It's exam week

I'm disappointed with how little actual school work/learning I've had time to do this year. It's clear that when I have the time to study and stay on top of the work load (eat all those pancakes) I can do very well.

We had a one week course in Emerg/ICU care this semester. I stayed on top of the material and feel like I killed the exam. Yes it's just one week, but that just meant I was able to stay on top of the work. What makes this win extra scary though is that the rest of the class seems to feel that they did not do well on the exam.

The other three courses this semester though, will not go as well. I'm desperately choosing which weeks I will study. Weeks! Not just lectures or parts of lectures I feel are less important, entire weeks!

We had our OSCE last week and despite studying for the past 2 years and feeling pretty prepared for it, I was knocked off my game a couple of times. It was fun but also, as I said to the examiner for the ankle exam, fully humiliating.

Our school has a pass/fail system so that as long as I make my 60%, I'll make it through to clerkship. For the OSCE, we just need 60% of 60% of the stations. But, I don't want to be the doctor that barely made it through med school. I don't want some doc in administrivia hell looking for the last 1/2 % so that no one has to hold my hand through remediation in the summer. I want to do well in clerkship and need to start making studying a priority in my life. Starting.....NOW.

Lots of information, not enough neurons

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Midterm is next Monday, Finals start the week before Christmas. The first final will be fine but the next 3 I haven't begun to prepare for.

I'm still going to do observerships because that's where I feel I learn more about medicine than I ever do in lecture.

My last was with a hospitalist who let me do rounds with his residents. I was taught to do some tests and was included in conversations about the patients' care. I can't believe it's taken me so long to do these!

My next is a psych observership which I'm really looking forward to. I'm not sure if I want to be a psychiatrist - in fact I'm not at all sure I know what I want to be, but it will be great to learn what they do. I think that no matter what practice I end up taking up, there will be a psych component to it. Same as regardless of which practice we choose, we're all going to be geriatritians. As I go through my class material, I try to think about how what I'm learning is different if the patient is old. Should be good practice right?

One of my finals is MSK (musculoskeletal) so I've arranged for my observership before finals to be in the osteoporosis clinic. It'll be like review for the final right??

The more I think about finals, the more I freak out. It's a lot of information for me to have in my head and be able to apply clinically. Clinical application is fun but requires that I really own the material.

Which means I better get back to work and stop watching Bones.