5 Down, 3 To Go

So we had another mock spotter on Friday. Each term we have one mock (i.e. it counts for nothing grade-wise) and one final (real) spotter.

These exams are also known as "bell ringers" because you get 1 or 2 minutes per station where you have to determine what it is you are looking at and then answer questions on it--before the GONG goes off and you have to move to the next station.

I have to say, this was the best one so far, for me. I don't think I did wonderfully on it but I feel like I am finally figuring out how to ace these exams.

For one, I used to just about have a seizure whenever I saw this photo:

Human embryo at around 3 weeks. 

But now I am not as freaked out. It's just a teeney, weenie little embryo---and it can't hurt me! I know what the bits do, and what they become, and I am not as easily thrown off by our prof putting random genes in the answer (which I don't know) to trick us.  I just look for the part of the answer I know (like nucleus pulposus or skeletal muscle or whatever) and ignore the via Gli3R protein or in response to Fgf signaling part of the answer. I know, it sounds obvious, but when exam adrenalin is rushing I tend to see those words and BLANK on all the things I do actually understand. Freak out. Run out of time. Guess.

So. I try to breathe. When I get to the next station I force myself to let the last set of questions go. I used to ruminate. There is no time to ruminate.

Also, I am in two amazing study groups (mostly composed of the same people), and we've been preparing for exams since the second week of school. Every week we've made presentations for each other on the salient points from our cases last year. We make up quizzes for each other and handouts, etc. It works really well because you are forced to do the review every week and you want to do a good job (so that you don't look like a slacker for the group presentation). 

2 weeks ago we each made a mock spotter for the group from 7 randomly assigned cases spanning both last year and this year (thus covering all the cases). Making the damn thing was VERY time consuming and it took us 2 three hour sessions just to get through all of them, but we timed them like a real spotter and everything. 

I never realised that the BEST way to study is to try and make exam questions! You really have to think about the concept, how to trick people, how to word questions and make plausible fake answers. Each question took me at least 30-60mins to make. 

Hello. It paid off. There were several of our exact slides on the exam Friday!!

Huzzah!*

The real bonus though is that I only have THREE spotters left in the future of my earthly existence. This makes me very happy. Though I must say, since I've been thinking more and more about pursuing surgery, studying anatomy is less tedious than it was in the past. 

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*I did have one of those post-exam-facepalms though in the shower yesterday. I was just washing my hair and like a lightening bolt one of the histology slides (that had confused me) popped into my head. I thought that it was liver with the arrow pointing to fibrosis. But the lightening bolt struck and I suddenly remembered doing it in one of our mock exams! Nooooooooooooooooooo! It was a fibrillary tangle in a sample of brain tissue! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. Facepalm. Facepalm. Facepalm. Sigh.

Can't win 'em all I guess.