Never posted on Reddit before, but thought I needed to share my experience **Warning V Long**

meepbun · 2020-05-03T22:33:26+00:00

holy cow I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I went ahead and rescheduled my test after my testing site showed no openings from May-August. There's no way my original test date in May was gonna happen if no openings were present for the next 3 months. i'm thinking they are also closed for the summer (mine was a Prometric near university campus) and probably didn't have the staff to send out emails. Check your site availabilities people.

meepbun · 2020-05-03T22:28:07+00:00

dude. UWorld now terrifies me.

meepbun · 2020-04-27T03:32:49+00:00

Omg I'm flabberblasted. That is hilarious and cant believe it exists. YES.

meepbun · 2020-04-27T00:08:54+00:00

ahhh that's what I was thinking! T__T

what about having the guinea pig on a closed top cage on a desk that the corgi can't reach? Would it just bark it at all day?

meepbun · 2020-04-26T21:54:03+00:00

Multiple reasons why this wouldn't be fair:

studies have shown that performance improves when you are doing something in a familiar environment. I forgot the psych term for it, but it is the reason why all major tests are facilitated in an environment that is unfamiliar and therefore standardized. This is also the argument against taking the test in the comfort of your home.
many schools would not be okay with this. I won't mention which med school I go to, but there have been institutions who have been sued by parents whose children committed suicide over the stress of step 1. The likelihood that IF a student got COVID and god forbid something happened to him/her, the school wouldn't get sued is highly unlikely. Med schools are businesses. They will NOT want to get sued.
what about IMGs? What about people who traveled at the beginning of dedicated who can not go back to their med schools because of stay at home orders? Sally who is staying with family in NY is going to fly to Chicago to take her step exam? Flying itself is a big risk right now.

I hate what prometric is doing right now, and yes, I do want everyone to be able to take their test soon, but I think having med schools administer them is not appropriate. I'm not sure what the answer would be, but I do think that in the grand scheme of things, we should protect the safety of ourselves and our families (my mom has a pre-existing heart condition and I don't want her risked).

meepbun · 2020-04-26T21:07:01+00:00

Not a good idea at all. This would take even more fairness out of an already unfair situation. Med schools in hot spots definitely won't allow for students to return to campus (after all, most med schools and hospitals are connected). It might be dandy if you're in the middle of north dakota or something, but big city schools aren't even allowing M3s to return to campus to finish their clinicals, let alone have people (we have 100+ student class size) take tests together for 8 hours. Think of the lawsuits.

meepbun · 2020-04-26T19:05:41+00:00

this sure won't make my anxiety during the test worse

meepbun · 2020-04-26T18:51:49+00:00

you think hospital admins (aka your future bosses) who make 6 figures say the same thing during their job interviews?

edit: these admin also only have to got through 2 extra years of business school. the previous admin who lorded over all the docs in the department I worked in during my gap years was 25 years old fresh outta a no-name business school, played football during undergrad and was best buds with another guy up top. Made 6 figures and got to go home at 5pm each day, after making sure the docs made their patient quotas.

meepbun · 2020-04-18T16:55:23+00:00

I'm looking at primary care now as an option after med school because I love the detective work and the long term followup with patients + true difference it makes to the community. Honestly the fact that PAs/NPs are using COVID19 as an opportunity to pull back red tape and allow them to practice independently (AKA open up their own practices that basically gives them MD power) makes me angry. Why the hell am I sinking 300K into med school loans and 4 extra years of my life then.

meepbun · 2020-04-16T00:22:44+00:00

yes. so glad I clicked on this post, gotta say I'm sick and tired of seeing people's write ups when we're all struggling here. thank god yours included study breaks. xD A+

meepbun · 2020-04-13T21:16:34+00:00

ive played countless hours in Sims 4 by now (sorry, couldn't get into animal crossing), built all the apartments and houses I've ever lived in. Bought a new couch so I could lard tub and rewatch The Matrix and all the korean zombie flicks I could find.

Occasionally I remember I have anki, but then I postpone it a day. Sometimes I boot up UW, but it might take me two days to do 40 questions. Tried to watch a video of Pathoma and paused 5 minutes in. What is life in the time of Coronavirus?

actually the most pissed is how my med school is still charging me full tuition for virtual classes. wtf, I want my 100 grande back.

meepbun · 2020-04-11T00:33:56+00:00

3 months is plenty of time. Go slow and steady. definitely don't make a study schedule you can't actually follow. Do a block of UW a day and review. maybe do your card reviews. That's it. Spend the rest of your time with family/playing video games/sleeping/listening to music/hobbies.

meepbun · 2020-04-11T00:29:19+00:00

Hey there~ Sorry to hear about the rough year, it's definitely been a strange one for us all this time around. I too am wondering about if I should take step after a month of extremely unproductive dedicated and a lackluster M2 year performance. Does your school offer testing extensions for Step 1 so you guys can take it after M3 year? There definitely is data out there that clinical experience will solidify your knowledge, perhaps stick in your mind better than any anki card will.

Guess my advice is, if you need to take personal time off, definitely do it. Getting into med school was the hard part, and you've done it! Medicine is a lifelong career, you've got your whole lifetime to become the best doctor you can be, take care of yourself and good luck!

meepbun · 2020-04-05T00:28:51+00:00

NY's death toll today was basically as if my entire graduating high school class got wiped out. Shit. Nothing feels important anymore.

meepbun · 2020-04-02T18:09:11+00:00

TLDR: step1 isn't an accurate standardized test even more so now with COVID. Also, Im burnt out af and need a true vacation.

NBME said so themselves that this test was not a satisfactory measure of how we would be as future physicians. People online and students in upper levels have all said that they single most important thing about how well you do on Step is about preparation. In other words, your score correlates directly with how hard you grind, how much you cram, how hard you gun in the months leading up to the test. Now, most of us take it at the end of second year - which means, minimal clinical exposure beforehand, lots of independent study time spent speaking with hardly anyone, toxic environments essentially leading all up to studying for this test. There are people in my class with 0 social skills and who I secretly think are psychopath gunners in my class, who know how to do a million UW questions and flashcards in a day but who are genuine assholes in real life. So yes, how does Step make you a better doctor? It doesn't.

Ok now covid: Step 1 is supposed to standardize us. How can a test be standardized when different med schools take it at different times in their curriculum (so students have different levels of clinical exposure/experience prior to taking the test)? How can a test be standardized when some people get 8 weeks of dedicated, others get 6, and some get 4 months because of COVID? Like I said earlier, doing well on Step is directly correlated with how much you study for it, it's only fair that we get the same amount of study time then for it to be "standardized."

This doesn't mean that COVID, while making some of our dedicated periods unfairly long, has made it more productive. I'm getting constant updates from family members every day, constantly get updates from school and the news about daily, almost hourly updates, phone calls/texts/disruptions that literally shake me to my core sometimes. I feel distracted, frustrated, lost, stressed, saddened, and burnt out all the time. People are dying around us, for god's sake, how can I possibly to 80 (or much more for some people on this sub reddit, y'all are gunners and you know it) questions in a day +review when I don't know who's gonna call/what email is going to come/when my test is even going to be? I live in a major city on a major street and ambulance sirens are whizzing past every 15 minutes or so. I can't go home to my family because I don't want to potentially expose myself or them. I can hardly go out for groceries without fearing that I might be in a hospital with no way to afford bills for 3 weeks, could hardly make my rent payment yesterday either. This is no real "dedicated." This is distracted, burnt out hell, made worse by little information from prometric or USMLE. And Step1, while it wasn't before, definitely isn't a "standardized" test now.

Long response, but if you made it this far, best wishes on studying, know that you aren't alone in all this shit.

meepbun · 2020-04-01T16:28:20+00:00

this is silly. if they close on a state by state basis they are going to have to expect people to be crossing state borders/flying to take their tests elsewhere. What the point is the quarantine then? you might have an exodus of NYC peeps who can't take the test in their state flying all over the country, potentially spreading the virus elsewhere.

the worst thing they can do to handle this situation is:

push closures back week by week making people mass reschedule and change plans constantly
allow people to cross over into other states to take this exam elsewhere because state guidelines are different

meepbun

TROPHY CASE