May 2004 Archives

Day 8 of board studying:

Well, its been a slow couple of days. I can't believe an entire week has already gone by. Am I now one third prepared to take that test? Not quite.

I sort of sank into a rut on thursday. I think studying biochemistry sapped all my strength and will to contintue. I have gotten very late starts since then, which I attribute partially to my complete inability to get up at 8 am according to plan, and partially to to my poor grasp of the entire field of anatomy. You would think anatomy, an area based enitrely on pure fact, facts which hasn't changed for thousands of years, would somehow be easy or straightforward. But its suprisingly complicated. I find it very difficult to remember which nerves exit the greater sciatic foramen superior instead of inferior to the piriformis muscle, or the fact that the superior and inferior pancreaticoduodenal arteries are the only link between the branches of the celiac artery and the superior mesenteric artery and therefore only thing to save your guts from rotting if your celiac artery clotted off. It seems, actually, that the vascular system of the GI tract is a favorite subject of board questions, and I was suprised to find that I like it better than almost any other pat of anatomy.

I have all these amazing colored diagrams that I drew last year during anatomy, and they are really nice to have right now. I want to eventually scan them and make a internet slide show of them, for posterity's sake.

I just did a practice test on cardiac physiology, the subject that I devoted myself to yesterday, and I got an 85%! The highest score yet. I think I now understand that stuff better than I ever did when I was learning it in class. I guess that's one good thing about this whole process - it prevents you from looking like a total idiot when you get to the wards and people expect you to actually know things.
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I just rocked my practice test in genetics! With a whopping 76% correct, even in spite of the fact that I was rocking it open-book-non-timed style, it makes me feel better about things. Sure beats the 40% that I got in biochem yesterday. Ouch.

Bit of a late start today. I had trouble sleeping last night because I kept having all of these weird dreams where I was studying, which is mentally exhausting even if its not really happening. I should make it a goal to stop studying before 11:30pm, if I want to preserve my dream state as the restful refuge that it should be. Now for my choices of the day: do I stick to my schedule and launch into anatomy? Or do I jump ahead to something a little less heavily weghted with rote memorization, like cardiac physiology? To be honest, neither option is really that tempting. Maybe I'll make a smoothie and postpone the inevitable.
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Day 4 of studying for the boards:

It is Wednesday morning. I have been studying since Sunday. Even writing that I had to check my calendar because I couldn't remember what day it is. I thought it was Tuesday. When I realized the truth, I experienced this brief moment of panic - oh my god! Its already wednesday? That's one less day to study. Only 19 days to go. Move move move!

Its sad that 19 days of desperate cramming seems like not enough time, but its really not. Yesterday, after studying at World Cup for 6 hours straight and realizing that I had only got through about a fourth of what I should have done that day, I let myself sink into desperation. This seems to be an impossible task. Re-learn every single bit of knowledge that I should have accumulated over 2 years, and do it in 3 weeks. For me, that boils down to about a subject every 1 or 2 days.

Right now I am on Biochemistry. Last year that amounted to a 10 week class with four tests, for which I would study like mad. Now I am summarizing all of it in 2 days. Yesterday didn't go so well. Do you know how many lysosomal storage diseases there are? Atleast 8. They all result from deficiencies of enzymes like alpha-galactosidase A and beta-glucocerebrosidase, which cause different sphingolipids to accumluate in different parts of the body, causing different symptoms. And just when I think I'm getting a handle on it - cherry red spots on the macula, think Tay Sach's disease, think Ashkenazi Jews - I do a practice test. Then I discover that Niemann-Pick disease also has cherry red spots, though not as commonly, and that little tidbit is fair game on an exam, even though it is nowhere in any of my books. Come on, Niemann-Pick, get your own damn symptoms and leave me alone.

At 10 last night I came up with a clever memory device for Krabbe's disease: "I'm Krabby because I have no myelin. And I can't see or hear." That honestly made me laugh so hard. Me, lying on my couch, surrounded by books, laughing by myself at a mnemonic that clearly won't actually help... that's my life.
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This has been a very busy week, and it is about to get busier. I am officially done with my second year! I had my last test on thursday, after a very weird week of studying and wondering how time could possibly have gone by so fast. Actually the biggest stress of the week, actually the whole past month, was not the test on thursday, nor even finishing the year, but the event that took place on friday. Last night.

It has been an OHSU tradition for some time now for the second years to put on a show at the end of year. Its called The Follies, and it is called that because the entire production consists of making fun of everyone and everything related to the medical school experience. There are skits, videos, gossip, news, music, and dance performances, which all amount to one gigantic inside joke about our collective experience at OHSU. For some reason I ended up co-organizing the entire thing, writing and producing 2 videos, participating in 3 live skits and a dance performance, and hosting the show as one of the two MC's.

It ended up being way more work than I ever expected, and trying to pull it all together during the last couple weeks of school was a bit of a challenge, but it ended up being so awesome that it was all worth it. But man, was I worried. We had a dress rehersal on thursday night which was a complete disaster. Nobody was prepared, nobody was paying attention, nothing seemed funny or even interesting, and everybody (including me) was exhausted from just having taken the final exam a few hours before. It really had the potential of sucking very very badly. But I stayed at school until 12:30 that night (I had been there since 8:45 in the morning) so that Cody, my fellow co-host, and I could map out the entire show and plan directions for everybody involved, including the witty banter that we would used to transition between skits.

I have never been much of a performer, or really much of a leader for that matter, so I was incredibly nervous for the entire event. Coordinating things like microphones and costume changes and skit set up was hard enough, but being on stage for almost the entire night as a host who was supposed to be funny and entertaining while keeping the entire show running smoothly? I didn't know if I could do it.

But it was awesome. It went so well, so much better than I ever thought it could. And the audience loved it. It was so incredibly gratifying to hear people laughing at things that I had written while attempting to study. The 2 movies that I had made, and that Mike helped me edit - one about the Lord of the Rings Interest Group (LOTRIG) - went over really well. At the after party, people were actually quoting one of my lines! And even people who weren't students, like Mike and Ritchey, who graciously agreed to attend, said that they had a good time. It was just such an exhilerating, awesome, rewarding experience. A good way to end the year.

Oh, but its not over yet. Tomorrow I start studying for the boards. And by that I mean cramming for 10 hours a day for three weeks straight for the hardest, most important test that I will ever take in my life. Bring it on!
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