Done with 2nd Year?!?

On May 3rd, I had my last set of exams for my classroom career. It was the last time I would have to cram tons of information for 3 different classes (pathology, clinical medicine, and pharmacology)and regurgitate it within a back to back marathon 8am-3pm exam day. I woke up around 5am that morning, to begin my review for my first exam which would be Medicine. As I poured myself over the ways to distinguish between chronic anemia vs iron deficiency anemia, Rheumatoid arthritis vs osteoarthritis, CML vs ALL, and whatever other information that has since escaped my brain, it dawned on me that this day was it! This day represented the end of two of the hardest, most depressing, and frustrating years of my life. It was a day that marked the official 1/2 of my journey towards becoming Dr.O. It was a day of joy!!!

Yet, by the time 8am rolled around, and I began flipping through my Clinical Medicine exam, it quickly became a day of questionable happiness. Despite all of my studying, I was unsure about half of the questions to what the teacher had said would be a straight forward exam. Right. To who?

I completed that exam, with my happy balloon severely deflated. You see, our school has made a lot of things very hard on us. Why? We don't know. However, they decided to implement a new grading policy in the middle of our first semester of 2nd year. We were to never fail any of our Medicine exams. If we did, we would be required to retake the exam for that module and if that re-take exam was failed, then we would fail the course. Now, failing this course is not an option at our school, because you will not be allowed to go on to 3rd year. To take it even further, they made an even.....ummm.....yeah couldn't think of a nicer word....stupider......change to the policy during second semester, saying that if we failed one exam, no matter what our grade was in the class, our transcript would show LP-R (low pass-remediation; we have a Honors, high pass, pass, low pass, fail, system). So, to summarize: From failing one exam in one class, you could potentially have to repeat an entire year of medical school. Makes so much sense, right? (rolls eyes).

So, as you can now see, leaving such an exam feeling anything but comfortable can be downright depressing. However, I had no time to focus on that. I had finished with about 45min to spare before my next exam, so it was time to find a corner and try to cram/review as much as I could for Pharm. Took the exam. Once again, not entirely comfortable.

Repeated the find a corner, cram/review for the last exam which was Pathology, and ended up flipping through that exam wondering if I had even studied the right lectures. It was brutal. I quickly finished that exam simply because I realized that all I could do was guess. The questions weren't any that you could rationalize. You either knew it or didn't. So 30 min into the 60 question exam, I was done.

I walked out of the classroom feeling like I had just been to battle and lost. The excitement that had been in my heart that morning, was so far away now. I couldn't scream and celebrate the end of my second year. That had been stripped from me (typical of them). That burden that was supposed to be lifted wasn't. In fact, an additional 30 lbs had been added. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I couldn't bring myself to say "We're done!!!" Instead, I was left with questions about whether I was really done. Had I done well enough to pass all of my classes? What if I had failed the Medicine exam? Remediation would mean having to push back the date to take my boards and definitely not having any type of break before the start of 3rd year.

I ate at our 2nd year BBQ and watched all of the water balloon fights going on (our solution to the fact that they had decided to ban us from the traditional last day of second year fountain jump...sigh). Yet, these thoughts haunted me. I couldn't wait to get my grades. I prayed to God and prayed some more, that he would deliver me from 2nd year and allow me to move on with my life. I wanted to finally be able to breathe that sigh of relief and not be waiting to exhale.

Days later, to only prolong the torture, we received word that one of our classmates had yet to take the exam for Medicine and would not be taking it until the 18th. To them, this translated into us not finding out about where we stand in the class until after the 18th. You mean to tell me that you want me to live with the "what if" question for another 2 1/2 weeks?!?! I was livid. However, after discussion, the grades were released.

As I sat in Border's studying for my boards, I received the long awaited text from Grade Boy: Medicine grades were up. My heart sank. This was the moment of truth. Would I not be re-mediating Clinical Medicine? I couldn't bring myself to check at Border's, for fear that I might end up sobbing and looking like a fool. I completed my studying, saw Damon Waynes (I know this is random in my story, but he was there for a book signing), and made my way home. I shared the update with my mom, who was nervous right along with me (lol, gotta love moms!), and had her check. She read my overall course grade to me and from the amount that I dropped, I figured I couldn't have failed horribly. So, I decided to brave it and took a look. After praying to God that He just allow me to low pass, even if it was 65 on the dot, I look and see: 64.9%!!! I said, God, you are too good!!! Even though it's not 65, He knew that I would stand a chance with that grade. Despite how crazy my school can be, I know that God is greater than them and that He will touch someone's heart to make it so that they don't hold me for that .1%. Also, we have yet to do the challenge session for the exam, so all it will take is 1 exam question being challenged and accepted, and then I'll officially be done with them!

An even greater testimony of God's goodness: Today, we received an email about all of our classes and the status of grade releases and calculations. We were told that for our Pathology class,even though only one question was challenged and accepted for our exam (we get lazy with challenges at the end of the semester), our super-nice professor (God bless him!) challenged himself and because he didn't want to hurt us, decided that (probably because many people would have been failing due to this exam) he would allow us to keep our pre-exam overall class grades unless the exam actually helped us. Thank God for answered prayers!!!

I've finally begun to exhale after holding my breath for almost 2 weeks. It's not over until I get my transcript saying that I've passed everything. But, God has shown me that with Him on my side, I truly have nothing to fear :) So with that said, I bought my ticket, and I'll be off to San Francisco for a personal "Me Time" trip after the boards. I've always wanted to go to Cali. Definitely something to look forward to!

As for now: Hit the books and hit Step 1 out of the ball park!!