counting down to the pbl exam...

there's only one way to describe what the last few days before a pbl exam are like. this site sums it up nicely:

stress pig - click on its nose...

taking paranoia to a whole new level...

i interrupt this day of testing to bring you the latest news from mwms. <--yup, it's that interesting that i feel the need to share now, even though i should be memorizing more "road-kill" slides for my practical at 1pm.* mwms is relatively new, and one of the things it's known for is its plethora of security cameras. seriously--there are security cameras everywhere, except the cadaver lab (for hippa reasons) and the restrooms. we also have to badge-swipe in and out of the building. this would all be par for the course if the school were located in the heart of some major metropolis like most schools. but, i kid you not, the only thing near the school is a field of cows. that, and the ymca & red cross. but i don't think any of those entities are dangerous enough to warrant the levels of security present. sure, it's nice to be able to leave my laptop in a study room for a while and not have to worry about it being stolen. but i think it would be that way even if we didn't have cameras everywhere. the school is just not that big. so....the secretary had emailed us on friday to remind us of the time our test was to begin (as if we'd forget...) and told us that cell phones would not be allowed in the lecture hall during the exam (duh). we had the written portion of our exam this morning. in the beginning, things went as usual...they let us into the room, we all found seats, we began bubbling those damn scantrons (someone should create a stamp or a barcode sticker or something so that i don't have to keep bubbling in my name, dammit!), etc. in the midst of this, the head anatomy instructor gave general instructions; you know, the usual: there are this many pages, don't forget to erase completely if you change an answer, use a #2 pencil or the world will come to an end, etc. but here was the kicker: he then announced that only one person at a time would be allowed to use the restroom during the exam. fair enough, right? oh, but it gets better.... everyone who needed to use the restroom during the exam had to be *chaperoned.* the chaperone would stand by the sinks in the restroom and give each person a total of 2 minutes max to do their business. i'm not kidding. i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried. now, i don't know about you, but i'm the kind of person that likes to use the bathroom in private. i have nothing against bodily processes--they don't bother me one bit and i'm not ashamed of them--but my sphincters have a different attitude. there are times in the past where i've had to take a drug test for a new job and it's taken me like 15 minutes to pee because i was being "watched." my sphincters don't like to be watched. they don't like to be heard, either, for that matter. so i'm really grateful that i didn't have to use the restroom during the exam because i think it would've been a huge problem. i'm surprised they didn't say we'd have to leave the stall doors open! and i feel for the guys--i've never understood how men manage to pee at urinals given how public they are--but can you imagine trying to pee knowing that your anatomy professor is staring at your parts? couldn't that be construed as sexual harassment or something? it just seems...ridiculous. as you can see, just about the time i start to feel like i'm not giving mwms enough credit for the things they do well, they pull stunts like this. i'm not in medical school, i'm in prison. and the guards are paranoid.

*gulp*
----
* I call our practical slides of gross dissections road-kill because that's what they look like to me--road-kill. some of them, particularly in this section (head/neck), are downright indecipherable unless we're given some point of orientation. which we're often not....

halfway done

well, i've made it through part one of the exam. it took me 3 hours to complete the written exam of 150 questions. i probably would've stayed longer and re-checked everything (the professors, i kid you not, misnumbered the exam, causing mass panic among the students. we had two #4s and no #71. fun!), but we've got the practical this afternoon, so i figured that rather than perseverate, i'd come home and review my labs.

the written was actually not as bad as i feared. it would've been as bad as the rest of the exams, except i finally got a bit of advice before this test that seemed to really help. i met with one of my pbl-mates from last year on wednesday, and he explained to me how he studies for one of these exams. he said that it's all about relationships--that i need to be able to take the 2D slide and translate it into 3D, because they'd be asking questions that are relational. maybe it sounds obvious to everyone else, but it dawned on me, in talking to him, that this business of "memorizing the lecture slides" doesn't help if i can't picture, in 3D, how the structures go together.

(aside: i guess i should mention that we're working on prosected cadavers. i'm beginning to think that perhaps this isn't such a good way to learn. staring at a cadaver isn't a heck of a lot different than staring at rohen's, you know?)

so this weekend i spent a considerable amount of time going through the cross sections in netter's atlas. i tried to view each picture and really *see* where things were. not only was it more fun to study it that way, but i started to feel like i had some direction to my study for a change.

i'll probably miss all the minutiae questions on the exam, because i didn't spend time memorizing little facts this time, but i'm hoping it doesn't matter too much. an overall understanding of the big picture will help me more in the long run...i think....

at any rate, it'll be interesting to see if my study changes made any difference.

as for the exercise some of you mentioned, i've been feeling a bit stymied lately. we're in our late summer weather pattern where i live, which means that the days are brutally hot and the evenings consist of a deluge of thunderstorms. it hasn't let up long enough for me to get on my bike, and it is starting to bug me. i need some exercise and some time outdoors. i snuck away last weekend to study in a quiet place with no interruptions--fortunately this place is on the beach, so i did get to swim in between my study sessions. <--that was really nice. i guess this is all to say that i'm waiting for a break in the weather. i'd ordinarily ride during a rainstorm (i don't melt when i get wet), but i currently live in one of those areas that's known as lightning capital of the world. seriously. so i figure i'll leave the golfers to get struck and keep my butt indoors. at least, for now. but i may go join the ymca. i'm not as into gym exercise, but something is better than nothing....

speaking of exercise--another side note--my brother completed another triathlon yesterday! he came in 5th overall in his age/gender bracket (39th overall out of a total of nearly 1,000 participants!)--for someone who has only been doing this for about 10 months, his abilities are incredible. he acts like it's nothing, but--damn--he's not far behind the times of the professional racers! it's amazing!

alas, i best get back to my mental triathlon. onward!

*thunk*

my. brain. is. full.

seriously--i'm at that point in my studies where all i want to do is shake stuff out of my head like a dog shakes water off its back. i've been studying at home, alone, all day. haven't showered or eaten much, although i did manage to do some chores, just because i can only sit still for so long before my body starts screaming for movement. it's day two of non-stop studying and i'm exhausted. so exhausted, in fact, that i slept through two alarms, the telephone, and my roommate leaving this morning. agh! it really is insane, this process, on so many levels....

so what, you might ask, have i been stuffing into my head?

20 lectures at an average of 60 slides per lecture; 18 labs at an average of 40 slides per lab...so that's about 2,000 slides for the exam.

the material covers about 2/3rds of the anatomy textbook (Gray's) and 1/3rd of the histology text.

it was all covered in three weeks.

the whole thorax, abdomen, pelvis, & perineum, plus their histological components.

i may have mentioned this already. i think i keep repeating it so that i don't forget and answer some question with, well, innervation of the little toe by accident (gotta love digiti minimi!).

my brain is particularly fried at the moment, i think, because i've been reviewing cross-sectional anatomy. on the advice of a tutor, i'm attempting to get myself more grounded in what is where and answer questions based upon logic off of that rather than memorizing. i don't know if it will work--i usually leave these tests wishing i could have memorized every last word on every page of every slide. but it's impossible. it does make more sense to truly learn it--to get a sense of being able to see the anatomy in one's mind--but it's more difficult to do than i ever imagined. those diagrams we see everywhere of the human body? yeah, not so accurate. i feel like i have to erase all my prior knowledge and start over. <--i'm still cleaning! ;-)

anyway...i'm sitting here thinking that this is sort of a pointless post...but again, i want to capture this experience of medical school with as much truth & honesty as i can.

the truth of the moment: i'm exhausted & my brain is full.

*thunk*

'nuff said.

i exist, really.

i do exist. i know this because of the amount of angst i'm currently experiencing re: my upcoming anatomy exam. no one else knows i exist because this anatomy exam keeps me from doing everything else. seriously. i went to the grocery store tonite for the first time in weeks and everything had been rearranged. i mean, whole isles. clearly, i'm not getting out much. nor have i been able to reply to emails, much to the dismay of many people.

i'd blame my lack of communication on myself, as i usually do, but i'm at the point where i'm so fed up with mwms that i've decided it's their turn to get the blame. so, yeah, i haven't returned phone calls, emails, snail mail, answered the door, or, on occassion, even a question posed directly to me. scary, i know. but this is what happens when you find yourself in a medical school that decides it's "special" and wants to do things differently from every other school.

evidence of this difference? our anatomy class. one of my pbl group mates reported today that he'd recently spoken to a friend who is a first year student at another medical school. the student asked him how many questions were going to be on our upcoming exam. "225," he replied. "wtf?!?!?" was reportedly his friend's response. apparently at other medical schools, they have a test every other week with about 50 questions per test. it's unheard of to wait 4 weeks to slap students with an exam, such that it covers all of the thorax, abdomen, pelvis, & perineum. and not just gross anatomy, oh no--we also have to know all the microanatomy (i.e. histology) of these structures, too. not to mention that our professors seem to be a bit confused. they keep adding in details that i could swear belong to the genre of physiology, not anatomy. but do they care? nope. still have to know the whole hormonal cycle in women for this exam. fun.

i guess this is all to say that i'm feeling a tad unmoored. i'm doing wonderfully in my other classes, but this one...it's kicking my ass, again. i fear i may be banging my head against a brick wall. <--so, truly, i'm still alive. wouldn't go so far as to say well (roommie gave me the stomach bug on top of everything else this week), but i'm surviving.

since i can't say much more (i'm already past my time limit for puttering on the computer), i'll leave you with an interesting clip. one of my classmates somehow recorded the power point presentation given by one of our professors last week. during this presentation, this professor--i've spoken of him before; he's dean_honey--starts flipping through slides and sort of murmuring to himself. then it happens. the it? well, you'll just have to watch/listen to the movie to find out. i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried.... enjoy! (btw--it's nsfw, just so you know....)

practical exams

practical exams are par for the course in medical school. in any given semester, between opp class and ce class, we have at least a half dozen of such exams. they involve being tested, live, in the presence of a professor, on one technique or another.

today we had our first opp practical exam. it wasn't a big deal--the information at the beginning is basic (e.g. identify these landmarks) and the techniques (basically massage-type) are also relatively straightforward (aside from their names, of course).

i wasn't particularly concerned about this practical--i've been through them before, and i happen to know for a fact that this will be, by far, the easiest one in medical school. i'd also planned to pair up with one of the guys in my advising group, who happens to be laid-back and kind.

aside from having a little difficulty at first understanding the question posed to me at the first station, i got through the techniques part without incident. then i went to the second station, where we were supposed to point out "landmarks" on one another.

one such landmark i was asked to identify on my classmate was the pubic symphysis:



No problem, right? it's an easy enough bone to find...but when someone is lying down on a table & you have to find it, you have to find a way to slide your hand down the abdomen and onto the bone without, well, staring at their crotch. when i'm trying to palpate something, i often look elsewhere or close my eyes, simply so that i can focus on what i'm feeling rather than what i'm seeing.

only, yeah...it kind of backfired on me today, as i veered a little too far left. oops. it's a good thing my lab partner was a good sport about it, but my goodness, did i feel like a goofball! i guess it's better to risk having someone think that you're staring at their crotch rather than accidentally grabbing it..... *cringe*

never a dull moment!

students are stupid, too...

the head anatomy instructor came in before the thoracic lecture this morning and mentioned that there had been a lot of coughing during the practical exam yesterday. this coughing, he said, corresponded to the answers on the test. Morse code coughing, he called it. he said that if he caught anybody cheating he'd ensure that that person never practiced medicine.

i feel a bit dumbfounded by this news. i didn't hear any coughing. then again, we were split into two groups--one group in each lecture hall. so perhaps whatever he noticed was happening in the other room. but more to the point: what kind of idiot cheats in medical school?

then again, this class is a lot younger than last year's. [<--one of the downsides to a school getting older/becoming recognized is that the applicant pool shifts; more and more of those straight-A right out of college 21 year-olds end up in these seats versus those of us who were "old pre-meds" struggling to do things like work or raise children while taking classes and might not look as good on paper as a result.] the class is academically/paper smarter, but socially? well...the group is a bit lacking. i'm not saying these students are undeserving of being here. they've worked hard, too. but many of them still have that work hard party hard attitude that they've carried over from undergrad. they haven't had the immaturity beaten out of them by a job, family, grad school, etc. they still think it's cool to go out and get drunk after an exam.

[interior monologue: *ugh* get over it already!]

so i guess, given this sometimes immature attitude, i shouldn't be shocked at the notion that there are students who are cheating--but, goodness, you'd think they'd know better. it's not merely an incredibly bad idea. it's also something that took them time to cook up. time they could've spent learning the material straight up.

stupid students.

week 3 mileage

time spent...

in class or lab (no dumb orientation presentations this week! yea!): 18 h
studying anatomy: 41 h
studying opp or ce: 0 h
buying organic veggies i haven't had time to cook: 2 h
taking biddle to the vet: 1 hr
experiencing anxiety about the upcoming anatomy exam: 24-7

'nuff said.

downright nauseated.

i'm nauseated. and not in that physical i-can-go-take-my-zofran-to-fix-it way. i'm psychologically nauseated.

the second anatomy exam is on monday. <--this is the main reason for my present distress. while the first exam covered 2 weeks of material and was worth 10% of our grade (the anatomy professors dubbed it the "welcome to medical school" exam), the second exam covers everything we've learned over the past 4 weeks (i.e. all the way back to day 1) and is worth 30% of our grade. needless to say, i'm anxious! (as are the other 160+ people in my class...but maybe that goes without saying!)

i'm having an exceptionally difficult time focusing. it's amazing what can capture my attention when i'm supposed to be focused on anatomy. i knew i was getting truly neurotic on thursday when i found myself cleaning out the litterbox. i *hate* cleaning the litterbox. yet, there i was, hosing it down in the front yard. <--yeah, i wasn't just replacing the litter...i was *scrubbing* the damn thing. in the meantime, my roommate was upstairs scrubbing the dishes. i guess this kind of anxious neurosis is contagious. although, when i said that to her, she said, "dead tissue is contagious?" oh boy. that's neurosis, not necrosis! (<--thank god!)

anyway...i shouldn't be spending time posting right now. rather, i should be learning everything about the back, arms, & legs. but i couldn't help but take a moment to share the little discussed nasty underbelly of medical school: psychological nausea. i ought to come up with an icd-9 code for that one...after the test, that is. ;-)

the medical school exam experience

at present, i'm breaking about 10 rules by logging on to blogger from school, but it's 8am and they've dragged our butts here for a presentation by the president of a medical association (i.e. pr bullsh!t talk) and now they're telling us it's going to start at 8:30am instead of 8:00am, and i'm feeling just a tad bitter about missing out on that extra 30 minutes of sleep. <--yes, that was a run-on sentence. this is the kind of verbiage i produce after one very long, stressful day yesterday and not nearly enough sleep last night. but the point of my post is not to whine about my fatigue and the multiple unnecessary events i'm required to attend on a regular basis...rather it's to relate my experience of medical school exams.

i actually wrote a post about medical school exams yesterday, as i was sitting in one of the afternoon lectures. we have a new professor here who is from the former USSR. he's an interesting guy--exuberant and hyper educated (an md/phd breed) and has a wealth of information to share with us. alas, between his accent and his utter inability to create a useful powerpoint presentation, we're not quite benefiting as much as we could be under the circumstances. it's a shame, really.

so during lecture, i pulled up word, changed my font to some crazy small unlegible from (so as to prevent the faculty in the two rows behind me from reading my ramblings) and pretended to be taking notes while i was really going on a very long venting rant about how much i hate medical school exams. i'm not going to post that particular rant here. it contained one too many expletives, even for my taste. ;-)

the whole medical school experience is difficult to describe. i think that's one of the reasons i'm so interested in attempting to capture this process--how do i explain what i'm going through to others? i think it's important, to somehow articulate this so-called life, not just for my family and friends (so that they don't assume i've just fallen off the planet!), but also for those of you out there who may be contemplating this path. i sure wish i'd had a blog or two to read before jumping into the thick of this. then again, can a pre-medical student really hear what a medical student is saying? it's hard to know. as open-minded as i'd like to think i am, i'm not sure i could've heard what i have to say now before i began.

yet, i digress. again. (i seem to be getting better and better at rambling. it's a function of how much i'm studying and how little social interaction i'm getting!) what are medical school exams like? what makes them difficult? why do they trip up students who have been consistently successful in every other academic endeavor they've ever undertaken?

i can only speak from my experience--i doubt it's the same for everyone--but i know there are some common threads, so here's my attempt at a description: i'll use the exam we took on monday as an example. the faculty dubbed it the "welcome to medical school" exam. it was "only" worth 10% of our grade. i say only because most exams in medical school are worth, at a minimum, 30% of a student's grade for the semester. most are worth more than that. in some courses last year, our grades depended upon one examination. in other words--if you had a bad day on test day, it sucked to be you, because there was no room for improvement or remediation. harsh? hell, yes.

comparatively, then, monday's exam was one of the easier ones, simply because there was less performance pressure. however, just because the exam was worth less, doesn't mean that there wasn't less material on the exam. the test on monday comprised the following:

• gross anatomy of the:
• vertebral column
• back muscles (superficial and deep)
• sub occipital triangle
• shoulder
• scapula
• microanatomy of:
• epithelium
• connective tissue
• bone
• cartilage
• muscle
• lymphoid tissue

on the exam, there were 60 written multiple-choice questions (all board-style, meaning that they're supposed to be representative of the type of questions we'll be asked on the qualifying examination for basic medical sciences that we take at the end of our second year and have to pass in order to move on to third year and the clinical rotations therein) and 30 practical questions (also board-style, but based upon powerpoint slides that were shown to us of different images, like a picture of one of our cadavers or a histological slide of a blood cell, etc.). this was all based upon two weeks of classes. <--yes, you read that right--all that, from two weeks of classes, intermingled with orientation and two other classes (osteopathic principles & practices and clinical exam). that's 14 days. to learn all that. now do you see why the analogy of medical school being like trying to learn how to drink out of a fire hose when you're not really thirsty is so apt? ;-)

as you can imagine, every student in the class was stressed out about this exam. that's another aspect of the examination process in medical school that makes exams so difficult--no matter how hard you work, you never feel like you've learned enough or are prepared. no, not even the second time around. the combination of quantity of material, insufficient amount of time, and weirdness of the questions themselves--well, it just makes for one heck of an exam experience.

--

i ended up being interrupted in the midst of my ramblings, as you can well imagine. there's only so long that even i can type while in a lecture without raising suspicions. it's now sunday. i'm still exhausted from last week's marathon, but, guess what? there's no time to rest. the next exam is in 8 days. and counting....

our class, as a whole, performed better on this year's exam than last year's class. that made the faculty happy, so they haven't started in on us with the "you're stupid" attitude. at least, not just yet. as for the results of the exam? the highest score (combined written + practical) was a 98%, the low was a 48%, and the mean was 80%.

the good news? i doubled my score from last year. the bad news? the score still wasn't high enough for me to pass. *ouch* <--feel free to cringe with me on this one. three lousy points, two lousy questions...that's all i needed....

i'm not sure how i'm going to remedy my test-taking deficiencies. i know this material. i have been teaching the material to others. but i suck at answering multiple choice questions, particularly ones like these. is it test anxiety? some of it, for sure. but that doesn't seem to be the whole problem. guessing by what it took to get through this last year, it looks like it's going to be another l-o-n-g semester....

so, in case you were wondering, that's a small (very small) glimpse into the world of how it feels to take a medical school exam. i hope it helps those of you who are curious. and for anyone who has been through this--any advice on correctly answering multiple-guess questions? this C-BAD-DAD method of bubbling in the scantron doesn't seem to work so well. ;-)

onward!

rant: it's all about the tone....

i cannot speak for all medical schools (there were certainly things in the 101 list that do *not* apply to my program), but it seems that there's a general tone of animosity directed at the students, particularly by the science ph.d. professors. anatomists, in particular, seem to despise medical students. they think we're stupid (<--heard at many an anatomy lecture last year: "if you don't understand this, you're so dumb you should get up, leave, and go fill out a subway application")*. one of my study buddies had a conversation with a physician she shadowed before beginning medical school and he issued this caveat: "watch out for the ph.d.s. they're bitter because they didn't get in to med school." ouch. ordinarily i'd have thought this physician's hypothesis was off, but after what i've observed, i'm not so sure anymore.... at the very least, they hate teaching--that much is clear. since mwms is an odd place that runs on a pbl program, the school has made some very bassackwards curricular decisions. they're still trying to figure out the best way to "teach" and test our knowledge. while our anatomy class was a 10 week marathon of lectures, we're now deep into the pbl portion of our program. so far, the way we've been tested is in the form of "learning issues." basically, after our group finishes a case, we're supposed to pick learning issues, relevant to the case, on which we want to be tested. the powers that be try to act like these should be discrete packets of knowledge for the case at hand, but since that's impossible (the books, after all, aren't designed around our cases!), what ends up happening is that we pick chapters from our various books. so, for any given exam, there might be 40 or so learning issues, all derived from different chapters. all the groups choose their own issues and go at their own pace, with some direction given by the faculty facilitator. for the last pbl exam that the class of 2010 took, the majority of the pbl cases were based on neuroanatomy. by the time they were finished with the 8 cases for that block, most groups had picked nearly the entire neuroanatomy textbook. *gulp* it's simply not possible (in my opinion) to learn all of neuroanatomy on one's own by reading the textbook, particularly in 6 weeks when that's not the only class/book/bit of material one has to learn during that time. there are only 6 hours of pbl class per week, so discussing all the material in group is not really an option, either. basically, we're left to sink or swim on our own. many groups, as a result, have attempted to make the learning issues more manageable. in other words, while the group as a whole reads broadly during the case, learning issues are picked with what the group feels it needs to be tested on in particular. the thought is that if the group is specific about learning issues, there won't end up being 50+ learning issues on an exam. basically, pbl groups are trying to choose wisely so as to survive these horrid exams. as list 101 indicates, though, everyone in medical school is smart. there's nobody there who didn't have to do some amount of more-than-ordinary work to get accepted. everyone is self-motivated, if not exceptionally so. but are we treated as if that's a given? heck no. we're treated like incorrigible schoolchildren. lest you think i jest, consider the following email (only modified by changing names to protect privacy) sent by the professor in charge of compiling all the learning issues for the exams. i swear to you, it's all about the tone.

Dear class of 2010:

After compiling the exam topics sheet from the 1st 2 cases, I have noticed that most groups are choosing only a few topics from each case. These cases contain many more basic science topics than are being chosen at this time. For example, why are most groups avoiding gross anatomy? If you are deciding to avoid gross anatomy because you “already had that,” you are making a huge mistake. What you already had was a “survey” course, not a full anatomy course. As stated by I and Dr. Head Anatomist several times during anatomy, you MUST choose anatomy exam topics in PBL to learn this science well enough. You were also told by Dr. Head of PBL and I that in PBL you must review topics several times to fully understand them. Why are you not reviewing anatomy? Aren’t you discussing gross anatomy during the cases? If not, you should be!

Please be reminded that you are in medical college where you need to learn all the basic sciences in a PBL curriculum. In this curriculum, it is assumed that you take the responsibility of learning seriously and become adult learners where you are responsible for your own education. Most of you are achieving that goal, but others need to be reminded from time to time that this freedom in your education comes at a price. If you continue to minimalize exam topics as a strategy to score better on PBL exams, this strategy WILL backfire: you will not learn enough basic science information to score well on PBL exams, the COMLEX exam, or to be a knowledgeable physician.

Please let me remind you that the PBL exam will be comprised of 185 questions. If you choose too few exam topics, your exam will have 8 or more questions from each topic. As you might not be aware, deriving 6, 7, 8, or more questions from a topic requires that I examine you on very minute details: the kind of details in which you may need to memorize charts or graphs to answer. If you choose enough topics, say 4, 5, or 6 from each case, then I can attempt to make your exam from big picture topics that are most important clinically. Although not always reached, this is my goal.

In closing, let me make it perfectly clear that choosing very few exam topics from cases in not a good strategy: neither for the PBL exam, nor for your medical education.

Another Frustrated Anatomist, Ph.D.

*no offense to anyone working for subway; i guess the anatomists just have issues with those employees, too, even though they eat lunch there almost every day.....

self-doubt

like the proverbial deer in headlights, i'm paralyzed. i've spent the past hour "trying" to read a chapter from my neuroanatomy textbook, but without any success. but there's the rub: in medical school, is there such a thing as success? and if so, what does it look like? i ask because i haven't found it yet....

throughout this whole first year, my colleagues and i have been involved in a dance of sorts--one where we're constantly being evaluated (there is, i kid you not, an exam of some kind every week, if not more often) and consequently re-evaluating ourselves. it was suggested to me, when i was a pre-medical student, that it takes aggression to survive and succeed in medical school; this, of course, was always presented to me in the context of me being deemed by someone to not have enough aggression to get into medical school, let alone through it. what i'm finding, however, is that it isn't aggression that is needed to be successful here. rather, it seems one must be completely unaware of any self-doubt one might have--and that's where i get definitively stuck.

over the christmas "break," i spent some time with my younger brother--i'll call him super_blaze for reasons that will soon become evident--who has decided to train for a triathlon. he'd gotten a training book that he shared with me. in it, there was an anecdotal story that i found quite interesting. it was about bumble bees. apparently, some scientists decided to study the bumble bee to see how it flies. after all, it's shape isn't exactly aerodynamic, nor are its proportions particularly indicative of flight capacity. so, the scientists did tests, and more tests, and even more tests. do you know what they determined? their studies proved that the bumble bee can't fly. as the book aptly noted, it's a good thing nobody told the bumblebee that. :-)

i suspect this is a quality that must also be inherent in someone training for a triathlon--after all, is it not hubris to assume that one can swim, run, and bike all those miles in one stretch? apparently super_blaze doesn't think so, because he's doing it. and it's amazing. but then, he's always been the type of person who can, for instance, jump off an eighty foot water tower and enjoy it. (<--no, i'm not making that up. he did that. and he didn't end up in the er, either.)

but i'm not super_blaze. (i must have been the practice trial in the gene development department for my family, because i developed with an intense fear of adrenaline endeavors, as well as a predisposition for losing body parts in spite of being relatively kind to my body....) i'm rather conscious of the fact that i cannot fly. in fact, one might say that i'm hyper-conscious of my limitations. but i'm beginning to think that, rather than serving as some protective function, this awareness is turning out to be a barrier. one that, in particular, precludes success in medical school.

so...how do i unlearn the consciousness that trying to learn all of neuroanatomy in six weeks is absurd? how do i convince myself that i can learn this, rather than assuming from the outset that i'm doomed to fail (again)? if i've already experienced failure here, then how come i'm so afraid of having it happen again? why am i so tangled up in my feelings about all of this?

i sure wish i had some answers....

Week 10

So, it's been two months since the first exam in Anatomy. I'm now in week 10 and it's the night before the last set of Anatomy lectures. We've now officially covered all 1100+ pages of Gray's Anatomy, plus an entire Histology book and an entire Embryology book. All in 10 weeks. Did I mention, too, that I've also learned how to crack...erm...I mean fix...a joint or two? They weren't kidding when they warned us that medical school is like trying to drink out of a fire hose when you're not thirsty. I think my hose may have had some gravel in it, too. At any rate, 6 days & counting now till the final exam. Then I'll be free of the dead &amp; on to the living. ;-)

It's 1 AM...do you know where your med student is?

Oct 10, 2006 - 4 Photos

The First Exam

Today is the 8th day of medical school...and the day of the first examination. Ouch. When they told us that this experience would be like drinking out of a fire hose, they weren't kidding. I'm drowning in knowledge.


At present, I'm sitting out on the second floor hallway, outside the lecture hall, waiting for my classmates to finish taking the written portion of the examination. Next, I get to go back in there and try my hand at a "practical" examination--meaning I have to make sense out of nonsense and be able to distinguish stuff on slides. My confidence in this skill is definitely waning....


Ironically, though, I'm not as nervous as I usually am before/during exams. I'm too exhausted to get riled up and everyone around me is so hyper-concerned that it's already getting old.
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I got called into part II of the exam before I could finish this post. More on the mayhem in a moment!