I hate it when that happens!

You’d think that I’d be a better judge of examination performance than I am, considering I’ve taken a few in my days. But, I am not. Take Christmas for example. We had a major Anatomy and Histology exam the day before Christmas break. I studied until I was cross-eyed and still felt shaky about the material. Friday came and I took my exams (All 4 hours of them). I left feeling like my head had been run up and down a cheese grater. Then it was off to break. About Wednesday (Christmas Eve Day) I went to view my grades online and lo and behold…Solid A’s.

Back to today. I was up at 4:00 this morning to review for the exam. I knew the material forwards and backwards. Took the exam, reviewed my answers, and walked out confident. I felt like there were 1 or 2 that I may have missed, but all in all I felt great. Historically, if I felt great about an exam, I misinterpreted something. I went online to get my grades this afternoon and wouldn’t you know it…B. Granted, it is a good B, but not what I was expecting. I hate it when that happens.

What can I do but get ready for the next one coming Monday?

One weekend every other week we go to a Physician Preceptor. My day is Monday so I went today. Interestingly, my preceptor is my wife’s cousin. We do it in order to get clinical experience before beginning rotations our 3^rd and 4^th years. Ideally, we are supposed to be honing our History and Physical skills. I lucked out. His office is 15 minutes from my house. Some students have to drive an hour or so each way. It’s kind of a catch 22. Our clinical skills are weak so we go to preceptors. However, because our clinical skills are weak, we don’t do much. Therefore our clinical skills stay weak. It gets a bit frustrating, but honestly, how much can we really do yet? Then again, most of his patients are “patient education” cases where he is interpreting test results, diabetes consultations, and the like. Aside from taking vitals, there’s not a ton for me to do. I just hang around, somewhat voyeuristically. Still, it’s nice to interact with patients. After all, that’s why I am going into medicine.