Numb after step 1 and not even sure how to feel

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DrMcCoy

Psychdoctor-in-training
10+ Year Member
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Oct 19, 2010
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I'm waiting for my Step 1 score back but am nervous about how I'm feeling. I know everyone says they felt terrible post-exam, but they always seem to follow it up with "I know I got 15 wrong in every section!!!" Or, "I looked up all my wrong ones and I got x,y,z correct/incorrect!"

I, on the other hand, legitimately do not even know how to feel. I can't even begin to estimate how many I might have gotten wrong per block because I felt like I was half guessing most of the time. Occasionally there was a question I was confident in. But for every one of those there was also a "holy crap I know I used to know this from the beginning of my study period and I can't remember it right now..." question.

The whole day just felt like a blur and I was so happy to be done, but I can't help but feeling down lately because of this. My dean just sent out the "Step 2 notification" to my class last week, and I think that's what reignited these feelings. It seems like everyone around me studied for Step 1 perfectly (multiple passed through Uworld, FA, sketchymicro, Pathoma, goljan, etc). Meanwhile I can think of so many mistakes I made during studying and it's really making me feel like a bad, lazy person.

Did anyone else out there have similar feelings after their exam?

I was hoping for a 230 but now I just don't want to fail.
 
How to feel? Time for ethanol.

The general rule is that trust your NBME scores. You can do some extensive google search yourself. It is extremely rare that anyone score less than 30 pts compare to their NBME average. Even if your NBME mean is 230, you're very unlikely to fail. Stop being worry and get yourself a drink.
 
It's done. It's more likely than not that you passed and can't even take it again. Why worry about something you no longer have control over? Focus on things you can control like not letting your perceived step 1 score become a problem in future coursework. Survive and advance.
 
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