Putting in the time

Someone finally told me how to annotate First Aid.  I've been trying to find out how to do this for weeks.  Apparently, you're supposed to annotate from UWorld INTO First Aid.  Um, wut?  Someone recommended that I start by just filling in the educational objectives (provided by UWorld) from each question into its respective portion in First Aid.  So that's what I did today--this is useful, and by the end of my 20-question-annotation-into-First-Aid-Adventure I learned something: Your time is lost on the index.  Yesterday I read about Biochem.  Today, I did only Biochem questions.  Yo, biochem is everywhere (not just the first 40 pages of First Aid)  So I was flipping back and forth between the index trying to find out where I could fill in information about rheumatoid factor.  When I complained to the person who originally made this recommendation, she said: Yeah, that means you're not familiar with First Aid.  Once you've gone through it, you'll know where everything is, but you have to put in the time.

I'm at 42% Cumulative Correct.  It makes me want to vomit.

I forgot what it was like

I forgot.  I forgot what it was like to study for an exam like this.  Studying for school is completely different than studying for the MCAT or Boards.  When I'm studying for an exam for school, there's panic, I realize how little I know, I spend the day memorizing facts, doing practice problems, reviewing slides, etc.  I forgot that when you're studying for an exam like this, how you do on that day's practice exam will determine your mood for the rest of day.  I know it shouldn't, but when I was studying for the MCAT, I'd sit for 3 hours doing stupid physics problems and then I'd find out my score, if it was above 30, I was golden; my self-esteem was through the roof; I could do this!  When my score dipped below 30: I was never going to get into medical school, why was I so dumb?  It's not healthy, it's not true, but it's the truth, it's what I felt like.  This weekend I've been catching up on UWorld questions, doing 4 blocks of 46 questions, and after one 30% correct, I felt like finding my way to the bottom of a bottle of bourbon.  I opted for the bottom of a pint of froyo instead.  For another block, I managed a 60%.  I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm still starting out, that there's going to be variation and that I learn from each and every test I take; every wrong answer should be a concept I learn.  Onto DIT primer videos. I am all caught up on my UWorld Questions and my DIT questions though, so at least that's something.  

Step 1 of Step 1

Now that I've had some time to do the things I need to do for Step 1, I've had to make some adjustments.  I'm still trying to keep up with DIT questions and primers because I do think I learn from doing these.  People are rather critical of the DIT questions, but I find them useful.  I'm trying to do 20 questions from UWorld each day and my goal is to go through the QBank once before my dedicated study period.  I am also trying to read ~10 pages of First Aid per day so that when my dedicated study period rolls around and I start doing the DIT video series, I will already be familiar with it.  I haven't been sticking to my schedule because I'm finding that juggling classes with Step 1 studying is harder than I thought, but I've been using this weekend to catch up.  I'm averaging about a ~40% on my UWorld questions which is rather demoralizing, but I'm just starting out, so hopefully that will start going up.  As for First Aid, I don't even know how to annotate the darn thing!  Everyone is like, "annotate it from UWorld", but I'm jumping around so much that I don't find that it's useful to annotate after doing UWorld questions.  Maybe I should just do questions from whatever section I'm reading, but people tell me not to do that because then it gives me a false sense of knowledge.  That said, I think I'm going to try doing one subject at a time rather than all of them because that way I can focus in and see what I suck at and what I...suck less at. ;) Wish me luck and if you've already taken Step 1, I would love to hear some study tips, strategies, and well wishes (from everyone/anyone).  

Step 1: Is this real life?

Step 1 is upon us!   Failing a class this year has made me really nervous for Step 1.  I want to do really well on Step 1 to counteract that failed class.  I've heard that residency directors don't care about 1st and 2nd year grades, especially if you successfully remediate, but I don't quite believe that.  I've been perusing the internet trying to figure out how to study for Step 1, and it's been a little bit tough to find advice that I think is applicable to me.  I've also been hounding all my 3rd year friends with questions about how do balance studying for classes and study for Step 1, what should I do in terms of review courses, Kaplan, DIT, UWorld, First Aid, Review Books, etc.  I basically spent my weekend studying for my current class and figuring out how to study for Step 1.  I decided to post my plan on here because I know people find this blog looking for MCAT study advice, so hopefully I can do well enough that people want to take advice about Step 1 from me.

When I asked my friend for Step 1 advice, she asked, "well what score do you want?"  She didn't mean a vague "I want to crush Step 1" or "I want to pass", legit, "what.score.do.you.want?"  I don't know what I want to do yet, but I don't want to rule anything out (except neuro, and ob/gyn), but I'm interested in specialties like pediatrics (avg 221), emergency medicine (avg 223), , internal medicine (226), pathology (226), surgery (avg 227), and radiology (avg 240).  I know, it's a sundry list, but like I said, I just don't know yet.  The only thing these residencies have in common is that I need to break at least 220, in fact, I should be aiming more for 235-ish, and hope that when it's all over I want to go into pediatrics.  :)   So, goal is set: 235.  Now that I know what I want, I'm going to go out and get it.

I'm using 4 things to study for Step 1 based on everyone's advice/my online research:

1.) First Aid* (Duh)

2.) Pathoma* (I've been using it all year and I love love love it)

3.) UWorld*

4.) Doctors in Training* (heretofore referred to as DIT)

My plan before starting my dedicated study period is: Do ~30 UWorld Questions/Day and annotate the appropriate First Aid sections.  Additionally, DIT sends out 10-15 questions 3x/Week, and so far I've been keeping up with those.  Finally, I am watching the corresponding DIT primer videos for classes and trying to catch up on the ones from prior classes.  All the while, I am still going through Pathoma.

Wish me luck!**

*I have not been paid to advertise for any of these companies.
**For reference, a passing score on Step 1 is now 192.  :-/

New Year, New Me

I'm so excited to write this post because it means that I have passed all my classes (so far)!!  I had to re-take one of my classes, and thank goodness it's over!  It was rough.  I thought I would be able to study for my new class and my remediation exam simultaneously, but I couldn't do that.  So I gave everything I had to my new class, and then when I didn't have anything left, I had to study for my remediation exam.  It sucked, and I don't recommend it.  It's over now.  Now I have to focus on another new class and try to start studying for Step 1.