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Finish the endo final exam just now. It was tough in a sense that we had to memorize about 16 pages of notes WORD BY WORD. It was certainly a daunted task for me, because I didn’t start memorizing the notes till two days ago!!! Well, guess what…I memorized all of them word by word eventually. The exam started at 2pm and last for 3 hours, and I didn’t finish writing the exam until 20min to 5pm. I swear I wrote as fast as I could…non-stop!!! Still by the time I finished it, I only had 20min left. My hand got sored afterwards.

I remember the last time I memorized everything is way back in junior high school in Taiwan. Academics in Taiwan is very different from western education system. I had to memorize word by word of every single textbook from grade 7 to grade 9 in classes of Mandarin, History, Geography, and Citizenship & Morality. That would be a total of 24 textbooks (one book per semester, two semesters per year, for 3 years) with every single word memorized. The memorization went to the extent that I would know the locations of certain paragraphs and/or picture on a page and where that page is approximately located in a textbook and in which textbook. This is particularly so for History and Citizenship & Morality textbooks, and perhaps Mandarin textbooks too. I still remember I have dreams occasionally (even now!) where I suddenly cannot remember what the next paragraph is, I know how the paragaphs look like but can’t recall the exact words. You can tell….that period of my life affected me very deeply. There were also other courses that didn’t require word-by-word memorization such as English, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Health Education, Biology, General Sciences, etc. However, memorization in these subjects were still quite extensive, though not word by word. So, why did I have to memorize in these subjects? Because there was a provincial exam after grade 9 before admissions to senior high school. That exam scores would serve as the basis to decide which schools a student could attend. Certainly, everyone wanted to go to a good senior high school, so the competition was fierce. And thus the reason why I had to memorize so much stuff from grade 7 to 9. That was then. Now I’m old and probably won’t be able to remember that much. Good to know that I could still memorize 16 pages of text in 2 days.

And…guess what, the endodontics instructor Dr. Donald Yu didn’t provide us any pizza during the exam!!! Of course, no pizza, because if there were, everyone wouldn’t be able to finish the exam till 10pm. No kidding!

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Finished my implant exam just now. Now the next exam is endodontics this afternoon at 2pm. I still have some reading that I haven’t finished. Better go now and study. Dr. Donald Yu, the endodontist, said he would provide pizza to us during the exam, for our hard working preparation for the final examination. He is very generous. Hopefully it’s true.

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I submitted three of my photos to www.canada.com this past week, and one of them is showcased on canada.com website. Once again it is the Alberta Legislature picture that won Canada.com editors’ attention. My the other two pictures…oh well…probably not good enough.

This week’s theme: Let It Snow

New Snow Fall at Alberta Legislature Building
Picture taken on Dec 4, 2004 (last year). Fresh snow without any foot imprint yet.
http://community.canada.com/webx?14@@.ee99965!photo=.ee99965/85#photo

Also have a look at my previous two entries shown on Canada.com. First one, centennial Christmas lights at Alberta Legislature Building; second one, London Hot Air Balloon Festival at London Ontario.

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Oh, my, the next winter olympic game is coming soon in Turin, Italy (or, Torino, Italy). It will start on Feb 10, 2006—one week before the reading week. That means I’ll probably have some midterm exams during that week and thus be unable to see the opening ceremony of the game. I always like to see the opening ceremony for every olympic game summer and winter. Perhaps I should ask my classmate to video-tape it.

Just learn from newspaper that the tickets to 85% of the olympic events are still on sale. That’s a HUGE percentage. Probably not many people are going to the game. The problem is that it’s too expensive to find a hotel. Hotel rooms up in the mountains cost $1000 and UP per night!!! That’s crazy. Hotels in the city are nearly out of accommodation. How can an olympic host city not have adequate hotels?

Here are the video clips for Torino 2006 Opening Ceremony Winter Olympics.

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This Friday’s ortho lab final exam was a long one. There were FIVE stations we had to rotate through during the 2.5 hour exam with 30min at each station. First, clinical exam station showing intraoral and extraoral pictures of the ortho patient, as well as a panoramic radiograph. Second, cephalometrics analysis. Third, model analysis. Four, cephalometric landmarks for anatomic structures. Five, sum up everything and come up with a list of problems and treatment objectives for the presented case. I went to the third station first unknowingly, and I think having done the model analysis component first actually helped a bit when viewing the clinical intra-/extra-oral pictures in the first station. Glad that I didn’t do the first station first. Anyway, another problem with this exam was that many of us didn’t know we had to study for anatomy and landmarks in cephalometry. I was one of them and had to try very very hard to recall what I read two months ago in answering the questions in station #4. That was tough!

Next two big ones: endo and implant finals. Fun, fun, fun…

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