SPRING BREAK! SPRING BREAK! I

SPRING BREAK! SPRING BREAK!

I woke up slightly hung over this morning, only to be inundated with Mike's carefully constructed plan for the day: get up, eat oatmeal, make tea and coffee, scoot over to Jona's newly lofted warehouse apartment, go downtown, come home, work in the garden, and on and on. As I was trying to fit this schedule into my sluggish consiousness, I couldn't help but feel a sense of panic. So many things... so much time... no... time... left... for... studying.

But then I realized... I don't have to study! I'm on SPRING BREAK! I have a whole week to do whatever I want. I can sleep in, stay out late, heck- I couItld even get drunk on a beach in Cancun with a group of belligerent frat boys, or take part in a hormonally charged pool-side dance party hosted by Ryan Seacrest and the members of O-Town. If I so desired.

Or, I could pay too much money to fly down to Phoenix to stay with my college friend Kirsten. And then, while she is out teaching choir to 8th graders, I could spend the day attempting to study for the boards, which I have to take in mid June. SPRING BREAK! PARTY! It will be awesome.

The only reason I feel the need to study over SPRING BREAK is the fact that I am deathly afraid of the swiftly approaching board exam. The "boards" is an affectionate term for the U.S. Medical Liscensing Exam (USMLE). To get liscensed to practice medicine in this country you must past three exams, the first of which (Step 1) is to be taken after your second year. That's what I'm taking in June. It is a basic science type exam that encompasses everything you learned (or should have learned) in the first two years of medical school. It is very hard. You take Step 2 after your 4th year - its more of a clinical test, regarding treatments and complications of diseases. As part of that, I will have to go to LA to take an observed clinical exam with real patients. Step 3 is taken at the end of your residency, and is all about the specialty that you are going into. Then you will be "boarded" in a certain field, like pediatrics, or emergency medicine.

So its basically just a whole heap of fun. I wasn't all that worried about it until I took a "mock" board test a couple weeks ago. I knew nothing. There was literally not a single question that I was sure about. My strategy was to just put B for anything that I knew so little about as to make an educated guess impossible. I ended up putting B a lot. So that was a bit worrisome. I decided that in order to overcome this minor obstacle to my medical career, I must start studying over SPRING BREAK. I have decided to focus on immunogogy and pharmacology. It won't be too bad. I will be in a warm place, with good friends.
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