Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Step 2

It's a hell of a way to spend your summers, let me tell you. Last summer, it was studying for Step 1 of the boards. This summer, it's Step 2.

This feels different, though. First, I'm not in Florida this time. I think the beach helps the studying, and if I don't do as well on this exam, I plan to blame it on the lack of salty sea air in my current locale. Second, I'm not nearly as panicked as I was for Step 1. None of the students are. Not because the test is less important, but because after the last year, we're all too damn tired to work up a respectable freak out.

Still, as I do practice questions, I can't help but wonder, where the hell are they keeping these patients they talk about on exams? Because I sure as hell have NEVER SEEN THEM in a clerkship.

Maybe they're all cloistered. I'm being trained on the unwashed masses and tested on nuns.

4 comments:

MmeBenaut said...

It's rather scary to think what the unwashed masses might have accumulated in their lifetimes.

There's only one thing that I can think of that would set a nun apart from the rest of us. What are you studying then Terroni, exactly?

Good luck with the study and the Step 2 exam little one. I'm sure you'll blitz it, like all the other tests.

Terroni said...

I just feel like I'm studying a lot of stuff I've never seen in real patients before. We've all been saying the same thing as we do practice questions...Real patients don't present like this!

I've seen enough real patients to suspect that there's actually nothing that sets apart most nuns from the rest of us, though. We all have our secrets. ;)

Maria said...

Those hoops will just keep getting easier or so you will think. Mostly, though, you will be so exhausted that you won't care as much about the hoops and will shock yourself by doing twice as well when you don't give as much as a flying fuck. Once you see the pattern of the tests, you can swallow them down whole.

Maria said...

And oh..I forgot...you will use medical jargon right and left and not even think about it.

Just the other day, Liv told me that she didn't feel up to swim practice and I wearily said, "Presenting symptoms?"

And the even more odd thing is that she answered the question easily. She'd been there before.