Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Hippo Birdie, Two Ewes


Happy birthday to me! I'm 43.

First class meeting last night was spiffy! The professor is great--knows lots of things from many different angles, clinical as well as research (I think he said his Ph.D. was on calcium channels, and now he's working on AI among other things; cool!) which made for some fascinating answers to questions. I did not, as it turns out, need to know all of neuroanatomy in advance. Phew! It slowly dawned on me that there is a difference, probably, between expectations at undergrad level vs. grad level. Met two other women who are not teenagers. A good night out, on the whole.

I think I messed up my directions last post - I meant "bottom of brain", re the cranial nerves (of which there are 12!) (and the one sticking out from the top first in the sequence *after* the optic nerves I think controls mouth and tongue movement!) (but I could be wrong!), which is not ventral actually; that would be, um, caudal, I think. (blushes) At least I can accurately recall the difference between a sagittal section and a coronal section. Gack.

Anyway, one of the nice things is that almost every question asked in class was really interesting, as opposed to annoyingly stupid. Perhaps that's the self-selection inherent in the subject matter--probably not a lot of people interested in neurobiology are total fools. Maybe. I feel extremely capable of mastering this material and am shooting for astonishingly high exam scores.

So...I will probably go to class Wed. instead of knitting group, 'cause that's when we work through some Nernst calculations and I get to hear the full explanation of the equation, doubtless including the mysterious 2.303. And if not, I can ask.

Back to self-indulgent sloth, now. Happy birthday to me!

13 Comments:

Blogger Julie said...

Many happy returns of the day young'un!

10:39 AM  
Blogger Carole Knits said...

Happy Birthday!

11:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday! Is there a Neurobiology for Dummies that I could read so I can understand your fourth paragraph. I think I've got a pretty good handle on the second one. ;-)

I'm off to google 'Nernst calculations'.

11:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wishing you a very Happy Birthday! We will miss you on Wednesday.

11:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday!!
Karen
http://nothingbutknit.blog-city.com/

1:53 PM  
Blogger Jena said...

Happy birthday!

We'll miss you on Wednesday, but have fun with the Nurnst. :)

2:06 PM  
Blogger Mel said...

Hippo birdies, indeed!

2:27 PM  
Blogger Amber said...

Happy Birthday!!!!!

2:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Kathleen

4:31 PM  
Blogger Lucia said...

Happy birthday!!! You're younger than I am. This probably has nothing to do with my difficulty in apprehending anything you write about neurobiology. (In my defense, I've been in training class all day, so my brain is already overstuffed. Yeah, sure, that's it.)

5:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and many happy returns. I hope you have had a fully indulgent day. Second, the axes are dorsal-ventral, rostral-caudal, and medial-lateral, but damned if I know where the optic nerve lies. Third, 2.303 turns up when when converting ln to log (http://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/echem/nernst.html). Fourth, those R thingies ROCK. Remember that there is chirality (LEFT, in fact, meaning that GWB and his policies are highly unnatural). Fifth, are you sure you had enough cake?

8:19 PM  
Blogger Lorena said...

Happy birthday, wonderful!

10:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy birthday!

11:51 PM  

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