Rotations Schedule

I received a schedule a couple weeks back (Dec 21 to be exact) but wasn't too happy. Not only did I just find out that I was starting in 16 days but that I had to travel between 4 different hospitals including a psychiatry site that's 2 hours away from where I'll be living. NYC is not a cheap city and I really don't know if I was ever going to find someone to sublet my apartment for two months while I go away and rent another place in Rockaway.

I called my clinical advisor that very day. I'm sorry to say that she is terrible. AUC really ought to look into fixing its clinical department. Not only did I have to call 8-10 times to finally get a hold of her, but when she promised me she would send me a revised schedule on a specific day of the next week, she didn't do it. So the following week I called her 5 more times, left a message, and still didn't hear back from her. I called her the next day, got a hold of her and she said that I just needed to wait till she emailed me back my schedule. She never did and I'm supposed to start my first rotation next Monday.

People who took their Step exams a week or two after me got their schedules today and when I saw that some of them got the psychiatry rotation at Bronx that I wanted (and was told there was NONE AVAILABLE) I went absolutely insane. Enraged. Dear readers, I flipped out and I'm actually surprised at how angry I was, but there it is. The poor woman who picked up the phone got my bitchiness and aside from her exclaiming "EXCUSE ME!" after I demanded that she MUST fit me somewhere in the Bronx for psychiatry, she was actually very well composed and that settled me down. 10-15 minutes later, I got the schedule you see just above.

What does it all mean? In one 15 minute phone call, a capable young woman who isn't even my advisor fixed my qualms and gave me a schedule that I'm happy with. I don't understand why my own advisor couldn't do it for me. I'm not one to call for someone to be fired, but honestly something needs to be done to improve this whether it be more training or... I don't know. Anyway, I'm happy to be starting clinicals and can't wait to share my experiences (good and bad) with all of you!

Onwards!

I just received my score back today and I'm happy to report that I passed with a 224! A little lower than what I was hoping for but at least I hit the average for US med students (silver lining much?). Now it's time to start the next chapter of my medical school education by sorting out where I want to do my clinical rotations. All I know is I want to do all my cores in New York City and I want to do as many as I can at the same hospital site. I also want to find a place to live that is (somehow) centrally located... in the event that I am scattered throughout the boroughs. Below are the sites of the seven NYC hospitals AUC students go to.

Looks like Upper East Side would be an excellent place to live

Exam Postponed

I just rescheduled my exam to November 20th. With Hurricane Sandy fast approaching and the power outages expected to occur, I figured it would throw my study schedule for a loop. Last year when Hurricane Irene hit RI we lost power at my house for a couple days and the state overall was without power for about week. They are saying the power outages are going to be worse this time around so I decided it would be best to push my exam date back. I cannot wait to be done with this.

Step 1 Score and Residency

During one of my studying lulls, I thought it would be a good idea to see what kind of score I need to get for a fair shot into plastic surgery... kidding. Anyway the chart below is taken from the 2011 NRMP Charting Outcomes in the Match. For the full 2011 NRMP report click here. The below just focuses on the Step 1 scores of those who matched in their respective specialty.  I know the print is a bit small but if you click on the image it will enlarge.  

So shooting for a 235 seems like a good goal, right? It's a high enough score that it doesn't outright eliminate me from most specialties, but it isn't so high that I feel like I have no chance of reaching it. We'll see, maybe I'm just fooling myself. Truth be told I'm actually shooting for perfection, and once I fall short of that goal, hopefully I'll still be left with a pretty good score. An old adage inspired my current philosophy on setting goals: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars."

The Next STEP!

Everything I need to know for Step 1... in flashcard form! HOW FUN!

After coasting for the last 5 weeks of 5th semester, you can imagine how hard it was getting back into the full swing of studying. I got home August 21st, took about a week off and started "studying" on the 27th... and when I say "study" I mean doing about two hours of Goljan each day and then going out and doing something not academically-related (i.e. dinner, drinks, run, movies, football). It wasn't really till about two weeks ago that I stepped up my game for my Step 1 preparation. I've been waking up at 8:30 every morning and I start studying by 9. I study for about 5 hours and then stop to go for a run and eat lunch in the early afternoon when my mind needs a break. After my shower, I push on for another 3 hours before my mom gets home and starts cooking dinner and that's right around where I call it quits for the day.

At the moment I'd say I'm putting in around 7 hours of truly productive work each day. Since mid-5th semester, I had been slowly going through Goljan's Rapid Review of Pathology making flashcards for all the diseases by organ system and I'm happy to report that I FINALLY finished the textbook and my cards yesterday. Pathology was the final frontier in my Step studying. I had already finished the notecards for my other subjects weeks ago while preparing for the Comp so now that I've finished Path, I have this very odd and slightly scary gleeful completeness whenever I look over at my little treasures. I was so proud of my work, I even took a picture to show you guys. I would have instagram-ed it (since I now know what that means), but the confining square I was mandated to use would have cut out some of my beautiful stacks and it's just heartbreaking for me to leave any of those little guys out since I put in so much time and love into them (okay... clearly I'm very tired).

Maybe I'm losing my mind or maybe I just have an obsession with flash cards. The way I see it is like this: Textbooks are so big and heavy, with such tiny, boring black print on so many pages that it's just overwhelming and intimidating to even look at from across the room. I have heart palpitations thinking about it. But when I see a nice, friendly stack of cute flashcards with colorful fun-facts on the other side of them, I just feel much happier and relaxed about studying. Flashcards are FUN, people! They are fun-sized for a reason! Haha anyway....
Thanks for indulging me.

Back to the point of this post-- I'm looking to schedule my exam for the end of October. If I'm not feeling great by then, I'll just have to push it back to the first or second week of November and that will be it! Do or die.