How did you spend the last 8 days?

[Jack P]

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I'm sitting at my desk with 8 days left looking at my stack(s) of books and notes, the worn, torn, annoted and sad looking First Aid that's begining to be an aversive stimulus, wondering how to most effectively spend the last few days. For those of you who have taken the beast, what did you do and would you spend it differently? Did you favor just spending the time reading through first aid and writing lists out from memory (autonomic drugs, FAB, anti-arrhythmics (somehow my achilles heal) etc) or did you spend it doing thousands of questions? I'm sitting reasonably comfortable now as far as correlations go with Qbank, NBME etc and just want to maintain...anyway, just throwing a hand out in the dark to see if there is any advice...it will be appreciated

Cheers

 

[JBHunt]

I'm sitting at my desk with 8 days left looking at my stack(s) of books and notes, the worn, torn, annoted and sad looking First Aid that's begining to be an aversive stimulus

Lol. What scores are you getting with the NBMEs? Print out your performance profile and focus on the weak areas. Good luck on your exam next week!

 

[tomatoattack]

😱 keep studying, unless you feel burned out. I felt burned out and stopped studying three days before the test.

I realize this isn't really good advice, and that if you have studied for a long time might as well keep studying for a few more days. 🙁

Finalize your vacation plans

 

[Jack P]

Agreed, I guess if I have put in 5 solid weeks what is another one right? As far as NBME I'm right at the 680 mark (Form 3) with my weak area being Haem, but that's a mystery to me anyway...someday the reasoning behind having so many different types of lymphoma will become clear, but then it seems more lymphomas will mysteriously be classified ruling out the umptienth edition of reclassification systems, sending the viscious cycle of med student confusion into further chaos. I did hit the wall last night, fueled by overcaffination, information overload induced nausea and boredom I put the brain on cruise control with unprovoking comedies to the effect of Waking Ned Devine and My Best Friends Wedding...today I feel much better.

 

[delicatefade]

If you have access to Goljan, check out his review on leukemias/lymphomas. He really helped out with the classifications. Most leukemia questions you can get right just by knowing the age of the patient.

 

[lord_jeebus]

Questions questions questions

Over my last week before the test, I only did questions (except reading FA the day before). Personally I find questions much less painful than reading review books.

But if you get sick of doing them, find something else.

 

[dmitrinyr]

I agree with the other people who gave their advice. You have studied for so many weeks, what is a couple more days going to do, unless you are totally burnt out in which case you should still study but not as much as you have been doing. Besides that, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS until you cannot do anymore questions. I always thought that I should do as many questions as possible because questions allow you to see that topic that you know but be tested on it maybe from a perspective that you never thought of and that will help you learn that topic better. Doing questions is key and lots of people take this for granted.

 

[Jack P]

Thanks for the advice. Now it's three days and counting and I've been hitting the questions hard, finished the Pretest Orange book, Kaplan Qbook, USMLERx, Qbank and now I'm working through this book put out by West Virginia Medical School (Boardbusters...anyone heard of it?) I have the NMS book, passed down the line from others that thought it was beyond the grips of Step 1, does anyone disagree? And yesterday I fired through the comprehensive exam of BRS Anatomy, I wonder if it's good to go through the BSci, Pathology and Phys books....oh and then there are the NBME questions, still some work to do. Dmitrinyr, you are totally right...doing hundreds of questions allows you to see all of the different permutations of various topics; for instance last night I got a question on the Somogyi effect with Type I DM and another with the Hungry Bones syndrome following parathyroid surgery, had never seen those before! the boardbusters book if nice but it's a lot easier than the other books...seem to be averaging around 90 where i'm only around 80 for Kaplan Qbook and USMLERx....perhaps it's because my exam is coming up and i'm better prepared, here hoping!

 

[lord_jeebus]

If you've done QBank and USMLERx at 80%, you're good to go.

Take it easy these last few days, do some casual brushing up of the basics and maybe a NBME test or two, and go rock your boards.