No More Exams!!

I write this post with a sigh of relief. As of last week, I am done with all exams in medical school!! 2 weeks ago I took my step 2 licensing exam. In order to be a licensed physician there are 3 "steps" of licensing exams. Step 3 doesn't take place until intern year, so step 2 is the last one during medical school. I took step 1 in February and spent 6 weeks straight studying for it. Step 1 covered all the basic science that I had learned in the first year and a half of medical school.

Step 2 did not have a deisgnated study block, and rumors were widely circulated that it wasn't needed. It covers more clinical science that should be learned during rotations. One preceptor told me "you spend 2 months studying for step 1, 2 weeks studying for step 2 and 2 days studying for step 3." I tried to squeeze in some practice questions during my first couple rotations of 4th year. I didn't get in as many as I would have liked, and on my third rotation I powered through a video series to study. Once I got through the videos I finally had some more time for practice questions. I took a practice exam a week before I was scheduled to take the exam and wasn't happy with my score. I took another one the day before my exam and still wasn't happy with it, so I cancelled my exam. I had never done anything like that before! Cancelling a major exam at the last minute wasn't much like me. So I spent another rotation doing more practice questions and finally took the exam 3 weeks after I had originally scheduled it. I felt terrible when it was over. I couldn't believe so many people had said this was an exam that barely needed any studying. It was hard! I am still awaiting my score, but praying that I passed.

The following week I had a bunch of exams to make-up from maternity leave. I had finished my internal medicine and psychiatry rotations that I took off last year, and had to take the assessments for those. Good news, I crushed those shelf exams, doing much better than I had on any others. I guess all that Step 2 studying must have helped!

In between all that studying I have also been working on applying for internships-- tweaking my CV and personal statement, asking for letters of recommendation, interviewing with different programs, and perseverating over whether I am choosing the right specialty and location for training. Everything is all submitted now, so it's just a waiting game until match day in December. With all of this behind me I didn't know what to do with myself in my spare time! I decided to read a book for fun, which I haven't done in a couple years. I breezed through the first book in the series Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and am looking forward to the next ones!