pause

My third exam is done and in the bag.  100 questions over genetic diseases and all the esoteric minutia that goes along with them.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that with a few exceptions, I will not see most of this tested material in my career.  Ever.  Expanding repeats, unbalanced translocations, calculating the risk of birth defects in inbred cajuns.  Ain't gonna happen.  Lots of grumbling about this class throughout my class.  Keep in mind that med students are a bunch of hypercompetitive braniacs so grumbling is the norm.  They're not used to being wrong.  But in this instance, I think there's some legitimacy to the grumbling.  Oh, well.  Don't care.  Exam is done.  And like the class yesterday, this whole class is done.  This was the one and only exam worth ~70% of the grade.  Good riddance.

I did get my score back on my first exam, which was Behavior.  Squeeked by with an honors grade by 0.4 points.  Sweet.  Not expecting honors on the next two.  But as I said, don't care.  Pass is all that matters for those.  They are done and will factor minimally in the board exams.

I'm taking the evening off, instead choosing to spend it with wine, barbeque, and South Park.  Tomorrow begins the studying for the real exams.  The heavy weights are next week.  Monday is Pathology (the 800 pound gorilla), Wednesday is Pharmacology (lots of memorization), and Friday is a tag team of a two class exam that really amounts to assimilating everything from every class and seeing how it applies to imaginary patients.  It's bizarre.  They only had 5 lectures in this class but it's probably the hardest and most expansive class that we have.  The diverse topics range from anemia of chronic disease to fever of unknown origin to heart failure to my personal favorite, EKG interpretation.  The other difference is the test is written by a pure clinician, not a PhD.  I'm hoping that balances in my favor but we'll see.