Physiology I

'''There has been a big change since writing this, the department in charge of teaching has been changed, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. It does mean that the following information is out of date. However you can use it to compare with the new department and some parts may still be useful.'''

This is possibly the most interesting subject studied so far, however, the department is easy the most useless. During the semesters you will learn about several systems of the body:
 * Signal transduction - 2 weeks
 * Cardio vascular - many weeks
 * Respiration - 1 week!!!!

With 3 x 2 hour lectures and a 5.5 hour test/seminar/lab it takes up a lot of your time.
 * Renal - 2 weeks first semester
 * Renal - 1 week second semester
 * Endocrinology - many weeks
 * Neurology - 3-4 weeks

The good parts:

Lots of this subject will be repeated over and over so if you do well at the beginning it will help you throughout the year

There are crossovers into antomy and biochemistry, this subject will help you with them and vice versa.

Some of the lab are genuinely useful and you will remember them for a long time

Now for all the bad parts:

For some unknown reason there are seminars each week to discuss the topics of the previous week after the exam on the same topics. So normally one of two things will occur: Plus due to the crappy quality of the questions, if you study extra material you will be at a disadvantage, if you keep to the lecture slides, you will be at a disadvantage, if you are native English speaker you will be at a disadvantage. The department is always right no matter what evidence you give, you can try and argue your case but you will maybe win once a semester.
 * 1) You will study very hard and get top marks in the test and then you will sit for 70 minutes while you are told everything you already know and have studied
 * 2) You will study very hard and you will misunderstand, misinterpret or just miss a topic and you will spend 70 min having someone tell you why you were wrong and showing you that if you had had the seminar before the test you would have understood the topic perfectly

The only way to be correct for every question asked is to be psychic and know exactly what the examiners are thinking when they write the questions no matter how much you study. This department loves subjective questions that have no place in science

How to pass
There are a number of study guides for this course and I strongly suggest you try to get a copy of them, personally I preferred the Marius notes and these do seem to be the most popular however there are others, pick the one that works best for you or use all of them.

The recommended books are very interesting and useful clinically but you will not always have time to read them, plus they go into a lot more detail than is required by the department

In the summer before starting the year try to memorise the following G protein pathways: These will come up all through the year and you will have to memorise them in the second week but doing it beforehand will help you a lot.
 * Gs
 * Gi
 * Gq/11
 * G12/13

Reread the following topic from biophysics: They will be used throughout the year and will not be explained in detail again.
 * Flow
 * Thermodynamics
 * ECG
 * Diffusion

The weekly tests consist of two parts Seminar tests are usually like biophysics tests, some open questions, some multiple choice questions, a graph and maybe a calculation. 7 - 10 questions with 10 - 13 points available, 90 - 100% = 5, >60% = 1
 * Seminar test
 * Lab test

Lab tests will have 3-4 open questions

Only the top 10 out of 12 weekly tests are used to calculate your bonus points so use the two extras to focus on other subjects when there are midterms

If there is a choice between passing a midterm from another subject and a weekly test, always choose midterm, generally they are must pass

Weekly tests are important not only for the bonus points that you get for the semi final and final, you can fail all of them if you want but trying to study the entire semesters material in the exam period will be very difficult.

Weekly test questions are based on the lectures but they are often written badly and it sometimes can be difficult to choose the correct answer because: Some teachers will accept that the question is bad, most won't care and the ultimate decision lies with the head of the department, 99% of the time, he won't care.
 * There are more correct answers than the question asks for, in which case you have to pick the most correct (aka, be psychic)
 * None of the answers are correct, in which case you have to pick the least incorrect (aka, be psychic)
 * If you are a native English speaker, then the wording of the questions can imply several answers (be psychic)

Lab test questions have been answered by people and you can get copies but some teachers will add their own personal questions or will slightly change the lab questions so do not just memorise the answers

If you are against animal testing or don't want to be involved in the live animal lab then I suggest you miss this one.

The lab exam results will help you in your bonus points for both semesters so it is worth spending some time to get a good grade

Learn all the parameters you can find off the department's website, they love asking these useless questions in the semi final, not so much in the final

The final seems to have more questions that require you to understand the material and work out abstact questions rather than pure memory

If you get to oppurtunity to do a case report in the second semester, do it. They are usually in the quieter times so you will have time to study it well plus if it is good enough you you will get a 5 for that weeks lab plus the oppurtunity to replace a grade with a 5 anytime throughout the semester. This is pricess for the last 2 weeks of the semester.

If you have studied for the weekly tests all year then go for the first final exam, you will need to to the minimum of studying and you can get one of the big three out of the way very early.

The exams
12 weekly tests per semester:

1 Lab tes per semestert:

Any of the tests that have been preformed during the semester will be tested on unless they require special preparation.

Semi Final and Final:

3 parts:

3 x 30 multiple choice questions

The difficulties
The expectation for the students to fact check test questions is shocking, its bad enough trying to learn all the material for all the weekly tests, its even worse having to guess whether the question is correct because there is no match for what you studied

Some real shitty teachers will select questions that they know are not covered in the guides but are on lecture slides

Some shitty teachers will ask before the weekly tests if there are any questions on anything not understood regarding the topic of the test and will refuse to answer any questions on specific topics if there is a question on the test on that topic. Therefore making this charade useless

Trying not to spend too much time studying for the weekly tests can be difficult, especially when midterms roll along

Respiration is a huge subject that is done in 1 week around midterm time, try to leave one of your 2 low scoring weekly tests for this, most people do not have the time to do well on this

Getting the motivation to do a sim lab, they are all boring

Conclusion
Great subject, crap department and the semi final grade will not give you an indication of your ability as much as you lab oral test will, the final is more useful. Memorising equations, numbers and graphs in the first semester will be useless clinically but being able to logically answer why parameters will change and in what way like you will do in the final will help massively. It really is a split between the two semesters.