Medical students: Apply to win a First Aid Step 1 or 2 quizbank

I won one of these scholarships last year. It was helpful to have an additional quizbank to look at besides Uworld, especially for free!

AMSA and the First Aid/USMLERx Team over $800,000 worth of scholarships at medical schools in the U.S. and around the world. Five 6-month USMLERx Step 1 Qmax and five 6-month USMLERx Step 2 CK Qmax scholarships are available to students in need at your school.

This year USMLERx is also offering an ALL-NEW First Aid Step 1 Express Video Course scholarship, with each Step 1 Qmax scholarship.

To apply, simply go to the following link and fill out the brief, confidential online application:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HKJGPD9

The deadline for all applications is Friday, September 30, 2011. Your application will be reviewed by either your Office of Student Affairs or the national AMSA scholarship selection committee, and all awardees will be notified no later than October 31.

For information on USMLERx Step 1 or Step 2 CK Qmax, go to www.usmlerx.com. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to email me or contact info@usmlerx.com

Good luck!

I think I’m supposed to feel something.

Something different after taking Step 1. I drove home and spoke with an old friend and felt like it really was some grand life-changing moment. It just feels strange now. 8 hours, 322 questions, over 3 months of giving up my life for an exam that is supposed to decide my life. I guess I thought I would feel an amazing sort of accomplishment. In some ways I do, but perhaps it hasn’t hit me yet. It just feels strange to be done when questions still come back to my mind and I have so much to wait.

I am back in retirement land where the slow pace sometimes makes me feel like I’m not moving forward, or backward or at all. It feels so strange after the non-stop marathon studying routine. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the well-deserved relaxation and the company of my parents. But not it’s just a waiting game for the next 8 weeks according to my test receipt.

I have lots of loose ends to tie up before I move on to start my hospital rotations. I have to go through boxes of books and notes and see what I really ought to salvage. And look through stuff that has just been sitting here for the past 2 years while my life was on hiatus in the third world.

But I can say one thing… It feels nice to not look at my first aid or note cards or to drill through questions. It was nice to stay up late and stay in bed until I finally felt like getting out of bed. It’s even nice to have a headache today as I attempt to end my coffee addiction starting today.

For now, I guess I’ll just wait and see, and hope that I made the right choices. I find out my permanent hospital placement next week, so soon after I will be Brooklyn-bound.

It’s been a long, long week of studying.
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It’s been a long, long week of studying.

Death of the 3 dollar fake Nerf football. When ten minute breaks become the reason to get through 50 minutes of painful metabolic cycles with a gamut of enzymes to remember, a small football become the most cherished item to be thrown around mindlessly outside on a veranda overlooking the Wilmington skyline. Until the second ten minute break of the day at 10 am when it breaks and all happiness and energy seems to break with it. Three tax-free dollars very well spent.
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Death of the 3 dollar fake Nerf football.

When ten minute breaks become the reason to get through 50 minutes of painful metabolic cycles with a gamut of enzymes to remember, a small football become the most cherished item to be thrown around mindlessly outside on a veranda overlooking the Wilmington skyline.

Until the second ten minute break of the day at 10 am when it breaks and all happiness and energy seems to break with it. Three tax-free dollars very well spent.

6:47 am Wilmington, Delaware

“So are you going to save seats?” she asks coyly as I stare at the descending, illuminated elevator numbers. I’ve just woken up, still crusty-eyed from sleep, possibly with zit cream plainly seen plastered on my stressful , sebum filled areas. It is only day nine in this jail that I am paying nearly $5000 dollars to attend. Fine, I am not in jail, I’ve committed no crimes. I’m not even in rehab. I’m at a USMLE Step 1 retreat. It is no where close to being any retreat, since retreat implies relaxation and escaping from life’s woes. Two hundred stressed out medical students on a countdown for their lives, are my jail mates, anxiously preparing for most important exam of our lives.

“Yeah, I just want to sit close enough to the front so I can see.” I tell her and continue to drift back into drowsy slow-waves, bracing myself on the wall of the elevator. We finally arrive at the lobby and before I can slow-drag my lids to see, she is running. Not briskly walking as you would when you falsely rush across a street as a car waits, she is on an adrenaline-infused run as if a cheetah is chasing her. It’s just me in her dust. And it’s only 6:47 am.

I eventually catch up to her at the locked doors to the lecture hall/conference room only to be greeted by 50 or so other bright eyed gunners. I never come down before 7am but I woke up too late to shower before heading down to get a seat. I hate lines and this isn’t a long-awaited concert or exciting event. It is day 4 of biochemistry in a 6-day review week covering a semester of biochemistry.