What it really means

It's been too long and I don't even remember when was the last time I last updated my blog that's been left to collect dust since I've been way way way too busy with my third year studies. I won't even resort to apologising for my unexplained absence because looking at the past few posts, all of them have been apologising ones and sometimes people say the more you apologise, the less sincere it becomes so I won't even bother okay! hehe

Well right now, apart from facebooking and MSN chatting, I've really got nothing much to do since exams finished more than 10 days ago. Hang on that's a lie. I've got heaps to do but just putting them aside. So let's see.. I've got the Med interview to prepare for which I haven't even got the letter of interview offer yet.. haha. I have readings to do for my summer studentship which I start tomorrow.. but that's okay, supervisor Sarah- Jane told me quite kindly to recover from my exam and that I can use this whole week to do them.

So yes, since my last post, I've completed another and my last semester of Biomedical Science. This semester was by far the craziest of all with me ignoring the advice of many friends to take 4 third year papers, most notably, Pathophysiology of the brain, Biophysics of nerve and muscles (SUPER HELLISH I kid you not), Systematic pharmacology (because he was the one and only reason why I took it.. definitely a JOKE) and a Biosci paper. The last two papers I kinda enjoyed throughout the semester, they were both easy and understandable. For the neuroscience paper, most lectures were boring and unstimulating. Thank God we had a week to prepare for the exam and up till the last minute I was still trying to get facts straight. The exam was good thankfully and think I may have nailed at least 3 out of the 5 essays (a major feat considering my preparation status!!!. For Biophysics.. hang on let me start a whole new paragraph because one tiny sentence won't do biophysics any justice..

Biophysics, the bane of the semester. Throughout the entire semester Gloria and I (Gloria's my fellow cardio mate, my partner in crime) have always questioned our decision to take Biophysics, the notorious Medsci309, the 'most quantitative 3rd year', the hardest paper of all Medsci papers. When people said, 'Cam, don't ever do it. It's hard, like seriously hard. A+ students have taken that paper and suffered a huge drop in their GPA. Whatever you do, don't take it.' For me, it wasn't a matter of being rebellious when I decided to enrol in Medsci309 but it was about knowing my boundaries, my limits and my capacity. I was like, 'Heck Cam, this is your final semester, just go hard and do it.' And so I did. Oh my gosh, I have to tell you, the entire semester I was suffering and I think I deserved it. Because they changed Medsci309 from the first semester to the second semester for the first time, they also had to change the way lectures were given and we started of with Mechanics of Muscles by Dr Loiselle which we weren't suppose to have until the second half of the semester.

We first had Denis Loiselle when we were in first year, doing respiratory physiology in Medsci 142. I loved him then. He was funny and seemed to make respiratory phyisolgoy so easy. That was why in second year for Medsci 205, I resented the fact that we had Dr. Marie Ward take us for respiratory physiology instead of Dr. Loiselle. Anyways, back to Medsci 309. We had Loiselle first and oh my, it was the beginning of a semester of questions and constantly doubting whether enrolling for 309 was a wise choice. My year one reverence for Loiselle was reduced to raised eyebrows everytime he lectured us. It didn't take me quick to realise that perhaps he wasn't the lecturer that I thought he was. He was super intelligent no doubt and still had the sense of humour (there was once he revealed a recipe of cooking heart with NZ gold kiwi fruit to tenderise the collagen that would otherwise be too tough to chew. I don't think he lacked the ability, oh no, but it was just the way he lectured that rubbed me up the wrong way. Okay, so maybe it's that we're in Year 3 now thst he used a different approach. He would put graphs, unlabelled ones, up and question us, without giving us any theory whatsoever!!! He's justification was that he was getting us ready for the data analysis part of the exam, 'How good can one get?' but thing is, how were we supposed to sit for an exam without having first being taught?

Loiselle aside (his exam question was freakishly insane, to me anyways) the other lecturers we had were just fine. 309 was lectured by 4 lecturers in total, Loiselle, Mark Cannell (our Biosci107 muscle man.. remember the myosin pulling guys?), Marie Ward and Christian Soeller (we first had him in Physics and a lecturer which I slowly grew to love maybe because he taught us easy stuff) and a handful of super helpful demonstrators and Raj as our tutor (I still miss Anuj's tutoring though :( ) Anyways, after the first half of the semester which we were exposed to challenging concepts, the second semester was more bearable. We learnt about neuromuscular junction transmission and the basics of muscles, all what we should have learnt before lauching into gruelling biophysics of the muscle and nerves.

Another thing about why 309 was so hard was the fact that it was a quantitative paper and we have mostly been exposed to theory, theory, theory. 309 was a core paper for students majoring in Bioengineering and it was mainly catered for them. Although Raj insisted that they structured it in such a way that no one was at a disadvantage, many a times I felt we biologists were at the losing end, not knowing what a partial differential equation is and completely at a loss with the derivation of the many equations Mark Cannell went through. But then again, someone told me her Engineering mate didn't know what the sarcolemma (the membrane convering heart muscle) was and had difficulties doing the physiology problems. Oh well, I guess it is kinda fair then, us being less aware of numerical terms and they being less physiologically aware.

309 wasn't a complete disaster (oh god, hoping I don't speak too soon). For one thing I realy did enjoy. I loved the labs. Seriously. They were really similar to Medsci 205 labs in that we had individual labs. Not like the 2 (long) labs we had for Medsci 311 which were awesome although very very strenous. Anyways, our labs ranged from doing organ baths experiments where we placed a strip of muscle and stimulated it so it contracted and recorded various things to poking a rat diaphragm with a sharp microelectrode to record resting membrane potential and action potentials which once you get the hang of, was super super cool! Another thing was also mixing with the Bioengineers. Very often I marvelled at the fact that some of them are so god- damn intelligent (not to mention, very cute too) and seemed to be driven by this external motivation force to excel. Haleema may think otherwise.. haha, it's so funny because she seemed to have this perpetual loathing of the bioengineers. She'd take every opportunity to complain. 'You know what I hate about them?', 'The fact they think they're soooo smart', 'Oh my, they called the vortex mixer a ouabain mixer????','Why do they always finish their experiments soooo fast?' hahaha Good times indeed. But something was true and I noticed. We biologists, would take up the entire 3 hours of lab time to ensure we got down every single detail to write a wholesome lab report, they would finish their work ASAP and leave. We seemed to grill the demonstrators for answers and checking of our answers, they seemed to work independently, only asking for help when they needed to. This difference that I noticed, was it because of the different degrees? The way we were shaped? The different objectives in life? Was ours all for getting top marks, a meaningless A+ scrawled on the back of a lab report? Was that the sign of our achievement? Did we not care about what we learnt but only cared about what was right?

For me, my drive to do well is not merely to get an A+ or just to get into Med as a matter of fact. I once told a friend that maybe Med might not be for me after all. He looked at me, perplexed, 'Then why do you do so well when you're not 100% up for Med?' See the thing is, my life has never revolved around Med and I doubt it ever will be. Maybe this was the reason why I got rejected in the first place, maybe they saw the lack of passion. But getting an A+ is meaningless if you haven't learnt anything. Like what I told my sister, for me, I believe education is the one most important thing, to enrich our minds, to push our boudaries and and to test our limits. This is why I did 309 in the first place, I wanted and needed to know. And what if I get a crap mark for Biophysics (oh please please let me pass) and my GPA crashes as a result? I will be proud because I took the chance, I did 309 when everyone shunned it. To have a sound education, nothing is impossible and the horizon is as wide as it can be. Maybe this is what getting an A+ really means.. to know you've pushed yourself the furthest, to reach for the moon and refuse to fall amongst the stars. Maybe this is what an A+ really means, not because you want to get into the course of your choice but to expand on your knowledge and prove to yourself that you can. Everyone will have different perspectives. This is just what it really means to me. :D