Please keep in mind that the last day to partially withdraw from your schedule is this Saturday, April 4. A partial withdrawal means that you withdraw from one course but keep others. You will receive a W on your transcript in place of a letter grade. You can fully withdraw from the College up through the last day of classes. This means that you withdraw from all of your courses. Withdrawals are handled through the Registrar's Office in the Administration building.

Your point totals are current in the WebCT gradebook, so make sure you know where you are and make an informed decision. Withdrawals are strongly recommended for students who fit the following criteria:
- Those who have stopped participating;
- Those who are severely behind in the material;
- Those who plan to apply to Massasoit's Allied Health programs and have D-F averages

Please keep in mind that there are important ramifications to withdrawing if you are a full-time student, as your health insurance and financial aid status may be affected. Also, I believe the Registrar’s Office is very strict about their hours on Saturday. I believe they close at noon and will refuse to withdraw anyone who misses that deadline, no matter what the excuse is!

This week’s material deals with muscle physiology at the whole organ level and it’s the last of the three weeks dedicated to muscle. As part of your reading on this, you’ll also be doing a computer activity using PhysioEx, a lab simulation package that’s available on the CD-ROM packaged in the back cover of your lab manual. In your yellow packet of lab materials, you’ll find the PhysioEx worksheet. (It’s technically Lab 9, so you’ll find it nestled between Labs 8 & 10.) The instructions should be self-explanatory. Both the PhysioEx worksheet and the System Assignment for Muscle will be due next week.
 
One note about the PhysioEx worksheet: you’ll also notice that the first couple of steps refer to using the lab laptops; you can skip those and head straight to step 7.
 
Next week (Week 11!): We have an onsite meeting that’s dedicated to two activities. First, there’s Lecture Exam 2. This lecture exam will cover material starting at articulations and continuing up through Week 10.

• Week 7: Articulations
• Week 8: Introduction to Muscle Tissue
• Week 9: Muscle Contraction
• Week 10: Muscle Physiology

Following the exam, we’ll go into the lab and do two lab activities related to muscle (Labs 7 & 8). First, there will be a little bit of histology (although you’ve seen most of these slides during the tissue unknown project), and then we’ll tackle the muscle models that you’ll need to know for Lab Exam 2. I think we’ll probably meet in our regular lab first so I can show you the materials that are set up, and then we’ll go across the hall to take the exam in the “real” A&P lab (like last time). As with the previous exam, once you’ve completed it, you can just go back across the hall and work in the lab. More on that in next week’s update.

This is Week 9; we end on Week 14 -- you can do the math!

If you have done the Week 8 Quiz, please remember that that's available until 9:00 a.m. on Monday, March 23.

In my opinion, Week 9's material can be the most challenging of the entire semester. Mind you, there’s not necessarily a lot of it, but what’s there is fairly abstract and conceptual. It’s also crucial that you understand it, as it serves as the basis for what we talk about for the rest of the semester. Both muscle and nervous tissues are considered excitable; this week we talk about why muscle tissue can respond to a stimulus while other tissues (epithelial, dense regular CT, adipose) really don't. This section will deal with the electrical phenomenon of the plasma membrane called membrane potential. As its name suggests, this is a type of potential energy that the cell uses to perform work. Again, please make sure that you take the time to fully understand this week’s material.

We have two weeks off from onsite meetings, so I won’t see you for a bit. Please keep in mind that the College’s withdrawal date is April 4 (a week from this coming Saturday). I won’t see you in person before that deadline, but I'll dedicate that for a different post so this one won't get too long.

Good luck on this week’s material, and send me questions about that, too!

Last week, you had your first milestone in the course — Lecture Exam 1. I’ll be grading those and posting the grades in WebCT sometime by noon on Sunday, and you’ll get them back on Wednesday. This week, you’ll have your second milestone — Lab Exam 1. We’re going to have the Lab Exam in our regular lab. We'll start sometime around 3:30-3:40. (I’ve got a Bio I lab in that room that goes right until 3:00, so I have to disassemble their lab and make a quick changeover for you.) The Lab Exam is designed to take about an hour, but I won’t time it, as long as you finish in enough time for me to get things disassembled before 5:30 or so (before the next class comes in). It is also is the only scheduled event on Wednesday. If you’d like to look at slides, you’re welcome to use the black boxes in the small study room (S-545). I’ll also have your System Assignment for the Skeletal System and you’ll be passing in the System Assignment for Articulations.

For the one-billionth time, I want to remind you that you should be following the Lab Exam 1 Review Sheet for the Lab Exam. Also, take a look at the links from last week's post for items that may help you. I forgot to mention last time that I have a gallery of lab images on this site as well. Not everything in the lab photographs well (especially with my non-training as a photographer), but you can see these here.

As far as the Week 8 material goes, this week is the first of three weeks dedicated to muscle and it’s the first part of the class that gets significantly difficult. Typically, students who have a solid background from Bio I will manage fine.

The material for muscle is broken down like this:

• Week 8: Introduction to Muscle Tissue
• Week 9: Muscle Contraction
• Week 10: Muscle Physiology

Week 9’s material is especially challenging – it requires a mastery of membrane transport from Bio I and it serves as the foundation for how the nervous system operates. What you learn in muscle will carry through and be built upon up until the end of the semester. If you’re not on top of the material by the time we finish muscle, the rest of the semester will become impenetrable.

Anyway, I expect you won’t be worrying about the new material until after the lab exam, so I’ll stop now. See you on Wednesday!

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