models, histology slides, and in one case actual human skulls. But the one major difference was the complexity of the questions. Some of them at the stations would point to a structure and ask about the function or other details about the structure such as origins, insertions, what other structures it connects to, etc. At the end of one of the practicals, the TA read out the answers so I had a better how I did coming out of the exam.  

Final exams this semester were the most difficult finals I have ever had. It lasted 7 days with 3 reading days in between which was much longer than what I was accustomed to. The material covered everything for the whole semester which for some classes added up to over one thousand slides, diagrams, drawings. This made it much for difficult to study for them. I was forced to prioritize what I needed to review based on the importance of the topic or how uncomfortable I felt about it. It made me wish I had studied more consistently and steadily throughout the semester.

Even though we had all these exams come at us one after another with all of this material to review, it was not all bad. Our class president and fellow blogger Elizabeth worked with our professors to get at least one, sometimes two review sessions scheduled for each of our classes. These reviews are student driven meaning that professors review concepts base upon our questions. I did not always have a specific questions but it was really nice to hear stuff from lecture or lab repeated. It also pointed out some deficits in knowledge that I had in my classes.

There was some good fun thrown into the mix as well. I was fortunate enough to go to the big Ohio State vs. *ichigan football game (otherwise known as The Game). My brother is currently a graduate student at *ichigan and he got tickets for me and my Dad. The atmosphere was amazing even though those appalling colors of blue and gold (or maize as they call it) was adorned everywhere in Ann Arbor. I was in the student section with brother and Dad but there were a surprisingly large number of Buckeyes in the section as well. The game was a nail biter from beginning to end only made worse by the sounds of “Hail to the Victors” and “You Suck” from the *ichigan students around me. Thankfully we won and I got to leave the stadium victorious but with dissatisfied family members.

Now to relax and not worry about any optometry school stuff until the next semester begins. Happy Holidays everyone!