- Joined
- May 30, 2007
- Messages
- 2,559
- Reaction score
- 465
I'm an idiot.
After taking 11 weeks to study full-time for Step 1, my immediate next thought was "hmm... why not just go straight for Step 2?"
As a result, I've been in high-gear study mode since March 1.
That might not seem so bad for some of the SDNers out there. But for me, that's exceptional. When I studied for the MCAT, I thought it was crazy that I was putting in 2 hours a day for an entire month. I didn't even know that I was capable of something like this.
Now, I'm only 11 days from the last time that I'll ever have to worry about a test score (yes, there are plenty of tests in the near and distant future, but I don't need to get an exceptional score on those... just passing is good enough). But for the last 3 days, I've been having trouble mustering up the motivation to stick to my schedule. Every day is lazier than the last. It's 9:30pm here in Sydney right now and I've had the entire day off, but I've only managed about 30 minutes of DIT and 25 UW questions - and that UW set yielded the lowest score I've gotten in a long time.
It doesn't help that this happens to be the 3-4 day stretch during which DIT decides to cover content that I find particularly distasteful. But regardless, I feel like my mental capacity is waning. And perhaps more importantly, my UWorld scores seem to be dropping like a rock. When I do practice questions, it seems like I'm not interested in analyzing the options and reasoning my way to the right answer... rather, if I'm not sure about the answer, I tend to just guess and move on.
And it doesn't help that rotations get in the way of studying. I'm actually in the latter part of a week's vacation right now, but I'm going back to rotations on Monday.
I thought about taking a couple of days off. But taking time off seems more stressful than actually studying. Whenever I take time off, I spend the whole time thinking about all of the studying that I could be doing during that time.
Does anybody have any other short-term solutions for burnout? I know that I should be focusing on prevention, but at the moment, I just want to get through the next 11 days, take Step 2, and then think about other things in life. Maybe I should just load up on caffeine. Does anybody know how to get my hands on some amphetamines?
(by the way, in case a residency PD happens to read this, that last sentence was a joke)
After taking 11 weeks to study full-time for Step 1, my immediate next thought was "hmm... why not just go straight for Step 2?"
As a result, I've been in high-gear study mode since March 1.
That might not seem so bad for some of the SDNers out there. But for me, that's exceptional. When I studied for the MCAT, I thought it was crazy that I was putting in 2 hours a day for an entire month. I didn't even know that I was capable of something like this.
Now, I'm only 11 days from the last time that I'll ever have to worry about a test score (yes, there are plenty of tests in the near and distant future, but I don't need to get an exceptional score on those... just passing is good enough). But for the last 3 days, I've been having trouble mustering up the motivation to stick to my schedule. Every day is lazier than the last. It's 9:30pm here in Sydney right now and I've had the entire day off, but I've only managed about 30 minutes of DIT and 25 UW questions - and that UW set yielded the lowest score I've gotten in a long time.
It doesn't help that this happens to be the 3-4 day stretch during which DIT decides to cover content that I find particularly distasteful. But regardless, I feel like my mental capacity is waning. And perhaps more importantly, my UWorld scores seem to be dropping like a rock. When I do practice questions, it seems like I'm not interested in analyzing the options and reasoning my way to the right answer... rather, if I'm not sure about the answer, I tend to just guess and move on.
And it doesn't help that rotations get in the way of studying. I'm actually in the latter part of a week's vacation right now, but I'm going back to rotations on Monday.
I thought about taking a couple of days off. But taking time off seems more stressful than actually studying. Whenever I take time off, I spend the whole time thinking about all of the studying that I could be doing during that time.
Does anybody have any other short-term solutions for burnout? I know that I should be focusing on prevention, but at the moment, I just want to get through the next 11 days, take Step 2, and then think about other things in life. Maybe I should just load up on caffeine. Does anybody know how to get my hands on some amphetamines?
(by the way, in case a residency PD happens to read this, that last sentence was a joke)
