The morning of my Board exams, my mother packed me a lunch comprising of seedless grapes, two Greek yogurts, a cheese sandwich, a bag of pistachio nuts, two cappuccinos, a diet coke, chocolate-covered coffee beans and a pouch of pretzels.

Mum, this isnt the Hunger Games, I joked.

Well no duh. You have absolutely zero hand-eye coordination, she said.

I gave her a sour look.

But if there was ever a nerd equivalent, this would be it, I said, compensating. Someone needed to deliver a pep talk, after all, and clearly mum wasnt stepping up. Today, I do battle.

Mum ignored my inquiries about whether we had any war paint lying around the house. But this was hardly overkill. The USMLE Step 1 exam, otherwise known as the Boards, is an eight-hour test, designed to test medical students of the completeness and depth of their preclinical learning. Commonly taken right at the end of the second year of medical school, before students transition from classrooms onto the hospital wards, the exams represent a months-long effort on our part to frantically cram mountains of information, from the basics of mitosis to the specifics of anti-diarrheals, in hopefully a systematic and organized way. The three-digit score that one receives four weeks later plays a part in determining a students competitiveness for certain residencies and such. To what extent no one can really say. And therefore no one wants to chance it.

Did I mention that its an eight-hour test?

Much this year has been about such numbers. The number of hours you can study a day. The number of practice questions. Percentages. Percentiles. Five-hour energy drinks. The number of times you looked over the glycolysis pathway and still forgot an enzyme. The number of simulated tests. The number of days you overslept and missed classes out of sheer exhaustion.

In late September, I met with an academic advisor at school for help in planning a study schedule. She pulled out a college-ruled notebook and drew a long horizontal line intersected with many little strokes. In neat print, she outlined the various books and web resources I might find helpful and the goals I needed to be reaching by various dates on the timeline. She had relationships with many a successful student in the past, she said. I nodded fervently. Surrounded on all sides by what I could do, I just wanted someone to tell me what I should.

I would advise you that as you move closer to test, to limit how much time you spend on other activities, she said.

See the original post here:
Step One: A Medical School Pivot Point