Whooooo! Second year is OVER!

So as of this afternoon, at 5:30pm, it looks like second year is officially over and I passed everything. Now I just have a few things waiting for me before third year rotations start such as STUDYING FOR STEP 1 (AAAHHHHHHH!!!!), turning 25 years old, catching up with friends, oh yeah, and taking Step 1.

White coat ceremony pictures

This last Friday we had our clinical transition ceremony. It was really fun to get our white coats and look ahead to working in the hospital wards next year.

I put the best picture at the top. This is me getting my white coat from my ICM II mentor, Sam. (See previous blog posts about ICM II mentoring system). Thanks to Jo, one of my classmates' husband, for taking this picture!


This is me with Raye Maestas, my underserved pathway mentor and inspiring person (see previous blog posts). It was really nice to be able to introduce my family to some of my teachers/mentors at school

Our mentor, Sam, is super healthy and bikes everywhere. Here he is duded up in his biking gear and meeting some of my family including my mom and my Aunt Deborah.
Here is me with my white coat on.
This is me and my friend Sarah (and our white coats!) with mentor, Sam. It was a fun evening!
Here is another shot of me walking across the stage. contrary to the look of the picture, I was not striking a random action pose. There was someone just out of the picture that I was about to shake hands with.



So, apparently I waddle when I walk. Who knew? I think it is one of those things that you are surprised when you hear a recording of your voice or see a video of yourself, because it is not usually how you see yourself. I did not imagine myself waddling, but now I know the truth.

The USMLE step 1 (*JAWS THEME MUSIC PLAYS*)

In less than two weeks, the second year of medical school will be over and studying for the USMLE step 1 board exam will begin. Technically you are supposed to be studying for it all throughout your second year, but medical school keeps you so busy you can guess how much that happens. Step 1 is an 8 hour computer-based test over pretty much everything you should have learned over the first two years of medical school.

According to the USMLE website:

"Step 1 assesses whether you understand and can apply important concepts of the sciences basic to the practice of medicine, with special emphasis on principles and mechanisms underlying health, disease, and modes of therapy. Step 1 ensures mastery of not only the sciences that provide a foundation for the safe and competent practice of medicine in the present, but also the scientific principles required for maintenance of competence through lifelong learning."

'The content areas of the USMLE step 1 include:

• anatomy,
• behavioral sciences,
• biochemistry,
• microbiology,
• pathology,
• pharmacology,
• physiology,
• interdisciplinary topics, such as nutrition, genetics, and aging.

The specific systems covered include:

• hematopoietic/lymphoreticular
• nervous/special senses
• skin/connective tissue
• musculoskeletal
• respiratory
• cardiovascular
• gastrointestinal
• renal/urinary
• reproductive
• endocrine'

http://www.usmle.org/General_Information/bulletin/2009/content.html
------------------------------------------

The USMLE step 1 is sort-of scary for three reasons. First, it is really hard. Second, you have to pass it to continue on in medical school. Third, your score is important for applying to residencies and you should really try to do well on the test if you want to be competitive for residencies.


One of the review books for the USMLE step 1 is called "First Aid for USMLE Step 1." It is sort-of a funny pun, but I started thinking about it today. I don't need "First Aid for Step 1," I need, "Emergency Trauma Care with Defibrillator for the USMLE Step 1." I am serious, it is going to be several weeks of not so pretty studying in preparation for this thing.

I decided to give an artistic representation of how I felt about Step 1 right now. Yeah, that is pretty much it, except I probably don't have that good of form when I swim.


Although I might be scared out of my mind by the Step 1 exam, I am going to take a card out of Braveheart's book and give it my best (and yell 'Freedom!' a lot). Well, in the very least I think I might put some blue war paint on my face on the day of the exam so I will feel like Braveheart even if Step 1 does kick my ______.

Here is a chart that they keep showing us medical students about the average USMLE step 1 scores and the specialties you can match in. A score of 185 is usually the minimum passing score for step 1. Here I have circled the specialties that would be most likely for be to end up in at this point (generally not the most competitive, which is nice). Still, it is a very SCARY chart!

Roommates for next year. I am going to be living with my friend Andrea!

To my extreme sadness, my fourth year roommate, Melissa is leaving at the beginning of June. She matched to a Med/Peds residency in Michigan where she will be moving in just a few weeks with her boyfriend. In addition to the sadness of having to deal with Melissa leaving, this left me with another issue: I had to find two new roommates for the next school year. I really wanted to live with some girls who are nice.

With stealth and precision, I picked out my first roommate target several months ago. Andrea, one of my good friends from undergrad is also graduating this year. She told me earlier in the year that she was hoping to match in medicine in Seattle for her residency. I started immediately with the nagging, telling her that if she ended up matching in Seattle, she just HAD to live with me. I continued to remind her for several months what a wonderful house I lived in and would drop several not-so-subtle hints about how much I thought she would enjoy living there next year with me. She kept saying that she was going to look at other places, and that maybe she wanted to live in a different area, but we both knew they were heartless excuses.

In the end, Andrea match in medicine at UW in the Boise track. This means she will do her first year of residency in Seattle, her second year in Boise, ID, and her third year back in Seattle. She looked at some other apartments, but in the end she decided that she does want to live with me for the next school year! I think we are going to have loads of fun together (that is when we are both not crazy busy in the hospital, which probably won't be too often).

This is a picture of Andrea and Me taken last year. Andrea rocks.

But wait! The story is not over, because the search was still on for a third roommate. We finally found her in the form of an unsuspecting incoming first year med student named Liz. I have only met her once, but she was really nice and I think she is going to make a really fun third roommate for the next year. It will be fun to hear her experiences of first year as I am going through my thrid.

Beat the Bridge!

On Saturday I ran into one of my classmates who had just registered for the Beat the Bridge to Beat Diabetes event. She told me it was an 8k (5 mile) run and that she was was going to run/jog (slowly) with another classmate of ours. I thought it sounded like fun so I stopped by the Husky Stadium and registered. I met up with my classmates in the morning who were part of a larger fundraising team. There were thousands of people there and they closed off the streets to traffic for the race. It was sort of like a big fair. During the race my classmates and I stuck together which made it more fun than just running with a group of strangers.

This is the course map. We went across the Montlake bridge and the University Bridge. The University bridge is the bridge you have to beat because they raise it up 20 minutes after they release the third wave of runners and it is at the 2 mile mark.

Here is a picture of the finish line/area at Husky Stadium. There were tables of water, sports drinks, and fruit for you at the finish line. It was a warm day and I was pretty thirsty at the end of the race. They had these water stations along the race course where you could get a cup of water and drink it while you were running, it is a cool concept, but I wasn't very good at it.
Here was their little logo thing that I downloaded off the internet. The event was sponsored by Nordstrom and raised over a million dollars for type 1 diabetes research.

Here are some pictures of me all sweaty after I walked home. I got my "results" back today and did better than I thought. Our group of med students averaged about 9 minutes per mile (we took around 45 minutes to run the 5 miles) which is pretty good, I think. I never would have run that fast if my classmates weren't running with me and encouraging me. Peer pressure/team spirit is the keep to motivation!

Another sweaty post event picture. It was a lot of fun.

Whoo, only 4 more days of class and 2 weeks of finals until the end of second year!

During our (delightful) 5 hours of class every afternoon, we get brief 10 minute breaks between (enthralling) lectures. During these breaks the small number of us who are actually still coming to class at this time of year have started standing outside in the sun during our breaks if it happens to be sunny outside. Today while standing outside for our typical 8 and a half minutes, we realized that we only have four days of class and two weeks of finals between us and the end of the second year of medical school! Exciting times! Of course, after that we have to immediately start studying for step 1, and after step 1 we almost immediately start our clinical rotations. However, despite the negativity, in a mere 2 weeks and 3 days the joy that is the dreary first and second year medical school classrooms is no longer to be ours!


To celebrate our final (tearful) goodbyes to the medical school classrooms. One of my classmates, Olga, took some pictures of our typical classroom scene. Good memories.

People chatting and setting up their computers before class starts.

Our row. This is Jessica, me, and Sarah.

The mac laptop rainbow seen during class. black, pink, white. I think there might even be a green one somewhere.

Here are more people setting up their laptops and checking their email before class starts. Daniel from my mentoring group is on the left and Ryan is on the right.

This is one of my classmates illustrating the typical medical school library study toolkit: 1) big desk 2) not so comfy chair, 3) coffee, 4) laptop with a power source, 5) a book/syllabus, 6) highlighters, 7) pencils/pens, 8) food or something of an edible nature that resembles food.