Melissa's Bio

Melissa's Diary

Some days in med school are better than others. This week has been a mix.

This was the week before spring break, which means that it was packed! On Monday we had our clinical skills written midterm and lab practical midterm. Our lectures have been covered by a variety of physicians, who each got to write test questions on their lecture. Some lectures, and questions, were better than others. Overall, the test was tougher than it should have been and portions of it covered some absolute minutia rather than what appeared to us to be important. I did okay, but didn’t do as well as I expected to. For the lab practical, we had to be able to demonstrate two of the many clinical skills that we were taught. This included things like: taking a blood pressure & pulses, doing an abdominal, eye, ENT, or neurological exam, or testing for specific problems such as meningitis. For this test groups of us were assigned a time to take the practical, but we got to choose from that group who we would test with. I had found this out on Sunday night and secured my testing partner in advance, allowing us to practice on each other Monday afternoon before our test. We were randomly assigned to the physician testing us and we “drew” testing sheets to determine what skills we had to demonstrate. I ended up with easy ones: taking a blood pressure and testing for meningitis; my partner ended up with the neurological exam and pulses. We both did well and the physician who tested us also used the time as a chance to teach us more information (good stuff, too). This day ended up being a wash: I was frustrated with the written exam, but actually enjoyed the practical.

On Wednesday we had an OMT practical over some Counterstrain techniques. (Counterstrain is one of the methods of OMT, for all of you non-osteopaths out there.) Unlike clinical skills, when we have OMT practicals we don’t have any say in who our testing partner will be. We still have groups assigned a testing time, but then we draw numbers out of a bucket to see who we will be paired with and which physicians will be testing us. My study partner and I actually drew each other (very nice since we had practiced together!), but we ended up drawing the physicians that almost nobody wants to be tested by. One of the physicians (who will remain nameless) is pretty rusty on his OMT skills and is known for marking people down over things they didn’t really do wrong. We managed to get through him okay, but he did “correct” my partner when he was doing something correctly. I’m still waiting to see my score from him, but I’m sure he didn’t take off too much from my grade as he said I did well. The other physician we tested with was Dr. Glover. Now, don’t get me wrong, my partner and I really like Dr. Glover and actually have spent significant time outside of class talking with him, but he has extremely high expectations when it comes to OMT lab practicals. I don’t know anyone who would choose to be tested by him. In addition to that, Dr. Glover is an absolute guru when it comes to Counterstrain techniques. Really. The chapter on Counterstrain in the major Osteopathic manual, Foundations for Osteopathic Medicine, is actually written by Dr. Glover. Talk about some pressure! Fortunately, we did actually know what we were doing, and Dr. Glover told both of us that we did very well. In fact, Dr. Glover, the Counterstrain guru, gave me 100% on the practical! Talk about an ego booster. Good day, good day.

Today (Friday) we had a respiratory physiology test. Now, my study partner and I spend a good amount of time preparing for this exam. We’d done well on the assignment the professor had given the class, had read text material, gone over the notes, and spent time talking through all of the information. I felt quite good going into the test. All of that changed while taking the test. I’d read a question, formulate an answer in my head, and not find it as one of the choices. I’d work a problem out, and the answer I computed wouldn’t be there. Very frustrating. I have a pattern I follow in exams. First time through I mark, on the test itself, the answers to the ones I know right away. Second time through I take the time to work through the ones I actually have to think about. Usually after this I’m only left with a couple of questions that I really have to work through or I don’t know & have to just pick something. Third time through I check all of my answers to make sure I haven’t marked anything really stupid. Then I go ahead and fill in the bubbles on the scantron sheet. As a final neurotic step, I double-check that my written answers and scantron bubbles match. Believe-it-or-not, I’m usually a quick test-taker. Not today! I fretted over many of the questions and changed answers multiple times. By the time I was done, I was a mess! Needless to say, I don’t feel too good about the test now. Not a good day.

Since it was the end of a long week, a number of classmates decided to go out for lunch after the test. We invaded a local Mexican restaurant, trickling in little by little. In the end, 19 of my class of 89 were eating and drinking together, making quite a bit of noise in the back corner of the restaurant. I don’t think that anyone was happy with the phys test, but we were all glad to be done…and to be on spring break! Hopefully, we’ll all manage to rest and enjoy ourselves on our week off.

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*Some names have been changed.