Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Module reviews part 2

So I shall do my last 2 reviews on LSM 3224 and LSM3212. Funny how I preferred Cardio but ended up doing better for Molecular basis of human diseases. But oh well, things just don't go the way we want them to, right?

LSM3224: Molecular Basis of human diseases

Hmm this module really started off very badly, because of the change in lecturer and the order of the lectures as well, so the first part was covered by Dr Wong BS. He covered atherosclerosis, diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome. So he kind of expects us to know everything like things from immunology such as flow cytometry, blotting (western/southern/northern) because they are used in experimental procedures, and a lot more things that he will say 'I assume all of you know..', which we clearly do not know at all. So I guess I didn't learn much from the lectures. Instead I read the lecture notes many times but guess it didn't really help as well, since he tends to test application based questions like data analysis. So better to just know the concepts. Not much need to memorise. 

Prof Sharma covered muscle diseases. Well I guess she's rather good but I was confused reading the notes because almost all the diseases involved ROS and myostatin. She also tends to test some application questions so better to know the concepts. Both these profs' questions were short essay questions so it was quite difficult to study. 

And the last part of the module was my favourite! Guess what it is... It's cancer! Hahaha okay I sound so full of nonsense and a sadist. So yes, it was covered by Prof Yeong FM, my favourite lecturer, because she is really good. I won't go into detail about how good she is, but her notes were the easiest to study and her explanation was really clear and she really takes the effort to make sure that you understand. Okay and my liking for this part was partially fuelled by LSM4243 since it is all about tumor biology. Didn't study much for this part of the module because I already knew the basics like tumor suppressors such as P53 and oncogenes such as myc/bcr-abl. And Prof Yeong's questions was just 5 MCQs, true false type with negative marking. Quite tricky, I would say. But she gave us an assignment as well, and that was quite difficult because it involved reading papers and coming up with your own conclusion. 

Assessment was 25% lab reports, 15% assignment and 60% final exam. I really spent a lot of time doing the lab reports, considering the high percentage of 10% each for 2 reports and 5% for the last. And I guess everyone does well for the reports so better to put in more effort for them. Lab sessions were quite enjoyable for me because I had funny bench mates so they made the incubation times less boring. 

Overall, I would recommend this module because it's rather interesting, now that it's over and I'm no longer stuck studying about sarcopenia, obesity and everything else. 

Getting lazy so I'll do Cardiopulmonary system another day(:

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