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.

To Do List

I slept in today. A weekday. Until I woke up.

It was brilliant.

I've been working on my To-Do list. It includes only extra-curricular things today. There's such a sense of accomplishment crossing things off a list. I add things that I started on before making the list just for the joy of crossing them off.

I'm looking forward to going to Starbucks tonight to study neuro for a few hours away from all my other responsibilities. No one ever sees me there because I go to the shop far away from campus. It's fantastic. Although not just a little pathetic that I need to isolate myself to get work done.

Brainstem!

I'm pretty excited that this year we'll be looking at Neuroanatomy. It was fun in undergrad, I'm hoping it will be fun in med school too. It's good to have high expectations, right?


Most of the blocks this year will be interesting to me: Endo/metabolism, Digestive system and nutrition, genitourinary system, reproductive system, neuroscience/eyes/ears, Psych and behavioural sciences, Emergency care. Yay!