1. Remember that time I swore I would never do research again? That was cute. Today I had a meeting with the head of our curriculum and tried to convince him to let me integrate a pet project of mine into the curriculum.
2. “That sounds publishable! Let’s make it happen. Here’s a good journal and a deadline for submission.” … Wait, what? Am I… why?
3. WHY DO I HAVE NO STANDARDS. I’m not very good at the “I don’t like academia” game.
4. Step 1 Looms Ahead. I went to a promotional session by Kaplan today – partially because of the free pizza, but mostly because I wanted to see if the Kaplan representatives in Metropolis were better than the Kaplan representatives at Midwestern U.
They were not.
… though, to be fair, I was a Kaplan representative at Midwestern U – so I may be biased.
(I am not. This representative was genuinely terrible.)
(Also, they recommend taking 4 months to study for Step 1. WHO DOES THAT?) 
(I’m looking at 4 weeks, personally.)
(Then again – I’m looking at pediatrics. Perhaps I shouldn’t judge.)
(Or open any more parenthesis).
Action Potential 
4 MONTHS? Insanity. I did 2.5 weeks of intensive studying, and then I went to Europe for 12 days…. SO worth it. 🙂
DIT came the day after Kaplan came to talk to us. The general consensus is to study all spring semester. Eek!
4 months is insane. I did 6 weeks, probably only needed 5. Did well. Study hard, kick ass.
I did 1 month, whatever it was.
(I don’t remember that far back)
i did 6.5 weeks. too much. I did DIT for step 1 and step 2 and did great on both. loved it.
Agreed. Four weeks is plenty. 20 years from now, you probably won’t remember your step 1 score, but odds are you will remember the time that you spent doing something you loved (like traipsing around Europe) before clinical years started instead of sitting in a library trying top cram all of First Aid into your brain.
5 weeks was my plan and I was going absolutely stir crazy by the end. Any longer and I think I would have started to forget things and just absolutely hate studying!