There will be a clock in your break area. You are responsible for keeping track of your own time. Everyone on our breaks basically stood in front of the clock and stared a lot. Make sure to give yourself two minutes or so from finishing your break to when you need to restart, checkin can take a few minutes.
I'm having the same struggle. I've been forcing myself to wake up early but still, as soon as I lay down in bed my mind starts racing and I can't fall asleep. Last night, I took half a benadryl and that seemed to help a bit without making me too drowsy this morning. You may want to try something like that out tonight so you can see how you feel tmrw morning.
Yeah make sure you do them all. Don't worry about your score. They were essential for me because there were a few terms that I saw many times on the SB that weren't in EK or Kaplan Biochemistry. I got super pissed at first and then realized how much better it is to be seeing it now while we still have a chance to learn it. I had a great improvement between my unscored and scored AAMC FL and I 100% credit the section banks.
Lol good to know. i haven't been learning new content lately, just reviewing, so hopefully it won't negatively affect me too much.
I did the exact same thing. So frustrating! Remember this on Saturday. Just picture me yelling at you to make your best guess and move on when you're spending more than a couple minutes on a question. Better to miss that one than have to guess on 6-10 at the end (i legit couldn't read the last passage and had to guess completely on all of those questions plus the final discretes).
Reviewing the AAMC Scored FL I took yesterday, then Section Bank review for the 3rd time. Going to try and complete the CARS II Question Pack since I'm trying the "doodle notes" idea and I did terrible on the Scored CARS.
I need a haircut soooo badly. It's in the works for the week after the mcat, along with getting the air conditioner fixed in my car which just decided to stop working this week. 🙁
Thank you! Will do! Hope everything goes well on the practice test, thou. Stay positive. 🙂
Yeah I've seen those pop up occasionally (not sure if it was in AAMC material or not) so I think they're worth knowing. Especially since they're fairly straightforward.
ARG I hope you don't live in the south!
So we know from the passage that they are talking about HIV, which is a retrovirus. Retroviruses have vRNA (viral RNA) that they inject into the host cell. Reverse transcriptase in the cytosol transcribes this into DNA, which gets inserted into the host cell genome.
It does. The vDNA comes from the vRNA. Does that help?
oh! you're saying that the retrovirus initially inserts mRNA. then reverse transcriptase gives you cDNA. go that with DNA poly III and ligase to form dsDNA, which is the same as viral DNA
Kind of, I think you got it! The "cDNA" is transcribed from the vRNA, which is why I called that the vDNA. But otherwise, yes! This is how retroviruses work, they use the host cell machinery to transcribe and insert into the genome. Good work!
Aw snap, are you in Cleveland too? My friend wants to go to the viewing thing outside the Q but I know it will throw off my sleeping schedule. DAMN YOU MR MCAT
Yes!!! I have half season tickets, and I was praying we'd play OKC because then we would've had home court and I wouldn't have had to worry about this haha. I kept telling myself I could sell the tickets, but there's no way. Plus, I'd want to watch the whole game at home anyways so it's just driving time that i'm really adding on. I was planning on taking June 2nd almost with the sole reason of being done before the finals, but i didn't register fast enough and that date filled up everywhere. 🙁 It is fun outside the Q, you should go. 😉
Thanks for the reassurance! haha hopefully it'll help take my mind off things. I haven't been sleeping great anyways so i'm prob missing out on an hour of sleep tops. And yeah, focusing is sooo challenging today. What are you trying to get done?
I brought a variety of snacks: beef jerky, pretzals, dark chocolate, dark chocolate/sea salt/mixed nut kind bar, Gatorade, Dr pepper, some altoids. Also packed a floss stick and chapstick. I went to the bathroom on each break and there was just enough time to collect myself and get back. If for some reason you need to pee during the test and it's not break time, you can leave it at any time but the clock is still running and you have to run through the check in procedures.
for some reason i thought it was Friday
It really does feel like a friday haha. I dread being in your shoes and having to wait for our scores.... As for the caffeine, when i took the scored, I took excedrine (has caffeine) plus drank a coffee drink plus drank coke at lunch and by the end i was shaking. I do think it helped me, though, because I got my highest score ever in every section. Just trying to decide if my adrenaline combined with the caffeine will put me over the edge...I feel like the kid that graduated high school and always came back, constantly lurking this thread and what not.
But so for all of you caffeine junkies, I highly suggest the caffeine pill route. Never had a single bathroom problem throughout the test, still went on every break though just incase. However, I took 200mg before the test(bout 30mins or so) and it started wearing off around the end of C/P. So I decided to take another 200mg before CARS, I was super wired and sweating like crazy. Probably was a tad much. Once I got to lunch the wired-ness continues so I thought I'd be good for the rest of the MCAT. But I ended up crashing HARD about halfway through B/B. Which is normally my best section but now I'm feeling quite negative about it. So I popped another caffeine pill right before P/S, carried me right through real quick. Overall with caffeine YMMV!!!(now your tolerance and what not) if you don't regularly take caffeine I suggest avoiding it. I'm currently in post-MCAT anti-caffeine ~healthy lifestyle~ recovery lol, trying to cut all this junk food/easy studying meal weight.
You guys have worked so hard for this for so long, and your score will no doubt reflect how hard you worked!!!! Just go in there knowing that you are going the kill it, just like I know you all will. As much as it may seem like it at times, this isn't a "know it all" test. Spent quality time reviewing key parts of the passage. Don't spend time trying to understand all the weird convoluted sentences that you won't even be tested on(and if you do get a question it'll be easy to spot out of the passage because how often does the passage say protein AJFAI174281!(/&-&(/)-);&:&]^^#]*%[DJGKAHSNGRJ?). Focus on the important stuff, and the flow of the passage and processes within it. This is an interpretation test, analyze what you is important(by now your intuition will spot these keys real quick). I have no doubt in my mind that at this point as long you stay focused and utilize these skills you've been practicing for so long you'll destroy this test.
Good luck to all of you!!!! I'll be here lurking this thread for your reactions tomorrow!
edit: day earlyfor some reason i thought it was Friday
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