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Neuro is a class that many people will get really stressed about early on. I personally got very stressed about how it all is taught when I first began the course. My best advice is NEVER skip Dr. Glasser’s lectures, take good notes and study that. If he gives a review session, GO. Don’t consider skipping Dr. Glasser’s lectures and just studying my transcribed notes. They should be enough to get you through but he will probably add current developments and changes in board tested material. If you want to use my notes to make your lecture time easier you might want to consider printing them before lecture and taking notes on them. Then you will just have to correct my mistakes and fill in the new stuff (assuming he follows the same lecture schedule). He will teach you just about everything that you need to know for the course. If another professor is lecturing you might as well skip, study from BRS, go to Dr. Glasser’s review and you will do well on the mini. That is how I studied all semester and never got less then a 90% except the one mini where I just made too many stupid mistakes.
Neuro lab is a very different world from gross lab. At first you will feel like you have so many new structures and will have no idea how to plow through it all. I was told by friends a semester ahead of me to skip lab and just go for the last week of the semester. You see, for the last week of the semester Dr. Glasser will go into lab just about every night and pin 150 or so structures. I think that if you go every night and make sure that you truly know what is pinned you will do fine. I suggest going to lab every week while Dr. Glasser is lecturing and then leave. That will help you become familiar with the basic neuroanatomy. Don’t bother to go back in to study until he does the pinning. The sections he uses are much better then the ones in the buckets anyway. This is the method I used and got an A as did most of my buddies. When the practical came he did have some secondary questions but probably more then 45 of the 50 questions were basic ID the structure type. Also, about halfway through the semester he will pass out a handout which is a three page list of everything that he may ask about in lab. Since that is the complete list there is no reason to study more then what is on that list. Just be sure you can identify the different parts of the fornix, thalamus and corpus callosum (as indicated in the handout).
In this course you don’t really need any books other then your anatomy atlas (your “Netter”). I had BRS, High Yield and PreTest but they didn’t help much.
When you get into your first lecture in gross you will probably feel overwhelmed and start to wonder how you will make it through all the volume. Try not to let it stress you. It’s very doable. I suggest skimming the handouts so you have a basic familiarity with the language before lectures. It will help you be able to follow better since the language is the toughest part. Then I suggest that you spend as much time as possible in the lab. I have heard rumors of changes with the new curriculum about how the lab is done but when I went through some people dissected during the week and then presented to the rest of the group on Thursday or Friday. I highly suggest MAKING the time to go in and get your hands in the body before Thursday so that you know the stuff. Then come in both Thursday and Friday and help others learn it. The best way to be sure to learn the material is to get a basic grasp in lab, then teach people, and it will get reinforced in your mind and they WILL catch your mistakes therefore you learn more. Make sure to integrate the lab and lecture in this course.
I did my studying in the lab and did very well. For example, the week of mini II (after the mini of course) I spent about 10 hours dissecting just the heart. Then on Thursday, I had a crowd of about 40 people around me the first time I presented it. That day alone I presented it another 8 times or so not to mention Friday, the weekend and the following week. By literally presenting to half the class it was so well reinforced in my mind that when mini III came around I got a perfect score on Dr. Tabor’s section. Notice that the key is also to learn it before the majority of the class so that they want you to teach them. If you are the last to learn there will not be anybody for you to teach.
Dr. Tabor and Dr. Martin are both good professors. As you will see they have different styles and I suggest going to their lectures. If Dr. Rodney comes back, her lecture is worthless but I just met the new anatomy professor for the fall 2000 semester and I get the impression he will be very good. Regardless of the professor, I highly suggest doing lots of practice questions. For head and neck do ALL the questions in the back of Dr. Tabor’s book and for Dr. Martin’s material do all the BRS questions. As those two professors will tell you themselves, there are only so many ways to ask questions in gross anatomy so practice questions and many of the mini questions will look familiar.
You will need an atlas by Frank Netter and Dr. Tabor’s Head and Neck but I also suggest getting Essential Clinical Anatomy by Moore and Agar as well as BRS Anatomy. I also used PreTest anatomy so I would have even more questions to do (I think cranking questions are key). You should buy a new or fairly untouched atlas but can save a bunch by getting the others used.
The physiology department is a very bipolar department. In that I mean that I think that half of the professors are very good teachers and the lectures by the other half are a waste of time. There are not really any in the middle. It will only take one lectures to figure out who fits where. One professor who’s lecture you should attend is Dr. Palmer’s. For the average “white boy” it will take a lecture or so to get used to his Indian accent but you want to be sure to draw all the diagrams he draws. This is especially true with endocrine physiology. People will say that all his test questions come straight from his diagrams. That is true but in actuality he teaches all of endocrinology through the diagrams. As Dr. Vogel will tell you on the first day of class he writes all of his exam questions from material in his handout so be sure to study the handout. Personally physio is my strong point and I got my best grades of any med school class to this point by studying the books below and mastering “the art of skipping class.”
In order to get ready for the shelf exams and to find gaps in your knowledge I would suggest reviewing the BRS and doing all the BRS questions since that is effectively the outline of the final exam. If you are wondering what books to buy I would suggest getting the START Physio book, BRS Physio (both by the same author) as well as an EKG book. You don’t really need the EKG book until IMC but it helps to have now. I recommend Rapid Interpretation of EKG by Dubin. It’s very easy to follow for the non-physics mind. If you want more questions, as I did, try PreTest Physio.
If they follow the pattern they started in my semester they will teach you pharmacokinetics and dynamics in physiology and ANS physiology and pharmacology in neuro. For the pharmacokinetics and dynamics I (as a physics minded person) did not feel the lectures were extremely important to go to because the material was very well covered in the “baby Katzung” (orange book by Katzung and Trevor that is used n 5th semester). For that part be sure to do all the practice questions that they hand out and the ones in the related chapters in Katzung. Some questions very similar to Katzung appeared on our mini. If you are not physics minded then you better go to class because this will be a little difficult for you. For the ANS you should go to Dr. Nardell’s class. She does a very good job of teaching the material and starting you out without having to memorize too many drugs. She does expect you to get up the standard but she understands it’s tough when you get started and she will work with you. Again do ALL of her questions and the questions in Katzung. I have not gotten to 4th semester as I am writing this but my girlfriend has told me that you should learn ANS pharm really well and that will come back to help you when you go on to other systemic things.
That is about all the advice I can think to give for second semester. If you have more questions find an upper semester friend or look for me on campus if you know who I am.
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