the fbi building

mwms is one of several "new" branch campus medical schools that are popping up around the country. basically, this means that a medical school (usually in another state), builds a campus in another location. the branch campuses pretty much run themselves (i.e. have a separate faculty, student body, admissions process, etc.). so why do these campuses exist? because it's easier to open a branch of an existing school than it is to create a new school from scratch, thanks to the complexity of licensing and accreditation laws. basically, this means that mwms's "campus" is really only consists of a shiny new building. for now, the clinics, hospitals, & affiliated stuff are all located elsewhere.

this also means that the community in which mwms is located has no idea that it has a medical school in its midst. or, at least, they didn't know at the beginning, when the school opened. apparently, that lady they pay the big bucks to come into our classes and take pictures of us is supposed to have gotten the word out that we exist and are here to help the community. (r-i-g-h-t....) mwms should be known by everyone around here, given that the area is not yet very large and that the school has been placing all sorts of ads everywhere, right?

ah, but then we have experiences like these:

recently, a classmate of mine was talking to one of his neighbors.

the neighbor asked "where do you go to medical school? i didn't know there were any medical schools around here."
"oh, i go to mwms," my classmate replied, "you know, in the building next door to the ymca?" "you mean you go to school in the fbi building?!?!?!"

*headdesk*

"family planning"

my mom forwarded an email to me about the recent appointment of Susan Orr, PhD, to head the Federal Family Planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. the message was rather tantalizingly incendiary, and while my personal beliefs meshed with their assertions, i was curious to know whether the piece was slanted. so, thanks to Google, i did a little research.

the liberal slant on this appointment is that it's yet another huge step backwards for women's reproductive rights because Dr. Orr proposed elimination of contraception coverage for federal workers' insurance plans. the conservative slant is that it's a positive movement toward affording a greater amount of choice to individuals, particularly in the form of what components of health insurance coverage they choose to elect.

but what does this office of Federal Family Planning do, exactly? i wondered. so i looked them up. after a bit of digging, i discovered that title x is the main "to do" of this governmental unit. given this, theoretically, their mission is the following:

Program Priorities

1. Assuring ongoing high quality family planning and related preventive health services that will improve the overall health of individuals;

2. Assuring access to a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and related preventive health services that include natural family planning methods, infertility services, and services for adolescents; highly effective contraceptive methods; breast and cervical cancer screening and prevention that corresponds with nationally recognized standards of care; STD and HIV prevention education, counseling, and testing; extramarital abstinence education and counseling; and other preventive health services. The broad range of services does not include abortion as a method of family planning;

3. Encouraging participation of families, parents, and/or other adults acting in the role of parents in the decision of minors to seek family planning services, including activities that promote positive family relationships;

4. Improving the health of individuals and communities by partnering with community-based organizations (CBOs), faith-based organizations (FBOs), and other public health providers that work with vulnerable or at-risk populations;

5. Promoting individual and community health by emphasizing family planning andrelated preventive health services for hard-to-reach populations, such as uninsured or under-insured individuals, males, persons with limited English proficiency, adolescents, and other vulnerable or at-risk populations.

Sounds okay, right? I mean, I don't personally like the notion that they exclude institutions that do not provide abortion services while including faith-based institutions (seems to me that in order to be "neutral," they shouldn't allow either or should allow both), but I'm all for educating people about reproduction and providing health services, particularly in under served areas. I looked up their allocation of grant funds for FY 2006, and while some of the studies seem a bit unrealistic, others did seem like they'd result in some helpful information.

Here's the kicker, though. Any organization that applies for/receives a grant from the government under title X must agree to the following:

None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be made available to any entity under title X of the Public Health Service Act unless the applicant for the award certifies to the Secretary that it encourages family participation in the decision of minors to seek family planning services and that it provides counseling to minors on how to resist attempts to coerce minors into engaging in sexual activities

Um, is it just me, or does that sound like any applicable program has to teach abstinence and take away the rights of minors in order to be funded? *sigh*

I get that people are concerned about the appointment of Dr. Orr to this organization, but based upon what I've read, it seems like most of the funding has already been restricted and directed toward the conservative abstinence-only, family-centered approach. If she continues to support the current administration's conservative views, i suspect we're in for more of the same--a decrease in funding and support for any program that advocates something other than abstinence.

This isn't quite what bugs me most about the appointment, though. What I want to know is why someone with degrees in politics is running a branch of government that should, at the very least, be run by someone with training and expertise in public health, if not medicine? How will she be able to make educated decisions about policy if she can only rely on her own opinions to guide her? I dare say, it would be like putting me--a pacifist--in charge of the Army! ;-)

At any rate, it all makes for interesting debate. What do you think?

As for me, well, I don't know yet. I've got to go read a good five chapters of embryology before I can even begin to form a foundational knowledge of what, exactly, "family planning" means....

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....

Breast Cancer Walk 2007

i'm happy to report that, thanks in no small part to many of you, the mwms group raised over $1400 for breast cancer today! :-) the photos tell all....

the multitude of walkers

mwms students making strides!

the group pose

so much to say, no time to say it

i'm now 6 days away from my anatomy final and have realized that every moment up to the exam will be excruciating no matter what i do.

i have so much that i want to say here--so many things to write about--but, with the impending exam & all it entails, i can't take the time right now to post about any of it. i promise you, though, there will be some interesting posts making their appearance after the 15th.

in the meantime, i'll leave you with a photo i took this morning (using my macbook pro, which, unfortunately, doesn't have a flash) during our osteopathic principles & practices lecture. we had a guest lecturer and even our regular professor fell asleep! (<--too bad i didn't catch a shot of him sleeping!)

the day was redeemed by an excellent lecture given my mrs_dr_do this afternoon on taking a social & sexual history--so at least i've learned something useful during all my hours of sitting in the lecture hall. overall, though, this picture nicely sums up the energy level/morale on campus....

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....)

scrubbin'

i'd heard the audio for this before, but the video is even better. a little humor about anatomy lab. enjoy!

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!

constitution day: w strikes again

it's a fact: 99.9% of medical students depend upon federal funding from the U.S. government in order to pay for medical school and its associated costs (i.e. FOOD), while in school. the funding is not guaranteed--there are many, many hoops to jump through (read: 10,000 or so forms to fill out and sign) before a student can get such funding. if we do get student loans, we're considered "lucky." our interest rate on our student loans from the government is currently capped at 8%, as opposed to the uncapped rates, some upwards of 22%, on private loans. nevertheless, it goes without saying that if the government lends an average of $200,000.00 at 8% interest to almost every medical student (~4,000 nationwide?) in the country during his or her tenure in medical school, they end up earning quite a lot of money off of us. add to this the amount the government discounts our services once we do go into practice and one starts to wonder: is the government screwing over its healthcare providers? i'll leave you to chew on the answer to that one....

(aside: too bad michael moore left the education part out of "sicko"...it's another way that the U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world with respect to health care.)

in the meantime, i'm here to report that the hoops have just become more numerous. why? because some idiot, somewhere in Washington D.C., decided that all institutions receiving federal funding must celebrate--are you ready for this?--CONSTITUTION DAY. [have any of you even heard of constitution day? did you know that it's tomorrow? sorry, no, you don't get the day off from work. not even if you're the postman.] as such, schools that funnel federal funding to their students--including medical schools--must hold activities to celebrate constitution day. i kid you not. we're talking lectures, people. videos. presentations by politicians. and attendance, as i've been informed, is MANDATORY.

apparently, this is simply one of the latest actions taken by the department of education, which is now diving wholeheartedly into its misdirected "no child left behind" and "american competitiveness initiative" programs. what i want to know is: how do they think they're helping medical students by forcing them to take time out of their studies to attend lectures on the constitution? (is it not bad enough that we only have, oh, a week to cover the anatomy of the abdomen? how about cutting that down to an hour? it's not like we need to know about the abdomen or anything....) do they not realize that the majority of medical students likely have better knowledge of the constitution than most politicians serving in government? (i'd dare them to test our knowledge versus W's, but it'd take them too long to decide on a color scheme for the scantron to actually give us the test before he's out of office....) do they actually think that we want to celebrate constitution day when we realize that (among other things) it does nothing to ensure healthcare for all citizens?

we'd be better off having lectures on how to understand medicare or medicaid or governmental policies on healthcare. but that would mean that the government would have to produce clear directives on such matters and be honest about them. not to mention, they'd have to acknowledge that many of the government's policies on healthcare go against one of the primary tenets of the constitution: to promote the general welfare of its citizens.

yes, let's celebrate the constitution--but, shh, don't let anyone point out what that really means.

....
do you need to rant about healthcare & the government, too? here's your chance:

week 4 mileage

time spent...

studying outside of class: 39.5 h
taking an exam: 4 h
getting "ripped a new one" by the deans: 15 minutes

felt like...

studying: 23 h/d
taking exam: endless
meeting with the deans: an hellish eternity

overall?

moments when i temporarily forgot where i was: priceless.
for everything else, there was xanax....

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.

so what?

Heard in the lecture on the thoracic wall & lungs this morning:

“Breast cancer doesn’t kill people. So you lose your breast, so what? It’s metastasis to [other areas] that proves fatal. [….] What’s the matter? Why is everyone looking at me like I’m crazy?”

Oh. My. G-d.

I wish I had the balls to respond with: “What if you get penile cancer? So you lose your penis, so what?” Maybe then he would get the point.

Maybe.

We’re not looking at you like this because you’re crazy, Professor. We’re looking at you like this because we cannot believe you’re that ignorant. All those years of cadavers & formaldehyde have clearly affected your ability to remember that anatomy is about people.

*headdesk*

this one is for you, dad!

my father has spent many, many years trying to get me to join the family business. needless to say, i've stubbornly continued to pursue this whole medical school thing rather than taking up his offer to become "president of the eastern seaboard," as he likes to say. ;-)

while looking for a few good jpgs to throw in amongst my weekly milage, i found the following. this one's for you, dad!

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. ;-)

week 2 mileage

time spent...

classes, labs, lectures, & dumb presentations: 25 h
ce: 0.5 h
opp: 0 h
anatomy: 37.5 h
medical appointments: 5 h
exercise: does carrying my book bag up the stairs count?
crying & whining: >2 h

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!

week 1 mileage

this year, in an ingenious fit of inspiration, mwms decided to give all the incoming first-year students a survey to complete during the first four weeks of school. the concept is to calculate "the number of hours spent in studying the following subjects for the next four weeks" and then submit the form "anonymously" so that the administration can get a sense of how much students are studying. the first week of school they technically dubbed "week 0," so we began calculating this week (who starts counting from 0, i don't know...how can a week be 0?!?!?). for those readers interested in knowing what the life of a medical student is like, prepare to be amazed....

week 1 mileage:
time spent in class, labs and lectures: 25 hours
independent study (i.e. study time outside of class) for clinical exam (ce) course: 0.5 hours
independent study for osteopathic principles & practices (opp) course: 1 hour
independent study for anatomy: 35.5 hours
medical appointments/sessions: 5 hours
legitimate exercise: 1 hour
time spent reassuring classmates: endless

the big question: did i study enough to pass tomorrow's anatomy exam? who knows?