Another month, another med school roundup. I was originally all set to try to put this together last week, but I decided to delay a few days so that I could include all the graduation hoopla since it falls under the med school umbrella.
So. First and foremost, in the past month I wrapped up my second year of school! Praise hands everywhere, hallelujah amen. This has been one heck of a crazy busy obnoxious year, and I'm glad to put it behind me. Neuro ended up interesting me more than I had anticipated, as historically I have found the nervous system to be quite boring. Turns out, when we're not discussing autonomics and preganglionics and nerve plexi and blah blah blah, it's not all terrible. The last two weeks of NSB were our psychiatry block, which was conducted in a flipped-classroom style involving us completing assigned readings on our own outside of class and showing up for a couple hours each afternoon for a quiz and/or active learning activity on the assignment. Or, at least that's how it should have worked in theory - once someone figured out that the psych professors pull their quiz questions from a practice exam at the end of one of the textbooks, many people stopped even pretending to do any work and just memorized answers. [I can't stand people like this. I could rant on forever and ever about the increasingly terrible attitudes my classmates have adopted, but now is not really the appropriate time for that] Our psych exam culminated in me making my second highest grade out of my entire time in medical school, and honestly, between that and doing well on the miniboard, I'm still kind of floating around on that high.
- Boyfriend drafted me into playing kickball in the city league with a bunch of his friends/classmates. Team name = the COX Blockers, because #medschool [COX refers to cyclooxygenase, which is an enzyme that gets blocked by drugs like Advil and Aleve]. We had games once a week that I attended sporadically either because C was working nights on his renal elective and I didn't want to show up alone, or because I had an exam the next day.
- We held our Asclepian Ball back in the first week of April, and in contrast with last year, I came away with absolutely zero photos. Zilch. Zip. I'm still mad about this. We grabbed dinner with a group of Boyfriend's friends at the Bluegill prior to heading over to the Mardi Gras museum, where the event was held this year. Fun fact - Asclepian had historically been held at the Mardi Gras museum every year up until a few years ago, when the medical school was barred from returning after some fourth years lit a couch on fire while smoking celebratory cigars. Not sure how we bribed our way back in this time around, but regardless it was cool to get to see all of the costumes and props and everything currently on display.
- In addition to the NSB miniboard, we wrapped up this module by also completing our fourth OSCE / clinical skills exam [more on that here]. Soooo yeah. That happened. Nothing more to say on that, really. I think it went okay, but still - fingers crossed I passed!
- Wrapping up neuro officially marked the beginning of our dedicated study period for Step 1. We have between now and our white coat ceremony in June to prepare for and take the exam...yikes. We did take a "practice exam" of sorts last Friday to give us a starting baseline score, and we'll follow this up with a second exam later this month. If you don't show adequate improvement between the two exams, the school usually makes you delay your test because nobody wants you to fail. I ended up making a Step 1 equivalent of 200 on the NBME comprehensive basic science exam we just took, which was about average with the rest of my class. Based on the exam breakdown, I performed really well on behavioral science and neuro, MSK, gross anatomy and embryology, and "multisystem processes and disorders", and not so great on GI and renal. All in all I'm feeling pretty okay with myself right now, considering the minimum passing score on Step 1 is currently 192; if I can pass the exam with minimal review right now, things should be looking pretty okay in a month when I take the real deal.
- The fourth years organized our annual skit night, which is mostly a lot of inside jokes for the fourth year class with a sprinkling of layperson humor mixed in for good measure. My friends and I went last year and had a good time, but it really was an extra special experience this time around because I knew the people involved and thus actually understood most of the stories.
- I also organized a Q&A panel with some of the fourth years for AMWA, which ended up being a lot of fun [hopefully for more people than just me!]. We also selected new officers for our chapter, meaning I'm officially no longer a co-president and, honestly, I'm quite sad about that. I'm going to miss getting to help run something; organizing events and sending emails and running meetings fits well into my wheelhouse.
- And of course, graduation happened. Boyfriend is now officially Dr. Colby, MD [as he has requested I call him, haha]. The school holds an honors convocation ceremony the night before the university-wide graduation, in which awards are handed out and students are given their doctoral hoods. I spent the entire evening fighting back tears because I'm overly sentimental about everything; I don't really know the majority of this class, but I'm still so proud of everything they've all managed to accomplish. I missed the actual graduation on Saturday because I was in Auburn for my brother's own ceremony, but Dr. Boyfriend sent me a few updates as it was all happening so that I'd be in the loop.
I love my boyfriend's class so much more than my own, it's kind of sad sometimes. I'm going to miss them all that they're officially blowing this popsicle stand.