Block 3 (Med 1)

Aside from my absence at church, this block was my best overall. By that I mean that spiritually, physically, mentally, and academically, I did the best I've done since I started med school. I kept my thoughts pure, didn't eat after 9 PM, and used worship to relieve stress the night before tests. Ironically, we were studying the pelvic/perineal portion of the body, so my purified thought life came in the midst of seeing the most genitalia I've seen in such a short time span.

Part of my focus was on pacing myself. Study more and harder every day, then don't burn out the weekend before the exams. Granted, I still burned out to an extent, but not nearly as much as before.

A few new things happened. The night before our lab exam, my roommate had us go through the histology slides without any labels and find the contrasting features that we're supposed to know. I usually used labeled ones for this, but I also usually don't do as well, and I got 10 points higher on the lab portion. The night before the theory exams, I found that I hadn't finished going through all of the slides again, and was forced to speed read through them. And you know what? It was fine. I still slowed down to make sure I knew stuff pretty well, but with so much information to cover, I couldn't just take my time like I've been doing. This brings back a lesson I learned in undergrad: memorization doesn't equate to a lack of real understanding. You can learn even while memorizing; it's usually just a more efficient method.

To clarify for future me or for whoever might feel intimidated or discouraged over this stuff, don't be. I had a really good undergrad, during which time I learned to study very similarly to how I study now. Not quite as much, but nearly. And I'm not making A's. I'm making mostly high C's and low B's (though I finally made a high B in Anatomy this time). So I'm slightly above average in one class, slightly below in another, and right at the class average in the other one. As one professor here told me when we were discussing study strategies, "You don't have to make A's. As long as you get the concepts and understand things, that's fine." Until med school, I'd never had a teacher tell me outright that I don't need to make A's, that A's aren't even necessarily the goal.

In any case, six weeks until I'm done with this semester.