Hello,
Sorry for the long delay since my last post. A combination of being generally busy and forgetting about this blog resulted in the inactivity, but rest assured this is something I intend to continue writing in. However, it is that former concern which I'll be addressing right now. Sorry, no fun medical junk this time, but more of a personal reflection. It's getting late so I don't think I'll be proofreading this one. EDIT: Now that it's done, this is basically a lot of talking about myself and whining. You've been warned.
Since my last post, I've spent my summer doing research in a retinal imaging lab, generally having no idea what was going on but still putting out a mediocre poster presentation. More than anything else, it was a good exposure to what the world of ophthalmology is like, and I have to say that nearly everything about ophthalmology is a world apart from the rest of medicine--from the language to the tools to the procedures undertaken. It's still a career choice I'm contemplating, so more on that later I guess.
About a month and a half ago, M2 year began. Now, the first year of medical school is quite an experience. It's the first time you'll cut open a human cadaver in anatomy lab, the first time you'll interview a (standardized) patient, and a heck of a lot of adjusting and readjusting to lectures. You get a bit blasted by the med school experience, and most students find it pretty exhilarating.
M2 year is a bit different. Most of us are settled into our routines, have learned how to prioritize our time and attention, and are starting to lend some thought towards that dreaded thing that awaits us in May--the USMLE Step 1 exam. For those of you who don't know, Step 1 is a standardized test put out by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). It is an 8-hour exam designed to gauge everything you've learned in medical school up to that point, be it pathology, embryology, pharmacology or even ethics. All licensed practitioners must pass their licensing exams, and as with anything academic, average performance as well as the minimum passing grade are always rising.
But it's more than just a hump to get over on your road to medical practice. Your performance on the exam tends to be the single largest element that factors into your applications to residency. More than the MCAT is to medical school, and more than the SAT/ACT are to college. As you might expect, some programs are more selective than others, and having an excellent score may allow you into an enormous range of programs, while an abysmal score will severely limit you. This is true of entire specialties as well--the most prestigious (and best compensated) specialties such as Plastic surgery, Neurosurgery, Dermatology and Otolaryngology require superb performance on the exam. More forgiving are the more "typical" specialties, like internal medicine, neurology, OB/GYN, general surgery or anesthesiology. Psychiatry and Family medicine follow up at the back. In a very real sense, your performance on that exam will decide what you can do as a physician.
Okay, that's enough about the Step. Back to M2 year.
One of the other ways in that M2 year is very different than M1 at my school is that instead of taking multiple classes (physiology, biochemistry, anatomy) concurrently, we are on system-based units. We have only one class (currently, it's cardiology), and that one class takes up 4 hours a day of lecture. While this allows us to focus our efforts efficiently, it also means we have a lot more examinations--instead of once every 5-6 weeks, we seem to have them on the order of one every 2 weeks. I recently posted to G+ that I would be writing a new blog post because we just had our musculoskeletal & skin exam, only to have to postpone that because a cardio quiz was scheduled for only a week thereafter. And when the exam is on a Friday, you better believe I don't have time to be writing on weeknights :(
This can be a bit taxing. After a fourth or fifth consecutive day of: wake up, walk to class, 4 hours of lecture, walk back, eat lunch, 4 hours of reviewing those lectures, an hour or two for dinner & video games, and then 4 hours of test prep or flashcards; you start to feel the burn a bit. Sure, this is peanuts in comparison to what we'll be going through in May, but I've been finding myself questioning the worth of the hours I've been putting in. Is earning top grades really worth all of my time? Is it irresponsible for me to neglect my chores, social obligations, and personal hygiene to get in that extra hour of studying?
I learned the hard way a couple of weeks ago that all-out shotgun cramming is simply not the way to go. In preparing for that musculoskeletal/skin exam, I pulled 3 consecutive 12 hour study days and put in an extra 3-4 hours the night before, stretching my sleep back to 2:30am and waking at 6:30am to review some more. I'm not trying to brag here--you have to understand that adequate absorption of 20 hours worth of lecture requires another 80 hours worth of studying, and trying to do that in a weekend requires a massive investment of effort. But lo and behold, following a meaty breakfast and coffee the next morning, I had a migraine onset the moment the exam began. Nothing like trying to read test questions with your peripheral vision because you have a scotoma essentially blinding you. On the bright side, I didn't fail, and it seems that coffee is one of my migraine triggers (the previous one occurred the day after I had 2 coffees and 2 espressos to help me fixate during an imaging study). So, no more coffee for me. Wait, that's a bright side?
So that means that the only way to sustainably make it through this with good grades is to be responsible and budget my time during my typical schedules, ensuring that I constantly keep up with the material and always review what I have previously learned. Yet that takes some self-discipline of a different kind, one that I fear I haven't trained up well enough yet.
It's getting on past 11, which means it's time for me to preview tomorrow's work and do some practice questions. I'll pick this up again tomorrow, I hope.
