A Year in Review: First Year, First Semester

Many of you know I just completed my first year in the Medical Laboratory Science program at Michener. I had a request from a reader to do a year in review of the courses. I've decided to break it up into two posts; one for each semester.

First Semester

• AMML - Human Anatomy and Microantaomy


• BAIP - Interprofessional Collaboration


• CCML - Clinical Chemistry


• HEML - Introduction to Hematology


• MIML - Introduction to Microbiology


• PPML - Human and Patho - Physiology

AMML - This course focuses mostly on the different cell types and how they will present themselves in tissues. You will do a dry lab in the computer lab where you will look at electronic slides of different tissues types and look at cells and structures. Requires a lot of memorization and one of the "tougher" courses for myself. I believe there were 3 exams and 4 lab exams.  The exams are tougher and require more detail than some of the other courses.

BAIP - This is a course you will take all through out your time at Michener so just accept it and embrace it. You will be in a class with people from all programs at Michener. The purpose is to interact with these professions and understand how you can work as an effective healthcare team. There will be online quizzes, "how to give feedback" assignments and group projects on topics such as emotions, feelings, feedback, communication etc. The profs are from all different programs and all grade differently so hopefully you get a good one.

CCML - Sil taught this course last year and she was awesome. She makes a seemingly "dry" course interesting and exciting. You cover fundamental pieces on proteins, carbs, lipids and electrolytes. Small quiz every week covering the week prior. There is a math portion that covers the lab and the lecture with an assignment. The lab has a few assignments you need to hand in and you need to pre-read the lab before you head in. A "tougher" course as well in terms of quantity of information.

HEML - Great course taught by Elizabeth who has an awesome southern accent. She is very fair and is thorough.  Teaches you the fundamentals and how to do RBC and WBC counts. Lab is fairly easy this semester as it is almost all microscope work. You will do silent slides towards the end of the semester where you count WBC and RBC morphology.

MIML - Introductory Micro. This is gearing you up for the big leagues in Winter semester. Hardest part is memorizing all the contents of the biochemical test tubes, different types of cleaning solutions and other various immunological tests. Not sure who will teach it this year but Lisa is one of the best professors. So kind and wants you to succeed ( all the profs are like this though!) Lab is very time-consuming you have a 3 hour lab on Thursdays and a 2 hour lab on friday. There are also colonial morphology tests on Fridays.

PPML - This is kind of a "floater" course as a lot of people teach it from year to year. It's more of a human phys "light" course compared to what you might have seen in university. A lot of cross over from AMML which is nice and the exams are often close together so you can study for both at the same time. No Lab for this course.

Hopefully this helps as a quick synopsis of what you can expect in your first semester at Michener.

-K