A Med School Memoir

Finals are upon us.  The library hums with constant activity.  Med students, pharm students, nursing students, grad students, allied health professionals in training, all pack into the library, armed with coffee, cokes, red bulls, rock star energy drinks, whatever they require to keep them buzzing and hone their attention.  But around 7 pm, the nursing students clear out, around 10 the pharm students clear out, and by midnight it’s pretty much only med students left.  Some of them will stay here all night, pulling two chairs together to form an impromptu cot for maybe an hour’s worth of sleep before the test at 8 am the next morning.  It goes on like this for two or three weeks.

But not for me.  I had my time in the library, the overnights packed in with my classmates.  Those nights often seemed a little more like social time and less like study time.  So I have retreated to the quiet solitude of my house, studying in a dirty little room cluttered with textbooks, review books, and a mountain of flash cards.  It gets lonely studying by yourself for 12 or 14 hour stretches at a time, but in the end I hope it will all be worth it when my grades reflect all the hard work I’ve put in.

So we’ve completed our coursework for the year.  It’s now time to take our finals.  Our finals consist of standardized national exams that not only allow us to measure ourselves against the other medical students in the country, but also allow our school to compare itself to other schools.  Sometimes this comparison is favorable.  Other times, not so much.  Additionally, these standardized exams allow us a good chunk of time to review for the next big hurdle in our training, USMLE STEP ONE.  But I’m not worried about Step 1 today.  Today I’m only worried about reviewing all the pharmacology, microbiology, pathology, behavioral sciences, and ICM that I’ve learned since the beginning of the school year.  Piece of cake, right?

The stress of finals is unreal.  My grade in every single class depends on my performance in these weeks.  If I get sick, if a tragedy befalls my family, if I simply fail to prepare well enough, my grades will undoubtedly fall from good to lackluster.  If, on the other hand, I manage to stay motivated and prepare as hard as I know I need to, if I can maintain my positive outlook, and if I can set aside all the multitude of temptations (I’m looking at you, PS3 and reddit.com) that beckon me with their sweet promise of momentary distraction from the dull texts like Goljan’s Rapid Review of Pathology and First Aid for the USMLE Step 1, then I might actually manage to finish this year proud of my achievements.

For now, I will just keep on keepin’ on.  I have many hours of studying left before I’m “done,” though as soon as I’m “done,” I will have another set of obstacles to overcome.

Step 1 is just around the corner.

But still, for now…

Tags:   Finals · library · M2 · studying · the final countdown2 Comments