yes i live
Clearly as you see between my last blog entry and this one, I fell off the face of the earth and just stopped blogging for quite over a year. But I think the fact that I've become a busy medical student is somewhat of a good reason and explains the lack of updating?
Ok well actually not really. Honestly its just me being sidetracked and preoccupying myself with other crap in my life. Even horrible is the fact that the following paragraphs are words I typed in the middle of August 2008 and never published them but just put them as a saved draft! Horrible I know I am but now I'll go ahead and publish those ideas now in the following paragraphs (mainly in their entirety, with some additional edits) and then blog about the events from the beginning of this year to somewhere up to this present time as best I can.
In the middle of August 2008 (in the order to the best of my memory) I put a mod chip in my Nintendo Wii, playing a lot of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (finally beat it in July 2009), Beating both games of Trauma Center: Second Opinion and TC: New Blood, visited my brother in Evanston, Ill. and realizing that come Sept. will mark his 10th year there, then me starting to take care of things and moving preparations and related stuff for moving into a NSU-owned residential hall (Rolling Hills Graduate Residental Hall) to which I'll finally decide to move into, white coat ceremony for NSUCOM c/o 2012, and have met a whole lot of new people.
As I think back to those times, there was one pressing thought on my mind - "I can't #$(*ing believe I'm a medical student at Nova Southeastern University, College of Osteopathic Medicine OF ALL PLACES. I am very surprised at myself as I sit down this moment and think about all these events largely because...I originally had no intention or interest or had ever fathomed I'd ever end up here. Since high school I abhored Nova for no sound reason except that I just wanted to go away from home and vowed to not go there for undergrad and thought it beneath me to go there for med school. Honestly, DO school was never really a glimmer in my eye, nor did I further explore/consider it once I got into FIU for that 7/8 yr BS/MD program to USF med school, which you can read all about if you look at earlier entries in this blog.
And therein lives the further irony of all this: I've gone to schools I had originally no intention of going to in the first place due to initial, unfounded skepticism or thoughts, but then waivered once I further evaluated options and circumstances. For example, I had no intention to originally go to FIU in the first place when I graduated high school, it was actually my very last choice. I actually got accepted to Vanderbilt University for undergrad and wanted to go there, but ended up turning it down only b/c I thought it to be a worthwhile sacrifice to go to FIU for 3 reasons: 1.) The 7 yr accelerated med program with USF (which btw is now defunct now that FIU got a medical school). 2.) lots of scholarship money (I broke even, did not take any loans, and in one semester actually started putting money in the bank and 3.) well it was definitely cheaper. But if you ask me today if I could do it all over again/differently...I am not sure, but I think I would have leaned towards going to Vanderbilt and ignoring everything else. I'm sure each choice I faced would have had its own pros and cons and challenges, so I guess things play out the way they do or the decisions we make are done for a reason that we can't fathom.
And now the same thing has happened to me here in starting out at Nova. I sit down every now and then and wonder how did I end up here? Well the facts are that throughout senior year I had worked hard on the AMCAS, took the MCAT 3 times (my best composite score was a 24), submitted AMCAS in middle of August (kinda late, IMO), and when none of the MD schools I applied to considered me, I started considering DO schools, and that was in November! So yeah I started applying to DO schools reaaaly late and I can blame only myself for being so ignorant and narrow-minded towards getting an MD and not taking the time to evaluating ALL my options. The reality that has now become to me is, medical school admissions are really competitive and it would behoove one to realize there are people that are smart like me if not even smarter and so you either appreciate and evaluate all options, or else you figure out how to distinguish yourself. Long story short, I only got interviews at Nova and Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida. Got waitlisted at both, till June 2008. Nova took me off their waitlist first and then LECOM-B took me off during the first week of July. So as Regrets? Well its too early to say...but admittedly yes I would have wanted to get out of this area, go out of state, want a new experience, but settled on this...
Don't get me completely wrong, I don't completely hate it, I'm just weirded out by how all this has played out and the fact that I've had many many plans and things not going the way I thought it would be or me just being lazy, well things worked out differently...and I'm not sure if I should be thankful/grateful to God, or can't help but wonder what if and/or would much rather grumble or see if things were better if I had chosen another option...it just boggles the heck out of me.
There is one main thing about being here at NSUCOM that I don't really want to trade for anything else. What I do like about being here are the people, my classmates - majority are very friendly and I've struck up some good friendships and networked with easily mostly thanks to Facebook. They are all of different backgrounds and circumstances (i.e., much older, some are professionals, some have a masters, some are military, some are bilingual, some have a medical condition or some handicap that doesn't stop them from learning) that I like to learn from and it was an honor to be in a class learning with them.
What I am just a little miffed about is our class scheduling of how we have classes pretty much from 8am - 5pm every mon thru fri. We also have like 4 different lab sessions.
In summary, first year of medical school at NSUCOM has been quite an ordeal for me to adjust to and difficult and I'll go ahead and now admit it: I failed 3 classes in my first semester of medical school.
Failing at NSUCOM means you scored below 70% on combined tests in a class. For me it was Gross Anatomy (58), Physiology I (61), and Osteopathic Principles & Practice I (69!!!). It was quite embarassing for me because I thought I would only fail one class but ended up doing poorly in 3. One of the interesting opportunities here at NSUCOM I should disclose is that you can fail up to 3 classes in an academic year and still have an opportunity to have a "second chance" by taking a cumulative exam for the failed classes in the summer and if you pass them then you pass the class and can proceed with the curriculum.
Let's begin with why I failed. Well, it really was all my fault. There were times during the Fall 2009 semester when I slacked off in studying for anatomy, partly because it was a lot of information to take in and I just got discouraged and just gave up. I mean I tried but I know in myself I could have done better if I had exhausted more efforts with resources and old tests. Also I read the material once, usually a week before the exam and that is a big no-no here, a harsh lesson I have come to realize with most of my classes. My anatomy lab experience was really disoragnized and demoralizing, and there was not too much guidance; you really had to be self-motivated and had to be on top of asking questions and be arrogant with learning the structures on the cadavers. As for physiology I, it was just hard because it was very conceptual and you had to put the pieces of the knowledge puzzle together. You can't just go by old tests or read the material once. You need to read it like 2 or 3 times and for me, I had to force myself to interpret the material in my own words/perspective by typing an outline and just make it make sense to me in my mind. It was also necessary to get a tutor. See, my mistake was that I didn't want to waste money with a tutor the first time around in the Fall 2009 semester. Well I should have, and I did when I did the remediation. As for OPP 1, that was completely just BS. I had a 69 and so was off by one point; I did great with the lab practicals but screwed up on the final exam. See, you must get a 70 combined average just on the written exams (only midterm and final) and then you must also get 70 combined just on the lab exams and then altogether you must end up with 70 average. So my mistake was slacking off on the final.
Anyways, harsh lessons were learned from the Fall 2009 semester and long story short, I did get the opportunity to remediate the 3 aforementioned failed classes last month (June 2009), and did so successfully! However, I am not going to continue on with the curriculum and become a 2nd year medical student. I am actually going to do a 5-year plan. I will elaborate why in my next blog posting.
Ok well actually not really. Honestly its just me being sidetracked and preoccupying myself with other crap in my life. Even horrible is the fact that the following paragraphs are words I typed in the middle of August 2008 and never published them but just put them as a saved draft! Horrible I know I am but now I'll go ahead and publish those ideas now in the following paragraphs (mainly in their entirety, with some additional edits) and then blog about the events from the beginning of this year to somewhere up to this present time as best I can.
In the middle of August 2008 (in the order to the best of my memory) I put a mod chip in my Nintendo Wii, playing a lot of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (finally beat it in July 2009), Beating both games of Trauma Center: Second Opinion and TC: New Blood, visited my brother in Evanston, Ill. and realizing that come Sept. will mark his 10th year there, then me starting to take care of things and moving preparations and related stuff for moving into a NSU-owned residential hall (Rolling Hills Graduate Residental Hall) to which I'll finally decide to move into, white coat ceremony for NSUCOM c/o 2012, and have met a whole lot of new people.
As I think back to those times, there was one pressing thought on my mind - "I can't #$(*ing believe I'm a medical student at Nova Southeastern University, College of Osteopathic Medicine OF ALL PLACES. I am very surprised at myself as I sit down this moment and think about all these events largely because...I originally had no intention or interest or had ever fathomed I'd ever end up here. Since high school I abhored Nova for no sound reason except that I just wanted to go away from home and vowed to not go there for undergrad and thought it beneath me to go there for med school. Honestly, DO school was never really a glimmer in my eye, nor did I further explore/consider it once I got into FIU for that 7/8 yr BS/MD program to USF med school, which you can read all about if you look at earlier entries in this blog.
And therein lives the further irony of all this: I've gone to schools I had originally no intention of going to in the first place due to initial, unfounded skepticism or thoughts, but then waivered once I further evaluated options and circumstances. For example, I had no intention to originally go to FIU in the first place when I graduated high school, it was actually my very last choice. I actually got accepted to Vanderbilt University for undergrad and wanted to go there, but ended up turning it down only b/c I thought it to be a worthwhile sacrifice to go to FIU for 3 reasons: 1.) The 7 yr accelerated med program with USF (which btw is now defunct now that FIU got a medical school). 2.) lots of scholarship money (I broke even, did not take any loans, and in one semester actually started putting money in the bank and 3.) well it was definitely cheaper. But if you ask me today if I could do it all over again/differently...I am not sure, but I think I would have leaned towards going to Vanderbilt and ignoring everything else. I'm sure each choice I faced would have had its own pros and cons and challenges, so I guess things play out the way they do or the decisions we make are done for a reason that we can't fathom.
And now the same thing has happened to me here in starting out at Nova. I sit down every now and then and wonder how did I end up here? Well the facts are that throughout senior year I had worked hard on the AMCAS, took the MCAT 3 times (my best composite score was a 24), submitted AMCAS in middle of August (kinda late, IMO), and when none of the MD schools I applied to considered me, I started considering DO schools, and that was in November! So yeah I started applying to DO schools reaaaly late and I can blame only myself for being so ignorant and narrow-minded towards getting an MD and not taking the time to evaluating ALL my options. The reality that has now become to me is, medical school admissions are really competitive and it would behoove one to realize there are people that are smart like me if not even smarter and so you either appreciate and evaluate all options, or else you figure out how to distinguish yourself. Long story short, I only got interviews at Nova and Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida. Got waitlisted at both, till June 2008. Nova took me off their waitlist first and then LECOM-B took me off during the first week of July. So as Regrets? Well its too early to say...but admittedly yes I would have wanted to get out of this area, go out of state, want a new experience, but settled on this...
Don't get me completely wrong, I don't completely hate it, I'm just weirded out by how all this has played out and the fact that I've had many many plans and things not going the way I thought it would be or me just being lazy, well things worked out differently...and I'm not sure if I should be thankful/grateful to God, or can't help but wonder what if and/or would much rather grumble or see if things were better if I had chosen another option...it just boggles the heck out of me.
There is one main thing about being here at NSUCOM that I don't really want to trade for anything else. What I do like about being here are the people, my classmates - majority are very friendly and I've struck up some good friendships and networked with easily mostly thanks to Facebook. They are all of different backgrounds and circumstances (i.e., much older, some are professionals, some have a masters, some are military, some are bilingual, some have a medical condition or some handicap that doesn't stop them from learning) that I like to learn from and it was an honor to be in a class learning with them.
What I am just a little miffed about is our class scheduling of how we have classes pretty much from 8am - 5pm every mon thru fri. We also have like 4 different lab sessions.
In summary, first year of medical school at NSUCOM has been quite an ordeal for me to adjust to and difficult and I'll go ahead and now admit it: I failed 3 classes in my first semester of medical school.
Failing at NSUCOM means you scored below 70% on combined tests in a class. For me it was Gross Anatomy (58), Physiology I (61), and Osteopathic Principles & Practice I (69!!!). It was quite embarassing for me because I thought I would only fail one class but ended up doing poorly in 3. One of the interesting opportunities here at NSUCOM I should disclose is that you can fail up to 3 classes in an academic year and still have an opportunity to have a "second chance" by taking a cumulative exam for the failed classes in the summer and if you pass them then you pass the class and can proceed with the curriculum.
Let's begin with why I failed. Well, it really was all my fault. There were times during the Fall 2009 semester when I slacked off in studying for anatomy, partly because it was a lot of information to take in and I just got discouraged and just gave up. I mean I tried but I know in myself I could have done better if I had exhausted more efforts with resources and old tests. Also I read the material once, usually a week before the exam and that is a big no-no here, a harsh lesson I have come to realize with most of my classes. My anatomy lab experience was really disoragnized and demoralizing, and there was not too much guidance; you really had to be self-motivated and had to be on top of asking questions and be arrogant with learning the structures on the cadavers. As for physiology I, it was just hard because it was very conceptual and you had to put the pieces of the knowledge puzzle together. You can't just go by old tests or read the material once. You need to read it like 2 or 3 times and for me, I had to force myself to interpret the material in my own words/perspective by typing an outline and just make it make sense to me in my mind. It was also necessary to get a tutor. See, my mistake was that I didn't want to waste money with a tutor the first time around in the Fall 2009 semester. Well I should have, and I did when I did the remediation. As for OPP 1, that was completely just BS. I had a 69 and so was off by one point; I did great with the lab practicals but screwed up on the final exam. See, you must get a 70 combined average just on the written exams (only midterm and final) and then you must also get 70 combined just on the lab exams and then altogether you must end up with 70 average. So my mistake was slacking off on the final.
Anyways, harsh lessons were learned from the Fall 2009 semester and long story short, I did get the opportunity to remediate the 3 aforementioned failed classes last month (June 2009), and did so successfully! However, I am not going to continue on with the curriculum and become a 2nd year medical student. I am actually going to do a 5-year plan. I will elaborate why in my next blog posting.