I want KINDERrrrssss

I'm so tired I cannot speak.

Try having 3 one-hour lectures every morning, plus either a 3-hour lab practical or computer-aided-learning classes or workshops every afternoon. That is for 5 days per week. And every week of 3 months. You may say "Bah! What? 6 hours only ah? We working from 9 to 5 one wor.... ". Actually, if you think about it, our daily timetable is exactly the same as any normal office-hours - maybe even longer... sometimes due to PBLs and unfinished CAL sessions that had to be continued outside the schedule.

In one hour, you are bombarded with spectacularly new and alien medical and chemical terms, unreasonably lengthy and complicated mechanisms, mode of actions and chemical reactions, and stupid and unnecessarily detailed properties of herbal plants.

I accept not without grudge our responsibility as pharmacy students - to learn and train ourselves to think quickly and act wisely. What I don't understand is, why does the programme coordinators feel obliged to cram so much into 3 months... or so much into only 4 years? Why rush things if their aim is to produce quality pharmacists? What is the point of cramming so much work, portfolios and what-not, if we don't even have the time to sit down and revise the day's lectures? I really don't understand. I'd rather have 5 or 6 years of the course and have sufficient time to properly study and revise and absorb and remember and be able to relate to what I have learned, instead of running behind time, trying to write 7-paged lab reports while worrying about not revising Alkaloids 2 lecture because the next day, there'll be an Alkaloid 3 lecture.

I don't care already la. I'm not going to sacrifice my sleep anymore, like I did (somewhat) in Sem 2 (whence I slept for only 7 hours, despite 9 hours being best for optimising my concentration levels).

One thing I do agree to and highly support the programme for is the PBL (Problem Based Learning). I learn a lot... a LOT from the sessions. Rather, I searched and read through a LOT of information and learnt LOADS from what I've accumulated. I particularly love to find out the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of each disease, and relate the drugs and medication, how each class of drug works to treat the disease or its symptoms. :) What I'm not too enthusiastic about are the lab tests and diagnosis, although I agree that those are essential while studying a case.

*Signing off. Have to get to bed. If not, tomorrow I won't be able to take in a word of Dr OCE's Drug Metabolism lecture.*