PBL Tutor Training - Playing Med-Student

Today I had my first of two PBL Tutor Training workshops. What are PBL tutor training workshops you might ask? Well, the Med school at UBC teaches their undergraduate med students using PBL (problem based learning). The students are put into PBL groups (around 7 students), and they are given a tutor whose job is to facilitate the learning process of the students in the PBL group. The tutor's role is not to teach, but to give direction - to aid the student's own learning. These PBL tutors may be physicians, instructors, or researchers, and they need to be trained on how to tutor the PBL tutorial. In order to train these tutors, they need mock med-school students. That's where I came in. They asked students in the pre-med/pre-dental club to come and help the Faculty of Medicine train their PBL tutors. It involes 1 hr of training, 6 hrs of tutorial (split over two sessions), and approximately 1-2hrs of independent study between tutorial one and two. For all this I get $100. Not too shabby, if I can say so myself.
So, as I mentioned, today I had my first session. The problem we were given was about a man in the ER who had just been in a motor vehicle accident. He was having trouble breathing, and the problem seemed to be focused on his left chest. All we did was work through the problem, taking the information we were given, trying to figure out what the learning issues were (things which we needed to go and learn/research), formulating a hypothesis, and asking what further information could we use. We made it half way through the case (page 2 of 3). So now we've been sent off to study up for the Thursday session. I really like this PBL system of learning: whenever I take responsibility for my own learning, I find that I actually learn and understand material, as opposed to passive listening in lectures or passive reading. This is also a nice taste of what preclerkship at most med schools will be like; as far as I know all the major Canadian medical schools have gone to the problem-based learning method. All in all, well worth it. And did I say a hundred bucks=]

Oh, and my money is down on pneumothorax - collapsed lung. However, as the training told us, the point of these PBL sessions is to lead students to study the physiology and anatomy of the system(s) involved. The clinical aspect is nice, but not the real focus. But still, my money is down.

Cheers for now,
Afra

Argg! GPA Insanity

I need to maintain a 3.8 GPA to be competitive for med school admission.

A THREE POINT F'IN EIGHT!!!

Shoot me now.

Year one and two are over. Those marks are set in stone: I'm squeaking by (barely, depending on weighting policies of different med schools). The up side is that really, my third year is the last year med school admissions will look at. By the time fourth year rolls around, I'll already have submitted my transcript and application to med schools (like September/October is the deadline). So this year I really need to shine in school. Yarg!!

Shoot me now.

Welcome to 20 - Thanks to all!

Officially no longer a teenager. I don't think anyone has called me a teen since I left high school, but hey, at least now you can't call me one.

I had a great time last night. Thanks Eug for setting up the restaurant and reservations and stuff, I really appreciated that bro. And thank you all who joined us; I hope you guys had a good time with some great food and wonderful wine. Hopefully your bank accounts can recover from last night.

Anyways I'm off to UBC for a seminar on admission to Medical Schools.

See ya'll around,
Kev

It Has Begun

I finally went and picked up an MCAT preparation book. The thing is a monster, over a thousand really, really, big pages. And my, is there a lot of material to be covered. Most of it seems familiar: stuff from high school and lower division sciences. I think most of my studying for the MCAT will consist of re-lighting memory pathways in my brain which have fallen into disuse.

I have even prepared a plan of attack. I'm going to spend time each weekday (Mon-Fri) studying a portion of the material. I hope to go through everything once every four weeks. That means, come exam time in April, I will know this stuff cold. Of course, that is the ideal. My first four week trial will let me know how well it works in reality. I think after Christmas I'll start with practice full length exams. That will take up a few of my Saturdays, but what better way to prep for the real thing than doing copies. By the way, the exam itself takes about 8 hrs (including break time), so it's a test of endurance if anything.

So it has begun.

On a side note, you won't be able to call me a teenager in an hour and 15 mins. Yay!

Cheers,
Kev

Premonition

Ever have that feeling that everything is going to just fall apart: that foreboding feeling that everything good in your life will unravel itself, and that nothing in the future will ever go well for you. Like this whole dream-world you call your life will vanish before your eyes and leave nothing but bleak darkness. As if Fate itself has conspired against you, and is only waiting for the most opportune moment to make its opening strike.

What an aweful feeling.

...I'm sure some famous psychologist is rolling in his/her grave right now.

Cheers.

Goodbye Oh-So-Full Weekend

A busy weekend has come to an end. As most of you know, our church had its annual Transit Rally on Saturday. This year was a bit different from the previous years as we did it in an 'Amazing Race' style. So, there were a number of stations set up, and the teams had to proceed linearly through each station. Ren and I were given Stadium/Chinatown station to do. Friday was spent on making up questions...and my were there a lot of em. But I rather like the story we came up with (of utter embarrassment to me). And we did get some rather creative endings to the tale from the groups. This was all followed by a nice BBQ at the park, with free food might I add. And after this, Vince and I finally saw a movie we've been meaning to see for a while: Downfall. As the title hints, the movie is about the downfall of Hitler. It was well done, and I quite enjoyed it. Political genius - yes; military stategist: definitely not!

Sunday brought with it communion Sunday, always the best of our services. Why we don't do communion every week, I don't know. After that, I had the joy of giving an introduction to the book of Judges. I think we're gonna have a great time discussing Judges. As common to many narratives in the Hebrew Bible, it is full of unsettling things: things which make us squirm with uneasiness. Good fun...that is, if they don't shut me down for teaching like this. Heh.

I closed off my Sunday by heading to the mall to indulge a bit. My chequing account has had an unnaturally high balance as of late, and I felt like feeding even more money to the great multinational corporations of this world. The up side is, I have some new clothes. My poor wardrobe has been asking for an upgrade for some time now. This should shut it up for a while.

Anyways, everyone have a great week.

As the old liturgy says: the Lord be with you all.
Kev

Religious Pluralism and John Hick

I picked up a thought provoking book from the library yesterday entitled A Christian Theology of Religions by John Hick. Hick is a very well known liberal Christian theologian and philosopher of religion. I have heard of him, but this is my first time actually reading his material. I haven't had a book captivate me this much for a long time. I started reading the book on the bus ride home; by 10 o'clock I read clear through its 150 pages. I approached this book knowing that its author had a very similar history to myself: he converted to Christianity in his mid/late teens, was involved in a more conservative/fundamentalist stream of Christianity, then gradually became weary of the narrowness and lack of sympathy towards questioning thought (as he puts it in another of his books, God Has Many Names). I picked up this book to explore the path which he took. Before I give a brief summary, I should note that I would not have been able to read this book properly back in first year university. Then I was still a foundationalist (an epistemological position), conservative Christian. But at this point in time, I have learned to read others empathetically, and try to really understand what they are saying. But I digress, onto the book.

His basic argument is this:
1. Christians are in general no better than people of other great world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism). Virtues and vices are evenly exhibited by people of all religions.
2. All the great world religions call us to transcend a self-centeredness to become re-centered on God/the Real.
3. Salvation is the transformation of individuals from self-centeredness to Real-centeredness.
4. Salvation, understood this way, is actually occuring to an equal extent in many world faiths.
5. There is thus one universal source of salvific transformation at work among many of the world religions.
6. God/the Real can be authentically experienced in terms of various different human concepts: Yahweh, Holy Trinity, Allah, Brahman, Tao, Shiva, Vishnu, etc... Culture and society in a way confine the way in which we experience God/the Real.
7. God/the Real is ineffable - unable to be adequately described using human language and concepts. This explains why there is such a diversity in human experiences of God/the Real (as personal, as impersonal).
8. Thus, Christianity is one among many authentic and valid responses to God/the Real.

This is Hick's basic argument. Of course, being a summary, it does not do it proper justice. I don't present this because I myself believe it - in fact, there are a number of places in his argument which I can't quite bring myself to agree with him. But regardless, I think it is a thoughtful, honest attempt to respond to the place of Christianity among a religiously diverse world.

If your first reaction isn't to throw him (or God forbid, me) into the fires of hell as a heretic, check out the book. It isn't long and it isn't written with technical jargon. It's stimulating and well worth the read.

Cheers for now.
Kev