Burnination

When I started second year, everyone said that the absolute worst point in medical school was the month of January. It's dark and cold, they said, and you're burned out, and you just want to be done but you can't quite see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. I didn't really believe them. "How bad could it be?" I thought--I mean, after all we'll at least only have 2 classes instead of 3 at that point, and coming off a two week winter break should make things easier. Not to mention that this particular block only contains 3 weeks of legitimate classes prior to test week.

But oh--how right they were. The last 3 weeks have been absolutely trudging, tedious, laborious, hellish work. Not because the material isn't interesting--if anything, I've enjoyed pathology more in the last 3 weeks than almost any so far, and pharmacology (our newly added course) is quite interesting and well-taught. The problem is that we're still taking pathology, whereas all our other first-semester classes ended in December. And not only are we in a seemingly endless sea of diseases, but the test we take a week from this Friday is a cumulative final over everything since August. And not only is it a cumulative final, but the final is composed of retired board questions similar to what we'll see this summer when we face the beast that is Step 1. And we have to get a certain percentage to pass the course. Oh, and then there's the "regular" path test over the last 3 weeks and pharm too. And the fact that in less than 6 months, we have to take the first step of the national board licensing exam--a massive, 8 hour test cumulative for our entire first two years' material, mandatory to pass if you want to be a doctor and progress to 3rd year.

And so there's just a lot on our plates. I have spent the last 3 weeks getting up early, studying from minute one (more than once I've balanced my computer on the toilet seat while putting on my makeup so I could flip through flashcards simultaneously) to minute--well, however many minutes get me to about 10-12:oo at night. I have to cover each day's new material, read chapters of board review books to remember everything from last semester, do practice questions to get used to the type of question on the shelf exam. And while all of that sounds decently do-able, when you add it all together it becomes a very daunting amount of work that precludes almost any outside activity. The year and a half leading up to this point has obviously involved a lot of work, but this seems to be a whole new level of time consumption. Last week I got incredibly excited to watch some TV with D, only to realize that we had a pharm quiz the next morning that I needed to prepare for (which took about 3 hours). It's at that point that you can't help but question whether the 3 hours away from loved ones, shut up in your room with your nose plastered to a screen or a book, is really worth all this insanity.

Honestly, I'm starting to believe they do things this way on purpose--so that when we're done with the first two years of medicine, the 80 hour work weeks in the hospital are a welcome change just for the chance to actually do something, talk to someone, see real people and realize that all these weird diseases with their crazy names actually exist out in the world.

Here's hoping the next two weeks pass quickly.