Done! Done! Done! A lot

Done! Done! Done!

A lot has happened since my last post. The most noteworthy occurance, of course, being TAKING THE BOARDS. Since this was one of the most intense things I have done in my life, i think it deserves a little remeniscing.

The test itself was preceeded by that final week of studying. It was awful. Honestly awful. I think I averaged around 10-12 hours of studying per day, and I usually didn't stop studying before 1 in the morning. I was trying very hard to stick to the schedule I had outlined for myself, which proved to be harder than I had thought. Its funny, because when talking to other people about their studying experience, it came out that while they didn't exactly enjoy it, most people found time to do some fun things once in a while. I know one person who watched a mystery series every night, and others who would stop studying at 6 every day and go out for a beer. But for some reason, I was totally unable to maintain any semblance of a normal life during that period, and did absolutely nothing that was fun, relaxing, or in any way entertaining.

In fact, I opted to go against every single person's advice about what to do the day before your exam. Literally everybody who i talked to who took the test last year, and everything I read online or in prep books, said to relax the day before. Go see a movie, go for a hike, go to bed early, and maybe review some notecards, but whatever you do, do not study. So what did I do? I studied all day long, from 9 am to 9:30 pm, feverishly trying to cram months worth of medical facts into my overcrowded brain. Fortunately I was able to stop to watch an hour of Waiting for Guffman before bed, as a reward for getting through the day.

But I think it paid off. The fact that studying was so stressful made the actual exam pale in comparison. The morning of Monday, June 14th rolled in quietly, and before I knew it I was sitting at a computer in a half-cubicle in a large room filled with other people sitting at computers in cublicles. My fellow test takers. A few of them were classmates, and it was kind of reassuring to know that other people had also reached this moment successfully. And for some reason, throughout the whole 8 hour ordeal, I felt nothing but calm, peace, and relief. I was relaxed, I was in a good mood. I was fucking doing it.

It was a cathartic experience. And it went ok. A lot of the questions were simpler than I expected (which might mean that I totally missed the point and got them wrong), and I found that I was remembering some random things that I had just reviewed the day before. But, there were also plenty of questions that left me totally stumped, about drugs and diseases I had never heard of, but for some reason I just let them slide. It was all ok. I was almost done.

I am now in the waiting-for-the-results phase, which should take anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks (which is kind of incredible to me, given that the test was computerized and was scored instantly). So any day now. I have no idea how I did. I'm pretty sure I passed. I'm pretty sure I didn't do awesomely. We shall see. But the point is, I am done. A weight the I have been carrying since the beginning of first year has been lifted, and I feel like I have genuinely accomplished something. Unfortunately, I will have to do it all again for Step 2 and Step 3 (this was Step 1), but that's in the distant future.
--------