Aye….guess what?

 

I JUST SPRINTED THRU THE FINISH LINE!!!

MY FIRST SEMESTER OF MEDICAL SCHOOL IS OVER!!!

The morning of July 27th almost feels like a lifetime ago…but at the same time, it's incredible that we're already in the middle of December. I really had to pause for a minute and reflect that it has really been 21 weeks since my first day of Orientation. 21 weeks. If we wanna count days, that's 145 days starting from 9:00 A.M that July morning (7/27) up until last Friday (12/18) at noon.

145 days.

Bruh, that's 3,459 hours.

Better yet, that's 207,540 minutes.

I've been an official medical student for 207, 540+ minutes. Sheesh.

I'm so glad to be on this two-week break. SO GLAD. Like, I don't know if you fully understand. These days of relaxation and celebration ahead of me are making me very, VERY ecstatic. I've been looking forward to them for a very, VERY long time. I had been looking forward to Thanksgiving too, but I had to worry about an impending Biochemistry exam. With this winter break, there are no impending exams. As a matter of fact, we don't take our next test until the end of January. Turn uhhhhhh!!

Speaking of tests, let me tell you about this Genetics/Pharmacology exam that we took this past Friday. It was supposed to be very straightforward and relatively easier compared to the tests we have taken this semester. Our professors had implicitly assured us that we would be 100% prepared for the exam.

“You just have to know the overall concept,” they said.

“I won't test you on specific details,” they said.

Of course, when a teacher says don't worry about a particular thing in their notes, I still glance at it and make mental notes…but I definitely didn't commit a majority of what they said not to worry about to memory. Also, the questions about the concepts that we needed to know were made quite a bit harder than I anticipated. That's why my jaw had dropped so hard to the floor by the time I hit the 10th question. You know it's gonna be a long test when you spend a good 25 minutes on the first ten questions…and mark near half of them to come back for review. There were only 66 questions on the test too, so each question had a good amount of weight on it, which made it all the more important to get as few wrong as possible. I had come into the test feeling so prepared, just KNOWING that I had a shot at getting a score in the 90's for once, maybe even…….a perfect score?? 👀 👀 👀 But it turns out that the professors had ulterior motives. I went from shooting for a score in the 90's on question 1 to just tryna make it through the test by question 45. Don't get me wrong, there were definitely some pretty straightforward questions on the test that were easy to get through…but there were also quite a few complex, wordy questions with weirdly descriptive answers. We were basically bamboozled into thinking that it was going to be an easy test. But of course, it was made a lot harder than it needed to be. It was sad yo. And the whole experience was made even more dreadful with the crashing of the testing system in the middle of the examination period. I had already answered all my questions and was 10 questions away from completing my exam review when it crashed on me. When it crashed, a white screen popped up with a small sentence that stated that the system crashed and that I needed to restart my test.

Bruh, I was so scared that I lost all my answers. I literally stared at that white screen for a couple of minutes before realizing that half the people in my testing room had the same issue. The exam proctors were stuck with trying to figure out how to fix this issue while keeping a room full of highly annoyed medical students calm. Thankfully, they helped us in getting the issue resolved and I didn't lose any of my answers…but not before having to sit there for an additional 30 minutes in that room when I had been literally 5 minutes away from submitting my exam. But oh well, such is life. Like I've said with my tests in the past, I'm sure I passed it…I just don't know by how much.

Whaaaaatever, it's done with and I'm chillin' now. I'm going to have a blast spending Christmas with my family here in VA and then spending New Years' with my girlfriend down in ATL. I don't even wanna think about medicine right now. Thing is, I repeatedly find myself not only accidentally using medical terms when talking with my family, but also thinking about the mechanisms of the most random things. Sigh. I suppose this is what my life is becoming. I guess it isn't so bad. Could very easily be a 100,000x worse.

I'm currently catching the itis because I just had some amazing iHop, so all I want to do is nap…but my brothers are begging to get their butts beat at FIFA, so now I gotta go and serve them the fixings. So I'll leave with wishing each of you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy Holidays!

Please be safe and enjoy your loved ones! 

Be blessed!

– Black Man, M.D.