Day 108: The final stretch4 min read

Today’s inane images of the day:

AMWA had a “Baked Goods Exchange” on Monday… here are my mini sugar-cookie-cakes that I made for the exchange.

Originally I was only going to make these cherry oatmeal cookies… but I didn’t have enough ingredients to make bigger ones so I added the above cookie-cakes.

Productivity is good…
Since my subpar performance on the second BFCP examination, I have been diligently printing all of my lecture notes [sorry tree-huggers… this is for the greater good and I promise to plant a lot of trees when I’m done with school!] and re-writing them [my right hand is really tired from gripping my pen for so many hours of the day… maybe I should learn to be ambidextrous]. Although the jury is still out on whether or not it’s actually helping my performance [can’t really say from the n=1 sample size of the last exam], I at least feel more productive… which is a good sign.

Over the couse of the last couple of weeks, there have been some noticeable and subtle changes in my daily routine — first and foremost, I waste a lot less time on social media and perusing the internet since I try to have my laptop closed during dedicated study time. Because I have really tried to build up my presence online, I almost feel like I’m missing a huge part of my being when I’m not updating my blog, Twitter and Facebook daily… but I think there’s a healthy balance of the two to be found and I am coming close to finding that.

Secondly, I have come to terms with the fact that I cannot study at home. My study space is a room that opens up to the kitchen which leads to unnecessary caloric consumption and minimal productivity [also, a lot of crumbs on my lecture notes…]. Furthermore, I think it’s too easy to succumb to my bed’s pleas for company.

Thirdly, I think my stamina for studying has increased slightly. It took a lot of energy to get over the first hump of adjusting to an 8AM-5PM M-Th schedule and it took even more energy to try to get into the habit of actually opening my lecture notes after getting home. Maybe it’s the feeling of foreboding about the proximity of finals that hit me Sunday evening when I was tossing and turning trying to fall asleep… but so far this week, I’ve done a lot more studying after-school than I think I have ever done in the past.

We have a lot of exams coming up…
Anyway, we have a total of 5 examinations within the next two weeks. We have an OSCE [Objective structured clinical examination — something like a practical exam for clinical skills] for APM [Thursday, December 8], an exam in BFCP 2, Capstone and PMH [all on Monday, December 12] and finally an Anatomy practical exam [Tuesday, December 13]. Scary to map it all out like this…

Update on remediation…
Finally, I will be remediating my second exam on January 3. Turns out Dr. Sabina really pushed to have the remediation exam be only on the subjects of the exam that we either 1) failed or 2) did significantly worse than the rest of the class. I knew that Microbiology would definitely be one of those subjects, but I also have 3 more: Genetics, Embryology, and Radiology. This means that I don’t have to answer any Immunology, Anatomy or Biochemistry questions since I did well enough on those sections not to have to remediate them. I am ecstatic that I do not have to take the full-length exam all over again [though, my exam will still be pretty significant since Microbiology and Genetics had the most lectures…].

All of this being said…
Because I have so much stuff going on in the next couple of weeks, you may not be hearing much from me on here [promise to at least update with images here and there…] — consider it a mini-sort-of-blog-hiatus. I’ll still be around… just not as much.

Good luck to everyone battling finals [and this weather…] and I’ll meet you on the other side!

Today’s medical school fact of the day: Human malaria is caused by four species of Plasmodium: P. falciparaum, P. vivax, P. ovale and P. malariae. — Microbiology lectures