#block exams

[sandrakuang-blog]

Currently in my 6th week of Pharmacy school. Am I doing well? Not particarly, but I'm doing better each day ☺. Had my first block exams two weeks ago, and needed to retests on two of them. Did my retests & passed! Had my second block exams today & I'm pretty sure I failed one of them and I think I did well on my other three. But we'll see. So far, results came out for pharmaceutics & I passed! So let's hope for the next & if worse came to shove, I just need one retest haha. Pharmacy school is much more difficult than I anticipated, but I'll get the hang of it! I'm still learning & I'm still growing. Hopefully I find some good study tactics soon & I hope I learn how to manage my time better. You'd think I would've learned by now 😑 lol.

[sandrakuang-blog]

So tomorrow is my first day of block exams for pharmacy school. I’m extremely nervous because I don’t know how it’ll be yet. It’s also 4 back to back exams =.= I’m hoping that I won’t need to do any retests yet, but I’m also prepping myself to not be so undetermined even if I do end up with a retest. Hopefully I’ll do well overall, and if not, i will study harder and find better tactics for the next ones!

[wellhello-do]

First Finals Week

Well it’s finally here. I have taken two finals already and have four more to go. My school does not do block exams (we have a bunch of exams every week forever). I have on multiple occasions whined about how I think I need more time to study, and grass is greener, and block exams make more sense AND YET now that we have a 2 weeks (ish, I mean they gave us a final last week and the week before) to study for 4 classes, I’m losing motivation.

I’ve done a first pass of all my material, but now that I’m trying to solidify the information I am losing motivation. How do you block exam people do it?? I don’t know what to focus on or how to keep that adrenaline going that keeps me studying. I feel like I know the material but I actually don’t know any of it well enough to kill any of my exams. I can pass or barely pass them at best at this point but I don’t feel that pressure yet. Any advice on how to organize what to study? I have biochem, anatomy, histo and psych coming up.

[med-in-purple]

Block week 1: Over and conquered

Yay I’m an actual medical student now! Okay I know that’s a silly thing to say because I’ve been in school for over 6 weeks now but I felt this whole time that I hadn’t truly proved myself until I took my block exams. Well, now I know that I can succeed in medical school. I passed all my exams, did very well in anatomy and my written exams and only missed one tiny thing on my clinical skills portion (upper extremity osteopathic exams). I’d say it was a success all around. 

Block week wasn’t nearly as scary, stressful or horrible as I thought it would be. Yeah, a full week of exams isn’t fun but what that actually means is that you’ve got one or two who days in between exams to study, eat well, do some yoga, and try to reach a bit of zen before your exam. I’ve already figured out some ways to study more efficiently for next block so I think I can only go up from here!

Also I didn’t bring this up before but I was VERY nervous about anatomy at the beginning of the block. I didn’t seem to memorize as quickly as those around me and one of my partners in donor lab had taken cadaveric anatomy before in undergrad (what!?) and so she was such a pro that I felt very overwhelmed. Well, it all seemed to work out as soon as I started doing a little bit of anatomy every day instead of leaving it all for two 12 hour weekend day sessions (why did I ever think this was a good idea). End result? I rocked my anatomy exam and I actually was having fun during the practical. It became a bit like a game to figure out what they were tagging and the feeling of knowing exactly what body structure it is can be truly awesome. Anatomy is my favorite part of medical school now, and last week I was even the one to take the bone saw and open up the glenohumeral joint. 

Yeah, medical school is pretty awesome.

Now I get to be a lazy slob all weekend before the craziness starts up again. As always, my mailbox is empty so send me those questions! I know you have them. <3 you all, stay awesome and stay safe.

[med-in-purple]

Trying desperately to calmly drink my green tea and relax before I start today's study session for block exam week. The "relaxing" part is very challenging.

[songbird30]

Math Exam

Guys I have a 3 hour math exam. If you haven't gotten the memo I HATE math. I suck at math, and this is going to be pure torture for me. Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it!!

[pleasedotheneedful]

I should've reviewed neuroanatomy on Friday.

Doing it now with the block tomorrow morning and I just can't be bothered to give a damn. At least it's not a massive chunk of points?

[pleasedotheneedful]

Grades are back (save for a couple of classes).

This ended up being my best semester yet. Physiology grades are still out, but it might even be the first semester in which none of my grades dip below 80%.

So not only did I pass my classes, but I might have actually passed all of my finals with flying colors.

(The latter hasn't happened once since I've been here.)