Week 3: Day 3
So first of all, I'm in such a good mood today!
Friday was filled with a great balance of productivity and fun. I received notification in the mail that my tutor funding had been approved (finally!) and so I met with my tutor. It was really good because she helped me devise a priority plan of how to dive into my course materials. You would think this sort of thing would be obvious to me this late in the game, but it's not. Anyway, so seeing her was super helpful and reinvigorating.
Then I had my Neurological Disorders class, which is always interesting. We talked about excitability, ions, and excitotoxicity. For example, a lot of neurological disorders have been linked to too much glutamate or glutamate handling problems in the brain. Sometimes ions like calcium or magnesium may also play a role (especially if the electrical potential is being considered as a contributing factor), but it seems like the key culprit is glutamate. In class I asked "But why is there so much work being done in creating drugs which act as glutaminergic antagonists, rather than just strengthening the inhibitory pathway (augmenting GABAergic neurons)?" and my prof said because even though amping up the inhibitory pathway would negate the effects downstream of the excitatory pathway, it is common for the excess glutamate to in itself be toxic. Meaning that you can't just negate its effects by turning on the antagonist pathway, you actually need to reduce the activity of the excitatory pathway. Got it.
I did some more studying at school and then went to a friend's house party. Made sure I got home by midnight and woke up at 9am today! Go me!
So today, though I spent 6 hours "getting up" (damn you Facebook! No no I actually did other things too, like buy groceries and make some low carb protein bars), I've already gotten 3 hours of homework done, and I plan to do another 3 more. Aside from this dinner break, I had set my interval stopwatch to time out a 1 hour interval followed by a 10 minute interval, so that I can spend the long interval studying and the short interval doing something else. Knowing that I have that 10-minute break to look forward to really kicks me into gear and sticking to my homework. The doddling can be left for the break. ;)
Unfortunately, I am spending all this time catching up, but I don't mind. I am confident that I will get it done and be able to stay on top of things shortly. :)
Friday was filled with a great balance of productivity and fun. I received notification in the mail that my tutor funding had been approved (finally!) and so I met with my tutor. It was really good because she helped me devise a priority plan of how to dive into my course materials. You would think this sort of thing would be obvious to me this late in the game, but it's not. Anyway, so seeing her was super helpful and reinvigorating.
Then I had my Neurological Disorders class, which is always interesting. We talked about excitability, ions, and excitotoxicity. For example, a lot of neurological disorders have been linked to too much glutamate or glutamate handling problems in the brain. Sometimes ions like calcium or magnesium may also play a role (especially if the electrical potential is being considered as a contributing factor), but it seems like the key culprit is glutamate. In class I asked "But why is there so much work being done in creating drugs which act as glutaminergic antagonists, rather than just strengthening the inhibitory pathway (augmenting GABAergic neurons)?" and my prof said because even though amping up the inhibitory pathway would negate the effects downstream of the excitatory pathway, it is common for the excess glutamate to in itself be toxic. Meaning that you can't just negate its effects by turning on the antagonist pathway, you actually need to reduce the activity of the excitatory pathway. Got it.
I did some more studying at school and then went to a friend's house party. Made sure I got home by midnight and woke up at 9am today! Go me!
So today, though I spent 6 hours "getting up" (damn you Facebook! No no I actually did other things too, like buy groceries and make some low carb protein bars), I've already gotten 3 hours of homework done, and I plan to do another 3 more. Aside from this dinner break, I had set my interval stopwatch to time out a 1 hour interval followed by a 10 minute interval, so that I can spend the long interval studying and the short interval doing something else. Knowing that I have that 10-minute break to look forward to really kicks me into gear and sticking to my homework. The doddling can be left for the break. ;)
Unfortunately, I am spending all this time catching up, but I don't mind. I am confident that I will get it done and be able to stay on top of things shortly. :)