"We are going to die, thus - we are the lucky ones"

Inspirational words from Richard Dawkins on the fact that we're the lucky ones to die, and more importantly - live...

Holding a Heart

This week is all about the heart, a subject very close to my own heart. Even though today's lecture didn't give me much new knowledge I spent the time drawing, 1,5 hour result below.
I can happily say that I handed in my drawings to a Professor in the czech part of the anatomy department who obviously are interested. I hope he will like the originals and I'm curious to hear what he thinks and what he wants to do with them.

During Wednesday's anatomy practical we spent a lot of time in the dissection room studying the authentic heart. Holding it in your palm is a strange but exciting feeling.

As I said - it's all about the heart...

Out of the Ordinary

A lot of things make me happy:
Waking up early to and get chills from the cold air and then taking a hot shower, having a good breakfast, drawing while listening to relaxing music, seeing the sun set in the horizon along the Swedish west coast, drinking a beer on the cliffs with good company - I can make the list long.
But last Saturday Kristýna completely gave me a new definition of the word "happiness".

I won't give away any details here but believe me when I say that it sure was a surprise to. She took me down to a calm place by the river in the middle of the city light drenched Prague. There I got to open my early birthday present.
She put a box in my hands and when I opened it I found myself speechless.
I usually don't get presents with such a personal touch to them - I believe me and Kristýna share the same frequency.

No, I wont get lost... To be honest, I know exactly where we are...

Beginning of 2nd Semester

There is a wide gap from this date to the next. Almost as much as a month. I guess the urge to write come in periods.
I could write a long recap of the time I spent in Sweden after finishing my biophysics and first aid exams but I believe this photo above summarize it all up pretty damn good.

After spending some quality time with Kristýna (yes, love is in the air) in my frozen west coast home town we had to kiss goodbye and go separate ways again. At that point we hadn't been apart for too long - only a couple of weeks due to her Erasmus exchange semester beginning in Helsinki, Finland.


I went back to Prague for the second semester knowing that I had to step up my game a bit in order to keep up with the pace.
Currently I've got through two anatomy tests with good results and also increased my studies of the histology. I believe that I'm back in my previous study-gym-eat-sleep routine and that I'll be able to keep it for the rest of the semester.

There's of course a lot more to tell but I'll continue from here on...

Medical Dictionary for Word

I got really tired of all the red underlining correction due to incomplete dictionaries in my Microsoft Word 2007 while writing the medical report for my seminar on Wednesday so I took a minute off to search for an add-on to make it correct it properly.

I didn't find one that's legit for MS Word directly but I found out that there's another way of doing it.
MS Word use files called *.dic which is simply a text file with words lined up alphabetically.
There's even an option to add you own dictionaries stored in the folder:

In Windows 7
\\PC-root(C:)\Users\'Yourname'\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Uproof\

By downloading this medical dictionary to your PC, unzipping it with WinRar or WinZip etc., and putting it into this specific folder, or equally located in Windows XP or Vista, you can open Word and go to the path looking something like this:
Word Start Button > Word Options > Language Options > Own Dictionaries

There you may import your own dictionary and by adding the file you just saved you're done with a fresh word list of medical terminology.

My new heart

It's so nice to be home, breath some west coast air and see all my folks.
Dad picked me up from the airport and we drove back home chatting about pretty much everything.
At first when I planned these two weeks of "vacation" I wasn't sure if going home was a good idea, but I'm not regretting taking the flight back home because when you see the family you understand how much you've missed them.
I won't forget to study, been going over the circulatory system once already, and my plan is to finish off the upcoming three systems.

I've had some time to relax and I've been continuing watching Gray's Anatomy where I left off and I've also been drawing - just finished the conducting system of the heart. I've spent almost 1½ hours and I must say I'm satisfied with the result, the shading was hard but I'm getting better. The base is from Netter's, conductive system of the heart:

the Heart

Winter Semester finally came to an end

There's a thing or two that happened and now I got the time to put together a neat summary.

I left off by telling you I failed my first biophysics exam. A lot of different parameters influence the examination and this was my first encounter with this type of examination.
I could write many positive things about it, but more importantly also a lot of negative things - in a constructive way - although I wont bore anyone with such details unless they are interested.
The following week I dedicated to the gym, the booklet and to sleep.
I studied a lot and threw the notes that I've been studied from in the trash bin. Instead I changed perspective and started to break down the green booklet thoroughly. It helped a lot and that's just another proof that there's no point of taking short-cuts.

I rebooked the exam to the upcoming Thursday and this time I felt ready. My questions was good and I switched tactics. Instead of leaving out knowledge on the preparation paper I wrote a lot, and didn't leave anything out, even if is was just remotely connected to my topic.
I believe that when the examiner saw my papers he understood I knew at least something and therefore didn't push me hard.
It took me approximately a minute to explain the first topic; Light Propagation, properties and light spectrum. He heard me out and just asked a follow up question in optics, one of my favourite subjects among the biophysics material - which means that I didn't have much trouble answering that.
I kept talking, in contrast to last time where he did the talking, and the next topic, Particle Accelerators, went through the same procedure with a follow up question on magnetism.
The last topic was about Phase Border Phenomena and I had trouble remembering the different subjects under that topic which left my paper rather blank.
I tried to explain in a non scientific way and the good thing about this examiner is that he is not impossible in any way, especially since we had such a good discussion up until now.
He guided me through it and dragged some knowledge out of my head and the result ended up in a passing credit which made all the effort during these 2½ weeks worth it all.

Next up was celebrating at the Asian sushi restaurant that just opened up around the corner while simultaneously studying for the next exam in First Aid.
First Aid is another course that sort of just have been there as a side dish not really contributing to the meal, so to speak, which is a shame because I really like rice, or potatoes.
It was time to show of some military paramedic training - well, at least that's what I thought in the beginning of the course.
I thought I'd remembered it all, and also know it all - and I was proven wrong badly.
There are always updates and in this topic, as in everything else, repetition is the key.
I think I could have skipped out on the course by giving the examiners my documents from the Army but now when the exam is over (I passed even if I got the hardcore examiner) I'm rather happy I didn't.

It seems that I haven't been taking any short-cuts lately, and I start to wonder if I will ever be able to do that in the future.
When it comes to biophysics, unfortunately and to my utter surprise, cheating is to something worth considering and what scares me even more is the fact that it is to some also a "level up" in the social group interaction.

Regardless the time spent I can now happily conclude that I made it through the winter semester and that I'm excited to begin the summer semester. It's a true fact that studying anatomy will be a blessing to the brain after the massive texts about heavy atoms, quarks and gamma rays.

And, at last, I'll end this with a nice way to confuse your teacher:
(more nice exam answers at smosh.com)