finals

Day 275: 2 down, 4 to go

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

Have you had these Bolthouse Farms smoothies? I grabbed this one thinking that it would be slightly less sugar-laden than all the rest of them… but the “Green Goodness” part was misleading. Alas, it was a yummy dessert to go with my weekend pre-exam pizza!

The best part of having NBME exams is that the questions are inherently more fair than an in-house-generated examination. When various individuals write questions, the variability in semantics, difficulty level and understandability [oh, you meant that?!] sometimes get called into question. And when you’re sitting in limbo between passing and failing because of a couple of measly points… you can bet that you’ll be sitting in the exam review session contesting every single question.

Despite the fact that the exam is more fair … most of us have no idea how we performed. The exam was 115 questions, so when I finally hit the submit button on my exam, my brain was fried [and the caffeine-rush had already worn off] so I was ready to book it out of that uncomfortable O’Dowd lecture hall seat. Plus, we had an Anatomy Practical just a few hours afterwards that I needed to study for.

Either way, what’s done is done and I just have to keep looking forward and studying for the next thing. I feel calmer now that we don’t have class from 8AM-5PM [only 8AM-11AM for Synthesis] and we don’t have anymore days jammed with 2 exams. Plus, there are a number of fun end-of-the-year lunches/dinners scheduled for the upcoming week and end of next week — lots of little things to look forward to [and one huge thing: summer!]. I cannot believe that we are down to our last 9 days of the first year… the year went by in a haze of studying, O’Dowd, getting to know my classmates and adjusting to being in a long distance relationship. I’ll definitely be reflecting more on the year in the coming weeks.

If you’re off enjoying summer please soak up some sun and adventure for me. If you’re still in the midst of finals, good luck. If you don’t fit into either of these broad school-based categories, then please enjoy this present chapter of your life — I’m quickly realizing that time is fleeting and we only live in each individual moment once.

Day 251: Where’s the “pause” button?!

Amanda Xi

Today’s series of inane images:

[To make up for the serial silence, I thought I’d post a series of images that represent what has been going on in my life…]

While in Miami, I had the opportunity to meet the Keynote Speaker: Gloria Steinem!
This was the view from our Sofitel Miami hotel room [except we didn’t spend any time outside…].

Dessert at the Anniversary Gala was amazing…

We’ve started our last block of the M1 year: Respiratory.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the AMWA 97th Annual Meeting in Miami, FL — I had a wonderful time getting to know one of my classmates, meeting other AMWA members from across the country and listening to the insightful words of the session speakers. Dr. Remen‘s soft-spoken words from the Friday evening reception really stuck with me — she noted that many see the world as broken, as something that needs to be fixed… but suggested that we see the world is hidden and needs to be discovered. Additionally, another talk entitled “How to succeed in practice” started out with some basic advice: don’t burn out. The speaker then proceeded with minimalistic slides leading up to the main piece of advice: in order to succeed in practice, you have to love it. Although he essentially stated the obvious, the session was well-presented [i.e. comical and lighthearted] and I find that sometimes we just need to be reminded of what’s important to keep going when the going gets tough.

With the end of the M1 year quickly approaching, I keep wondering where I can find the “pause” button — I seem to need every moment of the day to attend lecture, complete assignments and keep up with extracurricular commitments. This essentially translates into our Respiratory material taking the backseat until [maybe] this weekend. Although I understand the need to test our competency with written assignments, sometimes I wonder about whether the timing of due dates was considered — we have a 4-5 page Literature Review paper due Monday and another 2-3 page Position Paper for PMH due on Wednesday. Sure, this doesn’t sound like much, but when I sat down and started to look into the assignments, I realized that they would take much more time than I seem to have.

The frequency of updates will be sparse in the upcoming weeks — we have 5 weeks left in the semester, but our block of 5-6 exams (depends on if you count the Anatomy Lab Practical) start in a little over 3 weeks. I’m sure that everything will magically work out and summer is right around the corner, but right now, in this moment, the future looks daunting.

Happily, I’m sure I’ll take some stress off tonight at our Med Ball — Social Committee has been working hard the last couple of months to make this a reality and I’m really excited to see all of their hard work pay off!

Until next time…