Biochem Anyone?

I had been out of university for about 6 years when I decided to go back and take the missing, magical pre-requisites that would be my ticket to passing the MCAT and getting into medical school.

It was a full year and a half of inorganic chem, organic chem, physics, microbiology, and health sciences. It sucked. For a lot of reasons.

Once I was done that I was able to apply to several schools in Canada/abroad and had enough of my bases covered to write the MCAT so I opted to not go back in the fall for another full year of calculus, stats, and biochem--doing that would have given me the pre-reqs to apply to U of Alberta and UBC. But I was getting close to 30 for crying out loud! How many more 1st year courses did I have to endure??

I was living in my friends' parents basement doing o-chem when my 10 year high school reunion rolled around--which I obviously skipped. What was I going to say? Yeah, things are going well...I am in the process of getting dumped, I am doing a second year chem course, unemployed, and keeping my fingers crossed on getting into med? Riiiiiiggghhhhhht.

I just couldn't face it. I'd drained my RRSP's and my relationship. I thought that if I couldn't get in somewhere with what I had then I'd figure out a plan B.

Turns out maybe a little biochem would have come in handy after all.

They barely touch on it in my program, yet the USMLE seems to care if you know what a g-coupled protein receptor is.

I took the kaplan diagnostic test last week and found that my (major) areas of weakness are medical genetics, biochem, and molecular biology. Shocker! I never have taken any classes in those areas!

When we did our little kaplan pep talk a couple weeks back the lecturer said that wherever we have weakness we should spend 30 mins a day from NOW until the exam chipping away at it, "If your weakest area today is your weakest area on exam day then you aren't studying correctly".

Taken at face value it's pretty basic/obvious, but I think it was absolutely sound advice.

I've plowed through the first few chapters in the review book of medical genetics. Tomorrow the autodidact begins biochem.

This is going to be an interesting little educational diversion.

Wish me luck.