I blew off MSII...now what!?!?

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Actually, that statement is misleading. I started the year off great, i.e., getting top grades, staying on top of everything, you know, the whole nine yards. Then, everything went pretty much south in November when I and my significant other began having relationship problems. I'm still passing, some things only barely, but my grades took a wicked nose dive. What's really bothering me is that there are glaring deficiencies in my knowledge given the time and energy, I spent on trying to maintain this relationship (I couldn't tell you jack - squat about antimicrobial therapy, renal pathology, etc.)

The solution is pretty self - evident (study my arse off) but I was just curious if anybody out there ran into the same situation. How did it turn out in the end? How did step I go?
 
Students at my school who had academic difficulty during 1st or 2nd year are often pulled aside and advised by one of my deans to post-pone on third year rotation in order to study longer for the usmle. Sometimes, they will even be asked to repeat years if the administration doesn't have a lot of faith in their ability to pass the usmle. 2nd year grades usually correlate pretty well with usmle scores, but that doesn't mean that you can't come back from whereever you are at. Anyways, I would take some extra time to study for the usmle. If you really have a lot of difficulty with learning and understanding the general concepts and learn better when someone is lecturing you, I might even advise you to consider repeating the year. I personally think that most of second year can be learned just fine through self-study though because the concepts are not very complicated, so if you give yourself extra time to focus on the subjects that you missed, I think that you should do just fine. Good luck.
 
op,

i ran into similar problems, although it happened the last month of my first year. barely squeeked by in path and micro.

this lack of knowledge can be compensated for during boards study. i would give yourself a few extra days of the subjects you feel you need to learn from scratch, rather than the rest of the stuff you will be reviewing. i felt that micro was one of my strongest subjects on step 1. i think that it is most important to identify the areas you are weak in, and which are high yield and go from there.
 
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