Quote: Friday was a relaxed day after our micro exam and all went well. I started studying for my gross exam and that continued through the weekend non-stop. Monday morning rolled around and I was still studying…the exam was at 12:30 about 85 questions taken online. It can take a good 2.5 hours to take the exam for there is a lot of reading and the questions most of them are clinically based. I did not do too well on the exam and barely passed (marginal pass) but as I finished I did not know this…so i assumed that I had failed. Needless to say the practical portion did not go well…more later.
So what happened…I finished my online exam and I was exhausted and I had the feeling that I did not rock the exam by far. I got my score and it was low…so I assumed that was a fail. Different classes have different P/F and marginal pass cutoffs. I left the room feeling like poop because I did study my arse off but did poorly. I did not even want to take the practical after this. I went into the practical very demoralized and basically flew by all the stations not really thinking things out and I finished in record time. Of course I did not pass I just looked at things like briefly. I almost passed so it makes me feel kind of good that flying through I almost passed. Lesson, no matter how bad you think you did just keep on going and give it your best shot. After the practical I went to see the professor and he looked at me like??? huh? you passed the lecture. I was like what? so anyways that was my shitty day in a nutshell. One of the harder things to swallow as that in medical school you may be at the bottom of the class or middle or top. It just depends and that is okay but it is hard to give up being at the top of the academic food chain (like in undergrad). I know that folks say it over and over …oh do not worry you are in medical school now blah blah blah it will be fine you just need to pass. Well that is easier said than done. When we are used to getting the top scores in class and breaking curves and now you are barely passing it is quite humbling. Do not get me wrong I am happy that I barely passed it could have been worse and not passed after taking this huge exam. It is very much like sitting for the MCAT…that is how we all felt after we took it. Tons of reading with third order questions so it was not easy by far. I am doing well in everything else and getting awesome grades for my quizzes so that is good. I am determined to just move on retake the lab portion along with my colleagues that are in my shoes and then focus on not letting this happen to me again. Although marginal pass is not the kiss of death you do not want to get into the habit of getting those all the time. I remember when other medical students would say on some forums hey I am passing and that is enough…and I would think to myself geez why not do better? well now I know. It is extremely hard to do better in medical school. The amount of work that you have to put in to do “better” is like the difference btw a 30 MCAT and a 40 MCAT (putting it into terms that you may actually understand). The amoung of studying to go from gettting mid 80’s to 90’s is an exponential increase for most folks. Some folks with the same amount of studying can do really awesome but most it will take a ton more.
Thanks so much for writing about your experiences. You are helping me a lot - we just started classes, so I am a few weeks behind you in experiencing the ups and downs.
Thanks meowmix! there are for sure ups and downs and the road is long and seems so narrow that I will barely make it but…there is the little light at the end of the tunnel. Thank God I am in Mayo! the support here is just unreal. I have classmates willing to help, TA’s, second years…whatever it takes. We work really well together and that does make a difference. Today was an awesome day in mol bio with tons of info about RNA post-transcription modifications to the upteenth order he he. We had a huge lecture in microanatomy about nervous tissue and then looked at slides until about 5:30. I am now chilling until about 7:30 and I will start studying.
efex, thanks again for your posts. You had mentioned that the speed at which the subjects are taught, you are gald that you were a bio major. what undergrad bio courses in particular have helped you in med school? What do you recommend us non-bio majors to take, if we have the time and means. Thanks! Good Luck! Scout
By far one of the most helpful courses has been cell and molecular biology, biochemistry (the full year if possible and the hard biochem not the baby biochem), genetics, and anatomy and physiology. I wish I had taken embryology. I know that no, you do not have to have anything beyond the pre-reqs and after first semester is over all students are on the same foot BUT (and this is just my opinion)the first semester is SO INTENSE that having anything that gives you the smallest advantage is a huge benefit. They will go so fast that you cover thousands of new words and concepts in no time. So the take home message is that you do not have to have the extra but if you do have the time it will help. Also ALL classes in medical school are science like 32 hours worth per semester so the more you can listen, talk and learn the science lingo the more maneagable it will seem…just my 0.2
This week went by really really fast. I want to explain how things work here at Mayo in case you do not pass an exam or marginal pass an exam. In every class there are various quizzes and exams (for gross both lab and lecture based) if you do not pass a quiz you do NOT have to retake it at all, if you do not pass an exam you MUST retake it, if you marginal pass an exam you have the OPTION of retaking it. Once you retake your exam regardless of the grade you receive on that exam during the retake you can only receive a PASS for the said exam. Meaning if you ace it on the retake it does not matter all that will be recorded is a 70 or 75 depending on the course some require 70 for pass others 75, hence some 65 to 69 for marginal pass others 70-74 for marginal pass. Once you have all your grades for all your exams for the course the average is what is recorded on the transcript NOT individual scores. So if you retake X or Y exams this will not affect what is on your transcript it will just say so and so passed so and so course. This holds true for first year so far, I think second year (it may change) is still on a grade system not pass/fail. The atmosphere here at my school is very very supportive no matter what happens…they are making sure that every student passes not weeding folks out of medical school. My retake for the gross anatomy lab is on Tuesday along with other of my classmates. I am looking forward to putting this behind me and moving on to the other two quizzes we have that week…We have a microanatomy quiz on Tuesday and Mol Bio on Friday. The quizzes for microanatomy are worth each ten percent of your grade and the ones for Mol Bio are worth fifteen percent each. The exams for microanatomy are the midterm is worth 15% each (with a lab and written for total of 30) and the final for micro is 25% for each component…for Mol Bio there is only a final exam and it is worth 30%…
this sort of policy makes sense to me, in that the goal is to have you know the material, not make a particular grade. That’s a nice setup to reinforce your learning and help you show yourself that you’ve attained some mastery of a subject matter. The pre-med mentality is so caught up in the grades and GPA hunt that sometimes we lose sight of this fact: the point is to LEARN and KNOW the material! I really enjoyed this changed emphasis in medical school. Mary
Okay after spending the whole weekend studying for the microanatomy quiz we had today and going into the lab every day of the weekend to review structures for my retake today…I have to say that I passed my retake woohooo! ahhhh what a relief. I did really well in my micro quiz I sure needed that morale boost…and now back to studying for the quiz this friday in mol bio. We had our all school celebration tonight where each class presents itself of course with dinner provided by Mayo. It was great! I forgot to mention that last week we had a very special guest in gross anatomy lab…none other then the CEO for Mayo Foundation! how awesome is that? having someone so busy take time off his schedule to come and show important clinical correlation of the lungs to medical students…I was really honored.
OMG this week flew by! I had to study every day from Tuesday on for the mol bio quiz we had today and that seemed to go really well. Today because we missed gross lab due to the day off on Monday we will be doing gross.
Wow here is the start of another week and I still like this process he he. I did extremely well in both my mol bio quiz and gross quiz and now studying again…he he for the micro final next Monday which is cumulative. Today will be very exciting for I will be spending the half the day with a general surgeon. I am very intersted in this specialty (among others) and look forward to interacting with this consultant. We are full fledged into the genetics part of our molecular biology genetics course and I have to tell you… things get really complicated with penetrance and imprinting, x-linked, etc. I really love learning about this though. Gross anatomy is really my favorite class though and we are now in the abdomen. Once we take our micro exam on Monday we start immunology the following Wednesday…so we are going full fledged the whole time, when something ends something starts up. I will post later about my experience in the OR.
I love being in the OR, I love the smell the lights the interactions everything! wow what a great day. I met the consultant at 7:45 and he took me to the OR here at Mayo which is HUGE! I was in awe of this amazing place what a great time! I was observing surgeries for half the morning and everyone was super nice and pointed out structures and thank goodness for gross atomy for it all made sense. I cannot wait to do this again it was so worth it…tonight all the girls in class went out to eat dinner after microanatomy this of course included the spouses and SO of our male colleagues. It was so much fun getting together with everyone out of class and just hanging out. Ok now back to the grind…
AHHH I am so tired of studying pink blobs! it is amazing how everything starts to look the same after hours of looking with the microscope. I wish I would have taken a histology class then maybe some of this would look better I cannot wait for this class to be over on Monday after our final dang.
Yipee! my first medical school class is over and I did extremely well on the both finals (written and lab portion) so one down hundreds to go ha ha. Yesterday I hosted a prospective student that was interviewing today and it brought me back memories of myself in those shoes not long ago…we started immunology today and wow did they go fast! other than that looking forward to our first weekend off w/o major exams or quizzes on Monday. I am in the thick of studying for a quiz tomorrow so i cannot celebrate just yet…
Gosh I am really tired…today is one of those days that you just have to question if this will be worth it. The time spent away from my family is HUGE. I barely see them and my kids are doing stuff that I have no clue about. It is hard to be like a stranger passing by in your own home because you are stuck in books all day. I know that this will pass but the road at times does seem so very far away. I have only been in school for what? two months and it seems like YEARS! although the material is interesting the load is so huge that you kind of lose site of “life” and who you used to be…it is kind of odd to explain it but sometimes I feel that the person that started on this path is being squashed down by all this information that is being processed in my brain.
Welcome to the MS1 “Why Did I Think This Was A Good Idea?” club. Membership is free and open to all who question their new career choice. I think it is even harder for us older students because we have had careers and lives that we enjoyed, and we are setting that aside to attend med school. When school takes over, it is very difficult to believe that it will ever be worth it, especially when course work fills every hour of the day.
Today in mol bio we watched a movie. The professor felt that it would be appropriate as we are discussing genetic disorders to have us watch this movie. The movie is Lorenzo’s Oil and I had never seen this movie. It is based on a true story (although some of the movie is Hollywood style) about this young man Lorenzo that inherited a X-linked genetic disease ALD. This disease involves long chain fatty acids and an enzyme responsible for their degradation. This accumulation affects neurons in the CNS and eventually ALL patients die. Well, needless to say this young man is still alive today! it brings into light the differences among phyisicans, scientists and patients. I urge all of you to rent this and watch it.
I am totally convinced that I hate PBL! it sucks. It is the blind leading the blind literally. I guess going on some hunting expedition for info is good but…dang it is more productive and less time consuming to get it from an expert IMHO. Sure as physicians we will be looking for information on our own but that will be later in our career where a) we know were to look for it b)we have more background to understand what we are looking for. Now it is just go find X or Y then all come together to discuss what you found …WTF? there is no telling how in depth some folks went our how in depth we need to go you CAN get caught up the minutae (sp?). Thank God we do not have much PBL here at Mayo! make sure that you know what your school is heavy one…some folks like PBL but many do not.
In defense of PBL. PBL demands a tremendous commitment from students and teachers, and it only works when that commitment is there. In my opinion, it’s excellent practice for what I’m getting in third year, because it’s very often that with a patient, you still don’t know the answer, and need to have a system for working through a number of murky possibilities. Ideally, problem-based learning will help you learn to solve problems–and if it’s done right, which even at a PBL-heavy school it often isn’t–then it prepares you for thinking about differentials more effectively. This is the process not of coming to the “right answer”–which can be a real disaster in medicine if you fix too firmly on that goal–but keeping your mind open to all possibilities and thinking systematically about how to prove your own theories wrong. The “answers” can be looked up online; but it’s coming up with the right questions that’s actually much more challenging. I really believe this is an essential part of medical education but unfortunately unless PBL is very very good, you don’t learn this way of thinking very well until you get to third year, and then only intuitively because it’s what the good doctors around you are doing. Anyway, sorry it is not so good for you, but I’ve been enjoying reading about your more general enthusiasm for med school, and I’m glad you’re happy at Mayo. cheers Joe
I cannot wait for this class to be over on Monday after our final dang.