7th Day - the real stuff begins

We started with our first set of classes. Bioethics followed by Anatomy. Bioethics was a 2-hour boring lecture about common sense. However, I did like the clinical examples she gave. A lot of them had to do with doctors learning to be more caring to patients who have cancer, etc. She has already assigned us to read half of the bioethics manual+there's an assignment up.

Next course was Anatomy. This was also a two-part lecture. Both of the instructors taught me Anatomy last year. The first part delved into the muscles and innervation of the back. The second part delved into the formation and clinical cases of the muscles of the back and also the spinal cord. All the knowledge from FTM suddenly came back. But man-oh-man, some of the people in the class have never taken anatomy so they were not able to keep up. The first part was easy, so I didn't ask any questions. The second part, even I got lost, for some things. That's ok though because I didn't pre-read. After class, I went to her to ask a question, there were many people in line to my surprise. Everyone's questions were to clarify what she just said - as in- they didn't hear it the first time. My question was more of a curious one, "What causes the formation of hair in spina bifida?" 30% of the lecture was talking about spina bifida, how to diagnose it, the different variants of spina bifida, and how it happens. Not once did we talk about the cause. One of the landmarks was hair above the butt. She answered, "I actually never figured that out, but I can look that up for you if you give me your email address". Then, I said, "Well, technically, isn't hair just a down-growth of the epidermis?" She said, "No!" with a lot of confidence. I didn't argue with her further. After the class, I looked it up and this is what I found:

"A hair develops as the epidermis thickens and cells begin to grow down into the dermis. This invading down-growth forms a cap over some of the connective tissue to create a papilla. Cells of this papilla multiply to form the hair. As these cells are pushed up the central canal of the hair shaft, and thus farther away from their source of nourishment, they become impregnated with the hard protein-- keratin. The cells of the papilla continue to multiply and are successively filled with keratin as the hair grows. Other cells of the papilla form an internal root sheath of keratanized cells. A sebaceous gland develops from cells of the newly formed root sheath. In a fully formed hair follicle, the hair lies within a two-layered hair shaft. The sebaceous gland oils the hair and a small erector muscle is able to make the hair stand on end." (DON'T READ THE WHOLE THING)

This is a complicated way of saying that epidermal cells go down, thicken, get keratinized, and then are pushed up by a erector pilli muscle which makes it erect. So in a sense, I was correct in saying that hair is a down-growth of the epidermis.

I got a lot of catching up to do already it seems. I got anatomy, bioethics, histology, and biochemistry lectures to read. Now let's see if I can do this. I wouldn't be behind normally, but they posted the lectures on the same day as the lecture was given! This is normally not done. The lectures are posted online a day before the lecture, so it gives time to students to pre-read. They did this in FTM too. Oh well. A new challenge is always welcome.

The rest of day, I finished selling all of my FTM books and getting all of my Term 1 books. In the end, I spent $175 USD on my Term 1 books (school cost was $850 USD). I opted out that I didn't want the school to purchase them. I sold all of my FTM books for $120 USD. There was also a course companion of 2010 edition, so I couldn't get from any student. They actually posted the companion online but they locked the pdf so nobody could print it. Hahaha, what a mistake. For an engineer, decrypting a pdf lock is as easy as 1-2-3. I decrypted it and printed out the whole manual for free. In the library, there are only 2 printers that let you print for free. Only the FTM students had the option of opting out, but no one else did.

I had dinner at school b/c there was a meeting for Canadian students at 6 pm. It was mainly a club about getting residency in Canada. When I was getting food, someone cut in front of me while I was texting. Since it was sort of my fault that I didn't move in front and was not paying attention, I did not say anything. He may have thought I was not even standing in line. Anyways, he ordered the same thing I did, and then went outside to talk to his friends. I went inside. Eventually, his food came, but since he was outside, he didn't her the lady calling. The lady already knew me, so she gave me the food instead LOL! So basically, I got my food before he did even though he ordered before I did. Man, I love karma!