My Step 1 exam, due to a second Prometric weather cancellation (I DOOMED THEM), is now rescheduled for Friday! This time literally over a thousand miles away.
Yes, I googled it. Not taking any more weather-related chances.
(That said, if you hear about the north-eastern US getting hit with a blizzard / hurricane / surprise Godzilla attack on Friday, you know who to blame.)
Actually, my school’s Dean of Students snagged me this spot. I guess what I said in the last entry about “making it someone else’s problem” really does work. (Why do I always try to solve my own problems? I am never the best person to solve my own problems.) The Oscars hadn’t even ended by the time her assistant had gotten Prometric, the NBME, and/or the state government, for all I know, to work something out for me.
(I don’t think I’ve ever said anything negative about my school – but if I had, now would clearly be the time to take it back. The administration has superpowers. That’s their secret.)
I have so many half-finished blog entries, you guys. There are an awful lot of things – some of which actually aren’t totally self-centered – that I want to finish writing, and I can only get to the most trivial of them. (Thus, the gifs.)
But on the bright side, since this Thursday will be my THIRD (and please dear USMLE-God let it be the last) Last-Minute-Fact-Cramming Day, I have gotten really, really good at Last-Minute-Fact-Cramming. I have become intimately aware of the time limits in which this stuff can be committed to short-term memory, so I know right down to the very minute which flashcards, equations, and drawings to crash-memorize.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet my life – in all its morbidly fascinating – perhaps depressing – glory.
(Some people say you shouldn’t cram for the USMLE. They usually compare it to running the day before a marathon.
But if we can just compare the USMLE to whatever we want, I’d rather compare it to community theater. Specifically, the night before the Off-Book deadline – which every theatre slacker in the world knows is more than enough time for anyone to superficially memorize the entirety of Twelfth Night provided they’ve showed up at at least a couple rehearsals beforehand.
And if it’s good enough for Shakespeare In The Park, gosh darn it, it’s good enough for biochem.)
Action Potential 
I will start doing a sun dance for you! (I live in the Northeast/mid-Atlantic region.) Good luck!! You can do it!! 🙂
Good luck! Pour libations to the blizzard gods!
What flashcards sets on that website did you end up using for Step 1? Would love to blitz through some sets. Thanks! Good luck, you are doing great!
Sure thing. I made a class for my own Step 1 stacks just to keep them all together – [3/14/13: EDITED OUT as it contains my name]
I also really like and use the sets by these 3 users:
http://quizlet.com/belinda1220
http://quizlet.com/eluo123
http://quizlet.com/yaacovCR
Hope that helps!
Excellent, thank you so much, I really appreciate it! Would love to hear your experience once you get the exam out of the way. Btw, what sources did you focus on that you felt had the biggest help for the USMLE. There are currently, so many books, etc out there, it gets so overwhelming. Thanks and all the best again!
I have a post on that in the works – going to wait until my score comes back since it could swing either way! But WEBPATH, WEBPATH, WEBPATH. No substitute for Pathoma or a thorough review of BRS / DIT / pick your poison – but absolutely fabulous for the last week (e.g. the images on the test are quite similar to the webpath images).
Picmonic also netted me 8 answers I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten correct. I suspect the average person would get 6-10 questions correct that they would’ve had no shot at getting correct otherwise (remember, the mechanism of Picmonic’s system favors details you would not otherwise recall) – but whether this is worth the price is an individual decision.