One Small Step

How am I going to learn two years' worth of material in two weeks? I have the perfect solution, but unfortunately, it involves traveling back in time by two years. I'm taking the USMLE Step 1 on May 26th. It seems to be the most important test of one's medical educational career. It's like the MCAT times 100. The SAT times a gazillion and one. It's like taking part in a quiz bowl competition, except nobody wins. The test destroys everyone who dares confront its clinical fury. It's like Unicron (no, not Unicorn) from the Transformers cartoon, who eats planets for breakfast. It's like that weapon from the new Star Trek movie (which was awesome BTW, despite the creative alterations liberally applied to the Star Trek world). Oh, yes. It's going to rock my world.

It's hard to pull myself away from studying or doing practice questions. Okay, maybe not. But with only two weeks to learn everything about everything, I feel like maybe I should be studying nonstop to make up for lost ground. I think I'm making progress, though. I have 558 questions left in Kaplan QBank, which is essentially a pool of USMLE-like questions that's doing a good job of reminding me about everything I supposedly should but clearly don't know. There are a little over 2400 questions in all, so I'm about 77% done. It takes me a couple of hours to get through a "standard" set of 48 questions since all the questions also come with descriptions for why an answer is correct or why an option is wrong (aka why I suck so bad at guessing). Thankfully, some of it is actually sticking. I'm hoping at this rate to be done with all questions by the end of the week. I could theoretically burn through 500 questions in one day, but I'm concurrently reading First Aid, which is arguably the Bible of med school. I have never before pored over any publication with such passion.

I survived the last finals week of my educational career on Friday. The last exam was pathology. And it was a bit anticlimactic. Supposedly, the Step 1 will feel even more so. After you finish it, you're like, "Now what?" I should probably devise a post-Step 1 plan beforehand, while I can still think straight. I guess I'd go home and watch TV and eat some chips or something. I would consider reading a book, but it would bear too much resemblance to studying. Maybe some Calvin and Hobbes. I'll need to pack for Taiwan. Play some guitar. Burn my class notes. Shower. Give my mom a hug. Have her make me dinner. Post-Step 1 life is going to be grand.