The Home Stretch

I now have less than two weeks until the big day, and I'm feeling decidedly more relaxed now. I think the two weeks of path and micro were just more difficult because they were tougher subjects, with more information, to cram into a very small amount of time. Since finishing micro, I have busted out neuroanatomy in 2 days and finished this afternoon, which was a big ego boost--I hadn't planned on finishing until Tuesday, so now I can have a nice relaxed week of studying biochem (probably my weakest subject) rather than trying to cram all that into 3 days as well. Then, once biochem's done, it's just one big review of First Aid (the sort of "everything you need to know in one book" book) and then BAM, done. In fact, I'm almost looking forward to it at this point, not least because I have taken several people's advice to not study on the day before the exam. Instead, I have booked myself an appointment for a professional massage followed by a haircut the afternoon before, which is totally exciting. I've never had a massage, but have always said that I'd treat myself for various things--"once I'm finished with the semester," "once I achieve X goal," etc.--but never actually gotten done for one reason or another. Now there's no turning back because the appointment is booked, which means I'll be spending the day before boards getting pampered and relaxed and hopefully this will put me in an excellent state of mind. I'm already looking forward to it immensely.

Board Prep Day...I don't even know

Well I'm about halfway done with this beast and I'm really starting to feel it. The first week was pretty easy. Last week, pathology about did me in. Not because it's difficult--it's just a LOT of information to cover in a week. I mean, we spent over 6 months studying all this stuff in lecture. Luckily, even though it sucked my practice test scores have been going up so I guess that means it's paying off. This week I'm working my way through microbiology, which has thus far been one of my weaker subjects on all the practice exams. I finished bacteria this morning--it's one of those weird things that has a lot of factoid memorization involved, which means that while the information is all in my brain somewhere, the little rote tidbits were not within reach. They seem to be coming back into consciousness relatively easily, though, so I'm hoping they'll stay there for the next 2 1/2 weeks until test day. All I know is that at this point, I'm about ready to just take the darn thing and have it done. I don't know how people say they study for this for months...5 weeks is too many for me.

Board Prep Day 4--Or, My Kingdom for a Library

You know, you wouldn't think it would be that hard to find a quiet place to study in a town this big. Part of the problem is that I usually study at home. For the past two years, I've really not spent much of any time anywhere but my own couch or desk working on flashcards or reading notes. But when it came time for boards study, that just didn't seem like such a grand idea. For one, D is off work on Mondays and Tuesdays, and a blaring TV is just not conducive to efficient work. For another, if I studied at home there would just be no boundary between "studying" and "not studying" and I would probably end up just studying (or feeling like I should be studying) every waking hour of the day. I also (as stated in the previous post) knew that I did not want to be studying at school so as to avoid my dearly beloved fellow classmates as well as the time and money spent on gas to get there.

So initially, my plan was to head down to my local county library to study. It's right across from my dad's office building, which meant that I could make copies and such easily, and could have a space to store cold food for lunch right nearby. So Monday morning, I got up bright and early and headed down to the library right at 8 to get started...only to realize that the library doesn't open til 9. Oops. I started to drive over to school instead, but basically realized that by the time I drove all the way there, found a place to park, and walked into campus, it would be close to 9 anyway. Instead, I sat and read a little in my car til the place opened. Yesterday, I had to study at school because of a meeting. Today, I decided to try something different and go down to the library at the local community college, which is only about a five minute drive away and opens at 8. When I got there, it was perfect. This place is quiet (practically abandoned, actually), full of natural light, and has tons of desks and carrels with plugs for my laptop. Unfortunately, it also has locked wi-fi, and it took me twenty minutes to get help to figure out how to log onto it. Luckily, a helpful IT person was able to assign me a guest account (which only lasts for 3 days, but I can renew. A lot.). So now it's settled. I have officially found my study space, and will be going back there pretty much every morning from now on. Hooray!

Board Prep: Day 1/2

That's "one slash two," not "one-half," fyi. Today was supposed to be my first official day of board review, but instead I was really super bored yesterday and went ahead and got started then. I'm glad I did. Having started (even just a little), I now have a much clearer plan about how this is going to work. Some things, of course, just cause issues no matter when you get started--like the fact that I dutifully got up and ready this morning to drive down to the local library (studying at home just doesn't work when D is off...for this type of work, even the tv is distracting) only to arrive at 8:15 when they apparently don't open til 9. So I started to drive to school, realized that by the time I arrived, parked, and walked to the campus library it would be 9 anyway, and just sat in my car reading for half an hour. Otherwise it was pretty uneventful--I got done what I planned to get done by about 4:00, which left me with a lovely afternoon/evening break and now I'm going to do just a bit of review of what I looked at today (because otherwise I feel like I'm not doing enough. This is what med school does to you, my friends.).

Unfortunately, tomorrow I have a lunch meeting at school and so will have to trek into campus to avoid having to get up and move in the middle of the day. I so hate studying at campus. It's actually not the library that bothers me--it's extremely quiet and nice and warm usually--but you just run way too big of a risk of running into other people, and a lot of folks in my class are the kind of people who can stress you out just by saying hello. I think I'll arrive early to snag a table as far away from everything as possible.

Step 1 Study: Prologue

So, on Monday (or maybe tomorrow, if I really feel motivated) I start my official studying for Step 1 of the USMLE (aka the Board exams). To kick things of, tonight I took a practice exam--basically an accumulation of former test questions put out by the boards people which gives you a guesstimated score that you'd get if you took the test today, and then tells you which sections/subjects you did well (and not so well) on. We actually took one of these earlier in the year as a requirement for school, and at that time I got a predicted score that I would quite honestly be perfectly happy with as an actual score come test day. Knowing that I took that one without having taken psych or 1/3 of pharm yet, I figured I could only go up. Today I took another one (having just finished pharm and psych last week) and it predicted a pretty high score. Part of me is psyched about that--knowing that I'm doing well going in is obviously an ego boost--but part of me feels like it's really just a reflection of guessing well, since some of the areas where I supposedly did really well were ones where I felt like I was guessing a LOT. So, take it with a grain of salt, I suppose.

The good things that I did take away from this one were the areas that I really need to hit hard throughout my next month of preparation--namely, kidney (I apparently forgot everything to do with the stupid thing), biostats (surprise, surprise--this was probably the least-taught subject in my curriculum), micro (not a shock, I knew I had forgotten a lot of this since we learned it), and biochem (same basic idea). This basically confirms my idea from earlier in the week that I should save biochem and micro stuff for closer to the end of studying, since those tend to be short-term memory subjects that I'll just need to cram in before the exam (as opposed to pathology, which is much longer-term and easier to remember with tons of questions throughout studying).

So for those who are interested (who am I kidding--for those who are still reading, despite lack of interest), here's how I plan on tackling the next month or so. Wish me luck!

May 3-6: Physiology

May 7-8: Anatomy/Embryology

May 9: Catch up day, questions

May 10-14: Path (maybe only til the 13th, then treat the 14th as a review day and some pharm and/or biostats)

May 15: Behavioral science and Biostats

May 16: Catch up day, mock exam, then the rest of the day off

May 17-20: Micro

May 20-21: Immuno, go back over some more biostats if needed

May 22: Neuro

May 23: Day off/questions

May 24-25: Neuro

May 26-28: Biochem

May 29: Mock exam, rest of the day off

May 30: Catch up day, start massive review of First Aid (the Bible of Board Review)

May 31-June 2: First Aid, do tons of practice questions

June 3: Day off/last minute cramming of high-yield topics

June 4: Test.