Test Update!

Good news! My teacher accidentally keyed in one of the answers incorrectly on the scantron machine thingy, thus I got one more answer right....bringing my score up to 100.5%. Yay! I'm definately not disappointed about that in any way.

Wish me luck. I have a quiz today that I absolutely did not study for. I had good intentions of studying all day yesterday, but got sidetracked by a new book and by "The Biggest Loser." I studied a bit today; hopefully it's enough! Strangely, I don't feel all that concerned about it so maybe I know the material better than I think. Ha Ha! Wishful thinking!

Later!

I Got My Test Back

As I expected, I did really well on my first A&P test...99.5%!!! I have to admit, even though you all will think I'm nuts & will want to strangle me, I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get 100%. I know, that's so lame, but that's me. You know you love me!

LAB PRACTICAL NUMERO UNO

The histology lab practical was super easy! All the slides that were shown were ones that we'd prevously seen & reviewed with the prof., so that was really helpful. There were 29 questions plus 2 bonus questions, and I got them all right!!! YAY! The next practical is bones, so I bought my flashcards today & I'm ready to start memorizing. Without looking, I know there are 206 bones in the human body!

Ugg...It's Always Nerves with Me!

I hate that I get so nervous for every single test. It never gets better even though I always do well. I don't know, maybe i need the nerves in order to do well; I think if I didn't get nervous I'd become complacent. Still, I could do with a bit less nerves! Anyway, I've got my histology practical today & I've been studying slides like crazy. They pretty much all look the same, so I'm worried, but hopeful that I can pull my usual "A." Now if I could just remember where to find all the tissues I'd be in great shape!

It's Over...

I'm all finished with my first A&P test, it's over, relief...

The test was definately not as difficult as I was thinking it was going to be. I was never worried about the multiple choice questions, but I was letting the 2 short answer/essay questions freak me out. In part the freak out was due to the study focus questions that we were given. They made me think I was going to need to know every minute detail about everything...that was very stressful, and not the case. But all is well that ends well. I did have to guess on two multiple choice questions, but I had no difficulty with the short answers, and was able to answer 3 of 4 bonus questions. Let's keep our fingers crossed, I want no less than 95%.

Next up, Lab Practical Exam, Monday, Covering Histology...my weekend is sure looking fun!

MELANIN

I found out some neat things about melanin this week, and just thought I'd pass it on. In case you don't already know, melanin is the main pigment which comprises your skin color (your hair color too, but today I'm talking about skin). What's interesting is that all humans produce the same relative number of melanocytes (melanin producing cells), regardless of their skin color. What counts in determining skin color is the relative kind and amount of melanin made and retained. Darker skinned people produce many more and darker melanin pigments than do fair skinned people, and these pigments are retained longer by the keratin cells in the skin. Another interesting thing is that melanin is a major player in protecting us from UV rays. Your melanin producing cells send out melanin pigments in vesicles that migrate toward keratin cells in your skin. Once located, these vesicles hover over the keratin cells, protecting them from the sun by absorbing light and dissipating it off as heat. By doing this, melanin is protecting the DNA in the keratin cells from becoming damaged and mutated, which can cause some types of skin cancer. Other pigments that contribute to skin color are carotene, from the foods you eat (yes, you can turn yourself orange by eating too many carrots!), and hemoglobin from your blood, which gives fair skinned people a pinkish tint!

NERVES....

I've got my first big A&P exam tomorrow and I am so nervous! There is so much information and I feel way behind on my studying. Also, I keep freaking out about my lab practical exam next week, and that's disrupting my concentration for this exam. We did some review/practice yesterday in class; It seems I really need to focus my studying on the tissues; especially knowing where different tissues are found in the body & all the different cell types found in connective tissues. On a more positive note, I received another 10/10 on the quiz I took last week, no surprise there. Super study session starts now...

P.S. Check out my other blog! www.bblivinlarge.blogspot.com

Hooray For Connective Tissue!

So I really overstudied for yesterday's quiz...no joke! It was so easy, I don't think I needed to have studied at all. Everyone on the class finished in less than 10 minutes! I am absolutely, 100% positive that I aced this quiz. Now its time to start getting ready for next week's exam, which will cover chapters 1-5 (Intro stuff, chemistry/biology, cells, histology, & skin)...that's a ton of information to remember, but fortunately the instructor makes really good study guides that tell you exactly what you need to study. So that's what I will be focusing on this weekend.

As for lab yesterday, we did exactly what I was expecting...we looked at all sorts of connective tissue, muscle tissue, nervous tissue, etc. Here are some great pictures of what I was looking at yesterday.

Areolar Connective Tissue

Adipose Connective Tissue

Reticular Connective Tissue

Dense Regular Connective Tissue & Dense Irregular Connective Tissue

Hyaline Cartilage, Fibrocartilage, & Elastic Cartilage

Bone Tissue & Nervous Tissue

Smooth Muscle, Cardiac Muscle, & Skeletal Muscle

Blood Tissue (The blue spot is a White Blood Cell)


That's All Folks!

Quiz Update & Other Stuff

I scored a 10 out of 10 on last week's quiz, so YAY! A perfect score is always great news...especially since I thought I made a stupid error. Turns out I didn't! I have another quiz today. I am definately a little less confident about the quiz material this time; there are a lot of seemingly insignificant details that I must remember. I believe the majority of this quiz is going to be covering epithelial & connective tissues, and all things associated with each. There may be some stuff on the cell life cycle & mitosis, since we hadn't quite covered that in time for the last quiz. I'm good with mitosis, it's all the tissue details I'm have some trouble remembering. I think I'll do fine though...

For lab on Monday, we looked at a gagillion slides of epithelial tissue...simple squamous, simple cuboidal, simple columnar, stratifed squamous, cuboidal, & columnar, transitional, etc... Today we are moving on to slides of connective tissue. Sure to be another fun filled lab!

Ciao!

One Quiz Under the Belt & Another Duplicated Lab

It turns out my confidence for yesterday's quiz was not misguided, I believe I did really well. If I made any errors it was only through haste. For some reason I had it in my head that I was taking a really long time to finish, and that everyone was waiting just for me. So I started scribbling as fast as I could, and I think I may have switched two very similar words around...which was a totally stupid, preventable mistake. Hopefully I didn't actually make that error, but if I did, well that's the way the cookie crumbles & it'll teach me to slow down.

I'm very disappointed in yesterday's lab; it was another that I have already done, and not a very interesting one at that. We had to get two deshelled eggs (when you put a whole egg in vinegar to soak, the shell dissolves completely and you're left with only the membanous egg) and place them in two different solutions; one a hypertonic solution & the other a hypotonic solution. We then weighed the eggs at various intervals to see if they had taken on or lost water weight. The point of this lab is to show how different types of solutions effect the diffusion of water in and out of a membrane. On the plus side, we did do a slight variation in that we also looked at sheep's blood under the microscope. We prepared three different slides; on the first we put the blood in an isotonic solution, thus the blood cells retained their normal shape. On the second slide we put the blood in a hypertonic solution in which the cells noticeably shriveled (crenated). On the third slide we put the blood in a hypotonic solution in which the cells swelled and eventually burst (lysed). Overall, this was much more interesting than weighing the eggs.

Sorry, no pictures of this one! I didn't have to do any drawings.

FIRST QUIZ TODAY!

WISH ME LUCK!!! I feel pretty confident about this quiz since it should only be covering review stuff from Biology...which I just took & thus is still fresh in my head. I've got another lab tonight too; details later!