True, the Molecular part of the course is just starting, but I (Clay) write this in honour of those of you with mild OCD and the significant role you play in making sure that the trains run on time and the voltage stays at 230±5%. We need you here.

There is no one right way to study and you have two goals, one is to learn for your licensing exam and the second is learn to be a good doctor. You can't reach the second goal without reaching the first - or if you focus on only the first. Hence another reason for the two streams of material in the course; you will see the Core Material in your licensing exam. You have a set of obvious resources: the text (Molecular Biology of the Cell - 'Alberts'), the online material, and us (Ira and I). The other major resource you have is each other. Some of you have strong backgrounds for the course - others less so. We are pushing you to study together by setting up teams and team-based challenges. We also encourage you to form ad hoc study groups of your own. As you do, tell us and we will generate online tools to help.

The quizzes that run throughout the semester give you feedback along the way. They come in pairs, a small one that opens at a slice of material in both streams and another larger one after the slice finishes. Only the larger ones count towards your grade. They are Moodle-based and work on the honor system. They open to you for a specified 24 hour time interval. If you do poorly on a few closing quizzes then either Ira or I will be in touch to make sure you don't get left behind. We also post assignments, administered in Moodle too, along the way.

The mark for the M in MCB is 50% final exam, 25% quizzes and 25% assignments. The format for the exam and quizzes is multiple-choice-ish. All the questions are ours and come from the same question bank. So, after doing the quizzes you will be very familiar with the final exam. Questions that conform to USMLE, the American licensing exam, in content, style and level of detail are marked 'USMLoid'. Many questions do not. We tend to query understanding rather than fact regurgitation. We do not like applying time-pressure during tests; you should have the opportunity to luxuriate over those questions that seem impossible to answer - and there will be a few of those. They are balanced by others that are so mindlessly obvious that you start to worry.