So, I guess I should talk a bit about what went down yesterday. When I finished the exam, I got a notice forbidding me to share any details of the test. So I'm going to be vague.

Liz and I got to the test center at about 7:30am. There were five people, all classmates of ours, already there and waiting. The test center people were extremely nice, but that didn't stop me from being nervous. When I started the first block of questions, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely guide the mouse. Every time I tried to click an answer, I overshot by about a foot. It didn't help that the very first question was about this Random Vein, when the night before I'd specifically said "There's NO WAY they'll ask about Random Vein." Needless to say, that was not a confidence booster.

Well, I rallied, and the whole test went pretty well. It was seven blocks of 48 questions each. I broke it down like this:
Two blocks
10 minute break
Two blocks
15 minute break
One block
10 minute break
Two blocks
DONE!

Every single block, I got multiple questions that made me think "Crap. I should've paid more attention to that detail." Also, some of the topics I spent a lot of time on didn't come up at all. But there were also questions I felt confident about, and many times when I felt that the past weeks of studying have paid off. So overall, I felt good about the day. And now it's over, and I get to do things like pick up my pager and decide which Medicine subspecialties I want to rotate through. Yay!!

DONE!!!!!!!!!

Liz: Have you ever heard of fenoldopam???
Me: Ah, yes. Great Aunt Fenoldo. She smelled like mothballs.


Okay, it's not actually that funny. But it gave us a solid five minutes of laughter.

Reaching the home stretch!! I'm hoping to finish up one question bank this weekend. Then I'll still have 1000+ questions to do over the next week. Motivation has been flagging at times, but I think I can rally for the last few days.

What was YOUR first thought upon waking this morning?? Mine was, "Vancomycin resistance: D-ala-D-lac." This can't go on much longer.

The impression I got from our Pharm professor was that he really prides himself on not "teaching to" the national board exams. It's a position I usually respect. However, I respect it less and less every time I'm QBanking and get straight "How does this drug work?" questions on drugs we never learned. I don't mean "We didn't learn this particular drug, but I can recognize its classification by its suffix." I mean "No combination of the letters in the name of this drug is even vaguely familiar to me." Most of my classmates seem to be having equally hard times with Pharm, even the ones who spent a lot more time on the class (and in the class) than I did.

My mom called me at 9 yesterday morning, basically to say "Wake up sleepyhead!! You could've come home this summer! You're not doing anything up there!!" A point made much less effective by the fact that I'd been up for an hour and a half and was already in the library when she called. I think my mom really believes that I didn't come home this summer because I just wanted to hang out in Nashville, do nothing all day, and go out with friends at night. I try and try to make her understand that's not the case, but to no avail. Siiiigh.

Every time I get a question on Toxoplasma gondii, I'm reminded of the wise words of Kanye West: I know I got to be right now, 'cuz I can't get much wronger. I don't think I've gotten a single freaking Toxoplasma question right yet. First, it was because I didn't recognize it. Now, I can, but if I say cats, they want pork. I say pork, they want cats. I say retinochoroiditis, they want necrotizing encephalitis... you get the picture. Actually, most of you probably don't. And that's okay. That's the way life is supposed to be lived.

Gotta love 20-percentage-point swings on consecutive question blocks. Especially when the low score comes second. "Oh, I'm sorry," Q bank says. "Did you actually think you were making progress? Nonsense!"

Well, really just to one... who shall remain nameless.

If you are taking subject- and/or system-specific blocks of questions, geared toward material you have just gone over, you do not get to marvel at your high percentages. Join the rest of us big kids taking random blocks and take your low 50s like a (wo)man. Or, if you refuse to do that, don't talk about it to me.

QBank is very discouraging. It's especially frustrating when I get questions on material I've gone over within the past day, and still can't get the right answer. It's because I haven't yet trained myself to do the five-step questions. I'll be reading a question and think "I got this, it's the median nerve!" Then I get to the end and see that the question is "The last letter in the name of the affected nerve is the first letter in the name of Renaissance painter whose father was born in a village whose name has the same number of letters as a virus with which structure?" Or something that seems equally ridiculous.

On the other hand, I think I'm picking up a lot of factoids pretty quickly. I'm approaching this test like it's the biggest trivia challenge of my life, and I think all my training (hehe) is paying off.

Off to a classmate's wedding tomorrow. I'm going to enjoy it, because it's the last partying I'll be doing for the next month.

Not long ago I mentioned that the cover band at trivia had turned me into a champion of a song I didn't even care about. So imagine my horror last night when they began to play "3am," a song I consider one of the best ever written. Luckily, the final question was a tricky one, so I was thinking too hard to pay attention to the music. I don't think they butchered it.

Today's study spot is the engineering building. That's right, I have ventured off of the medical campus. Johanna and I staked out study spots here a few weeks ago. It's got the convenience of being on campus, but is separate from med school land. We wanted to get away from our stressed-out classmates, but I feel like such an outsider here. In fact, I almost left home wearing an Emory shirt this morning. I switched to a Vanderbilt shirt, lest anybody in this unfamiliar land accuse me of being a spy or something. I might be kicked out of the building at any moment. But with this t-shirt, I look like I belong. I'm a Commodore just like you, engineers!!! Black and gold for the win!

It's Day 2 of Boards Studying. I did not learn all of Biochem yesterday, despite my schedule saying I was supposed to. Perhaps I set my sights too high. However, I now understand the pathophys of several diseases that seem to come up in lots of questions. Even better, I finally learned all that B vitamin stuff. Honestly, what kind of name is beriberi*?

Today's study topics: Immunology and some Micro.



*Beriberi, the name for the syndrome of thiamine deficiency, is Sinhalese for "I cannot, I cannot."

You know how, in every movie where the protagonist is in college/law school/med school, there's a dramatic shot of them burning the midnight oil, sitting at a desk that's the sole pool of light in the midst of darkness? Well, as soon as the sun sets that's going to be me. I'm up on the third floor of the medical library, which for some strange reason has no lighting besides sunlight and the lights at each study carrel. There are lights, but they're never turned on. Weird. But I like it!!

Ok, back to Biochem.

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Louisiana for my youngest niece's high school graduation. It was a lot of fun. I'm really glad I went. Unfortunately, I came back to find that Nashville has morphed in to Studyland, USA. I can't really talk, since that's where I'll be starting tomorrow. But today was my last day of slacking off, doing nothing and enjoying life. And there was nobody to enjoy it with! Boooo.