Every student in the country is in “counting” mode right now (and I don’t mean advent or Chanukah). It’s that time when we all start to think in “papers,” “exams,” “school days” until Christmas vacation.
For me, it’s: 4 days, 3 nights, 2 exams, and 1 flight until school will be on the side-lines for 2 whole weeks. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but these days even a 3-day weekend or a single morning when I can sleep-in until 8am, feels luxurious. So I am sure to savour this vacation like fine dark chocolate!
It’s hard to believe that medical school flies by so fast, and yet is packed full of new things. I am starting to think more about spring semester, and I am excited and quite nervous at the same time. I cannot wait for Physical Diagnosis (Part II) which allow me to be with patients for a full day each week. And of course my mind has started to wonder about… THE BOARDS!
Every second year medical students takes a huge standardized test, the National Board Exam Step 1. Last week I registered and paid for it (gulp, $505), but I am assured by the school that I don’t need to start worrying about it yet. That’s easier said than done.
At the moment I’m still trying to simply envision that it will be humanly possible for me to prepare to take an 8-hour, 336 question exam about everything I’ve learned in medical school so far. The exam is brought to us by the same people that make the MCAT… and the SAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSTAT, to name a few. Does it seem scary enough yet? A friend loaned me her relaxation CDs to soothe my anxiety.
Anyways, I know next semester will be hard, but I’m so excited because it means more contact with patients is coming soon. Patients are the part of medicine that I’ve truly been waiting for. I hope it will also mean that I’ll have more colorful and poetic stories about my days, rather than talking about waves of exams and constantly studying my brains out!
Speaking of studying my brains out… Genetics and the Muscoloskeletal system have been fun, especially Genetics. I can’t wait to make a genetic tree of cancer on my grandfather’s side of the family. I know we must have some oncogene mutation in our gene-pool, and I wonder if I could figure out where it came from and how it is genetically passed.
And of course I’ll be bringing my medical toys with me to examine my grandparents again. I just can’t get enough of my grandmother’s atrial fibrillation- it’s quite irregular and musical. Plus taking all my medical toys on the airplane makes going through security much more fun.
The 8-hour, 336-question exam trumps the SAT any day. The SAT wasn’t so bad, after all. I wasn’t bothered by answers I just didn’t know, because no amount of rumination would bring them to me; I WAS bothered, however, by the final part in which we had to copy a phrase in cursive about cheating that somehow confirmed that we hadn’t cheated. I hadn’t written in cursive since the 3rd grade, and I wracked my brain trying to remember how to write those pesky uppercase letters. Also, having to write it in blood was painful and messy.