First Exam
We had our first major med school exam today: Cell Science Exam 1. This is a five week course that is basically a survey of biochem, cell bio, genetics, and whatever else might fall under that general umbrella. And it's been rough.
Although I studied more regularly and diligently than I have for any other class in my life, I still felt really under-prepared compared to a lot of my classmates who I felt were working twice as hard. I guess I studied the right stuff for the most part b/c I felt pretty good about it and there were only a handful of questions (out of 90 total) that I did not have any clue about how to answer.
What makes this stuff all the more challenging is that the questions tend to be more second and third order stuff. So rather than being asked: what is this? You get asked about a whole process, say RNA transcription, and then what if an enzyme X was removed from the process, how would enzyme Y be affected? To be totally honest, by the time I got to question 75 or so, I felt pretty much exhausted so it was a big push to power through to the end. As I went along I'd been staring questions I wanted to go back and take another look at if I had enough time. I got about one page in on that and had to say "Fuck it" b/c I was too wasted to think I could make better sense at that point than I was earlier in the test.
Another lovely feature of medical school is that we have no idea when we get our grades. There is this whole multiple step review process that has to happen and then the course director gets to decide when grades will actually be released to students. So although I felt like I did at least well enough to pass, I may have no way of confirming that for a long while yet.
Other than that, I came home and crashed following our afternoon lecture. Back at it tomorrow for another very LONG day....
Many spanks,
BBC ;)
Although I studied more regularly and diligently than I have for any other class in my life, I still felt really under-prepared compared to a lot of my classmates who I felt were working twice as hard. I guess I studied the right stuff for the most part b/c I felt pretty good about it and there were only a handful of questions (out of 90 total) that I did not have any clue about how to answer.
What makes this stuff all the more challenging is that the questions tend to be more second and third order stuff. So rather than being asked: what is this? You get asked about a whole process, say RNA transcription, and then what if an enzyme X was removed from the process, how would enzyme Y be affected? To be totally honest, by the time I got to question 75 or so, I felt pretty much exhausted so it was a big push to power through to the end. As I went along I'd been staring questions I wanted to go back and take another look at if I had enough time. I got about one page in on that and had to say "Fuck it" b/c I was too wasted to think I could make better sense at that point than I was earlier in the test.
Another lovely feature of medical school is that we have no idea when we get our grades. There is this whole multiple step review process that has to happen and then the course director gets to decide when grades will actually be released to students. So although I felt like I did at least well enough to pass, I may have no way of confirming that for a long while yet.
Other than that, I came home and crashed following our afternoon lecture. Back at it tomorrow for another very LONG day....
Many spanks,
BBC ;)