Tests

Students expect tests.  It just would be nice if I didn't have four in a four-day span.  Maybe they all fell together since we are about half way through the semester.  Wednesday I had a test in Sociology which covered socialization (i.e. how we learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior), status, roles and social interaction. 

Thursday began with a test in math on the most boring chapter yet this semester which covered solving and graphing linear equations as well as finding the slope.  I hope the following chapters are a bit more challenging.  From there I took a test in Psychology which covered two chapters on learning and memory.  I learned some things which would make studying easier if I actually put them into practice.  The professor asked us to mentally picture each of the words that he was going to read us.  The more crazy the picture the more memorable it is.  Normally we can hold about 7 things in our short-term memory but I was able to remember 19 of the 21 because of the mental pictures I placed in various rooms of my house.  Somehow that is much easier to do with words like rainbow, gloves and sofa than it is words like vomer, lacrimal, zygoma, maxially, and palatine.  I can picture a rainbow but never having actually seen that vomer bone in anyone's face I have a hard time actually picturing it.  I guess I'll need to pull out another technique that has something to do with the associations I make with those words.  Let's see vomer reminds me of Homer Simpson.  Maybe I can remember it by seeing Homer sticking out from under someone's nose - as the vomer is a narrow wall of bone that forms the inferior part of the nasal septum and continues posteriorly to join the sephenoid bone.  (If you didn't understand that last sentence a medical terminology class would help.)  Now where's the sephenoid bone? and what could I possibly associate with that? ...

Actually, the skeleton and muscles are for the test I need to take by next weekend.  Yesterday's test was on dermatology.  Learning the parts of the skin was a whole lot easier.  I still managed to get a few wrong on the online (and thus open book) test.  I do have a bone to pick (no pun intended) with the teacher on a couple of her answers.  One is clearly wrong as far as I'm concerned and the other was a very poorly worded true/false question if she's going to say that it is true.  So, I'll be asking her about that in class tomorrow.

This week promises to be easier (if you don't count learning the names of all the bones and muscles as well as all the things that could possibly go wrong with both) especially since I only have 3 days of class.  Even college students get to benefit from MEA (which is basically Minnesota in-service days).  I'm looking forward to a trip to Iowa to see some cornfields and help my niece celebrate her 8th birthday.  Oh, and to see Mom and Dad too.