I can honestly say that I have never in my life worked as hard as I am working now, preparing for this test. I've been in England for over 4 weeks, and since I have started my revision, I have left the house once. Once. I traveled all the way here, and I have yet to enjoy a day in Liverpool...
I had no idea that I would ever be this dedicated to revision, but here I am. Working hard. Putting in hours. Breaking down every few days, feeling worthless and overwhelmed, only to find myself confident and reassured a few days later. Its a really vicious and exhausting cycle. I really am so sick of sitting on my ass, studying first aid and reviewing flashcards and watching DIT and reviewing my notes. Seriously, I think I am forgetting what it was like to live, to have a weekend off, to work less than 12 hours a day. But this will be worth it; I pray to God it will be, anyway.
So, first of all you may be wondering WHY anyone would study for 6 weeks for 1 exam...well Step1 is a 7 hour, approximately 322 question exam covering anything and everything we have ever been taught about physiology, pathology, pharmacology, anatomy, biochemistry, epidemiology, embryology, etc. Thats a hell of a lot of material, and it is suggested that we study for 6-8 weeks for the exam, each day with about 10-12 hours of revision. This exam really makes or breaks what kind of doctor you can become, and what residency you can place into. But that doesn't really apply to me...I'm not going to go through the Match, and I won't be competing against other US med school grads - I want to practice in England. I only need to pass. But here's the thing: I truly, from the bottom of my heart, want to do my absolute best that I can...so I have been working my ass off.
Routine has been really the key to my study habits. Each day, I get up by 9 and go through my Doctors in Training lectures. This takes about 7 hours. By 4, I go through the worst part of my day - I take a practice test on U-World. Let me tell you, the questions are hard. I think the purpose of U-World is to make you realize how little you actually know, and it forces you to work harder. The average score of any exam is about a 50%. Somedays I'm above the mean, somedays I'm below, but I always dread the exams. It's a good learning experience, though, as they provide detailed explanations to each question to help expand your knowledge. But even after 2 years of medical school, it's still not easy for me to see anything less than 100%...After U-World, I go for a run and listen to a Goljan lecture related to the DIT lecture covered that day. I love the run - it is definitely the best part of my day. I don't know my way around that well, but I haven't got lost yet so I'd say I'm doing pretty well!haha This brings me to about 7, when I eat my dinner (I am so lucky to have a delicious, healthy dinner cooked for me every night!). Then I review notes until about 11, and then I go through some rapid review. Mike sometimes helps me with this, by firing questions at me for about a half hour - hour (I review on my own when he's not around - it's not as good, but better than nothing). I get to bed around 1, get up and start again the next day. The weekends have been spent reviewing the previous material and taking long U-World tests. Overall, on a really productive day I do about 15 hours; on a day that I find myself really distracted, I'm only getting in about 12.
All I can say is, thank God I didn't schedule my exam any later than I did. I've still got 10 days of revision left and I'm definitely starting to get really sick of it. I'm taking tomorrow night off, so hopefully that will be enough of a break to get me through the final push and on to a good score!
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