SNMA National Leadership Institute June 2016 Recap - Washington, DC

Happy Monday! I had the amazing opportunity to spend the last few days in Washington, DC attending the Student National Medical Association’s National Leadership Institute, and I couldn’t go without giving a quick recap on the blog!

First time at the SNMA Headquarters!

This was actually my first time in Washington, DC as well as my first time visiting the SNMA headquarters. I arrived on Friday afternoon, and the headquarters was my first stop. It was such an amazing opportunity to be able to see the SNMA staff in their element and physically see where the majority of the work takes place for the organization. I also enjoyed hanging out with my SNMA family that I hadn’t seen in a few months.

At the AAMC Headquarters

As usual, this NLI had a packed schedule, and I was super excited for what was in store. My Friday evening was filled with meetings, and I was up bright and early on Saturday morning for a full day of workshops at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) headquarters where the majority of the NLI was hosted. These workshops included teambuilding exercises, board governance basics, nonprofit finance workshops, fundraising tips, and SNMA strategic planning leadership development talks, just to name a few of the topics covered. I took a ton of notes and really focused on absorbing all of the information. The workshops definitely helped me feel more confident in my leadership abilities, and I look forward to incorporating them in the future.

Gorgeous weather and amazing DC rooftop views

After the Saturday workshops ended, the AAMC hosted a beautiful reception of the rooftop of their building. It was really nice being able to see the views of the city and fellowship with the other SNMA members. On Sunday morning, we met again bright and early for a morning board meeting and we got a lot accomplished.

Happy to meet my mentee!

Afterwards, NLI officially ended and I was super excited about was getting the chance to meet one of my mentees who lives in the area. For the past year, I have served as a mentor to a few pre-medical students through DiverseMedicine, Inc, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet one of them in person. It is such a blessing to be able to help others pursue their dreams of medicine.   

Aspiring Minority Doctor and Daily Medicine Blog at the White House!

I also had a few hours to spare until my flight, so being that it was my first time in DC, I went sightseeing! I was happy to be able to spend time with my good friend and fellow blogger of Daily Medicine Blog, and we took full advantage of the city. I was super touristy and took pictures everywhere! I’ll post a few at the end of this post because the weather was gorgeous and it was the perfect time to be out in the city.

I love the SNMA!!!!

Overall the June 2016 SNMA NLI was a success and I was happy to be in attendance. I found out my flight was cancelled as I was out sightseeing yesterday, so I didn’t get back home until this morning. I’m still trying to figure out how my flight was cancelled due to “bad weather” five hours early when it was clear from DC to Atlanta, but I’ll save that rant for another day, LOL. I was just happy to be able to catch the first flight back this morning, and make it through traffic in time to be back in class (I was only 30 minutes late, so I call that a success). But that’s pretty much it for the recap, and I’m headed to bed, so until next time!

Selfie at the Lincoln Memorial :-)

First time at the White House!

Post USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Level 1 Reflections

    

Post USMLE Step 1 Selfie

USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Level 1 are officially complete!!!!! It seriously feels so good to finally be finished with the first parts of my medical board exams. I won't know my scores for about three weeks, but right now I am just celebrating the fact that I crossed yet another big milestone on my journey to becoming a physician. Taking two 8-hour exams in less than a week's time span was a truly rough experience, and I am just happy to be done!

Post COMLEX Level 1 selfie

As for the exams, I'l probably have to write up a few posts that compare the two, along with my study strategies, and how I worked my way up to being ready for the marathon. Right now, what pops into my head the most was how vague the COMLEX was. I felt the USMLE gave all the pertinent information so that you had no doubt what they were asking, but the COMLEX gave the absolute bare minimum and you basically had to figure it all out on your own. Overall, outside of OMM material, the exams were very similar...just different. Even with the vagueness and uncertainty, I feel that I did a lot better on the COMLEX than the USMLE though. We'll see what happens when the scores come out, but the week I took the USMLE I felt extremely burnt out and even my assessment exam scores took a serious drop that week, so I'm hoping that didn't negatively impact my score. I walked into the COMLEX feeling a lot more confident, so maybe that's why I feel a lot better about it. 

They say that everyone feels like they failed coming out of the exams, but I honestly am not sure how to feel. Walking out of the USMLE, I know that I had marked maybe 50% of the exam which is probably a really bad sign, but I have no way to gauge how I performed because even after looking up some things I wasn't sure about, I'm still confused lol. As for the COMLEX, I marked a huge amount of the exam as well (if I don't know an answer 100%, I mark it), but for some reason I just feel better about it. Right now, I'm just praying that I passed both exams and that the silly mistakes I usually tend to make were minimal. 

But anyway, be on the lookout for a few board exam posts. I know everyone studies differently, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but hopefully it will help some of you out. And if I performed horribly on the exams (God forbid), then hopefully it will show you all what not to do lol. Either way, I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all, but right now I'm going to celebrate!

Officially a 3rd Year Medical Student and 4 Days until USMLE Step 1!

The smile of a 3rd year medical student :-)

My brain has decided it can't take any more studying for the rest of the night, so I figured I would type up a quick update post. As of today, I can officially say that I am a third year medical student, but I take USMLE Step 1 in 4 days (and COMLEX Level 1 in 10 days), so I still have that hanging over my head. I am just so ready to get these board exams over with and start rotations!

I don't think I'll ever feel ready to take these exams, but I've been told that no one ever does. At this point, I probably won't learn huge amounts of new information in the next few days, so I'm just trying to focus on the little mistakes I make, so that it doesn't happen on exam day. Today I headed to campus bright and early to take an 8 hour assessment exam, and while it wasn't too bad, not being given a score when I completed it was a bit frustrating. I heard it might take a week or so to get the results, so I pretty much feel like I could have spent the time doing practice questions at home and using the feedback to work on my weaknesses a little more since I'll have taken my exams by the time the results come in. Oh well! The good news is my stamina is pretty strong because I didn't even start to get tired until maybe the last 50 questions (it was a 400 question exam), so that's assuring.

In other news, my daughter finished school last week and I was so grateful to have my dad drive in from out of state to pick her up for the summer. I'm thankful to have uninterrupted study time, and I know my daughter is happy to have animals to play with and people who constantly interact with her because for the past few weeks I've been in a deep exam mode. But even when she's away she still brightens my day, and the text she sent me the other day was the best (pic at the end of this post). My family also has a huge Disney World and Universal Studios trip planned, so I'm sure she won't even miss me that much.    

But anyway, that's about it for now. I just bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and I plan on completely zoning out and relaxing for the next hour. My next post will probably be a post-exam update, so hopefully it will be a happy one. Until next time!  

My daughter sends the best texts! :-)

Board Exam Study Update

My daughter is really into Pathoma! LOL

Hi all! I decided to resurface for a bit to give a quick update on how the board studying is going. Right now, I am 19 days away from taking USMLE Step 1 and I'm definitely feeling the pressure! It feels like there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I want, but I'm slowly working my way through it all. The good news is that my NBME assessment scores continue to improve by a lot each week, so even though I am nowhere near the score range that I want to be right now, knowing that I haven't hit my plateau gives me hope. 

In case you're wondering about my daily schedule, today pretty much went like this:

4:30-7:00am - Four sets of 40 UWorld Questions in random, timed-mode back-to-back (I usually finish each block with 15-20min to spare)

7-7:30am - Made sure the little one got dressed and ate breakfast, did her hair, and then headed out to the bus stop

7:30-12pm - Reviewed all of the morning's UWorld questions (even though I'm on my second official pass, this still takes me forever!)

12-1pm - Took a break to eat lunch and caught up on last night's episode of Fear the Walking Dead

1-4pm - Did two 40 question sets of USMLERX questions on tutor mode in the subjects of MSS and Embryo since my latest NBME listed those as my weak spots. I also took a break when my daughter got home to help her with her homework/discuss her day and I had a little extra time, so I did 10 Combank questions on the USMLE side.

4-5pm - Watched a chapter of Pathoma (had to speed it up a bit because 1x is too slow for me)

5-6pm - Dinner with the little one (I cooked last night and had leftovers, so it didn't take the entire hour) and then finished up some outside business

6-7:30pm - More Pathoma and got the little one ready for and tucked in bed.

At this point, I've pretty much covered everything on my list for the day with the exception of reading a chapter out of First Aid, and it equals a little under 11 hours of study time with all the breaks subtracted (I literally calculate and write down how much time I spend on every individual thing). Not sure if reading that chapter is going to happen tonight though, because I have an 8:30pm conference call that will most likely go until 10pm, and then I'm calling it a night!

My schedule is super exhausting, but since it seems to be working for me, I don't want to change it too much. I do need to get to a point where I am doing more questions per day since the COMLEX will be 400 questions (compared to only 280 with the USMLE), but I'll just have to slowly increase the amount over the next 3 weeks. Tomorrow I also have my very last written exam of medical school (yay!) for my Primary Care Skills course, so I'll have to put an hour towards my schedule in the morning towards studying for it and another hour towards taking it.

Anyway, this post pretty much sums up my life nowadays in a nutshell. I'm about take a quick shower before my call begins, so I hope everyone has an amazing week!

A Little Board Exam Study Motivation :-)

Super short post tonight as I just finished with my studying for the day, but I started at 4:30 this morning, so I'm exhausted! I came across this picture though and just had to share. Seeing this gave me a little extra fire to keep going with the board studying, and I'll definitely be looking at this whenever I need a little inspiration or an extra push to keep going over the next month. For those of you on the board study grind with me, hang in there! Nothing great ever comes easy, and anything worth having is worth working hard for. Wishing everyone a productive week!