A simple plan

So I have "successfully" completed second year...hooray! Instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment or relief, I'm feeling a sense of a lot of impending work over the next 5 weeks. You'll notice my OCD schedule above. I tailored it to where I'm weak...Heme/Onc, Cardio, Neuro and Renal (even though I did well on the NBME in Renal, I just lack all self confidence after the in-house exam that I took).

My class took a practice NBME exam a few weeks ago. I was in the 190's without studying at all. In fact, I was barely awake while I was taking it so I'm not too concerned with passing. My approach is more about getting the material to be fresh, making up for my weaknesses, and solidifying the big picture so that I can have a gut reaction with the questions that I'm still tentative on. I'm usually pretty good on standardized exams (SAT/MCAT) so hopefully those skills will carry on over.

Here's the breakdown for my strategy:

• 5 weeks
• 8-10 hours of studying per day. AM Run/Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner breaks and done at 9PM regardless of where I am.
  
• 1 catch-up/NBME/chill day tossed in each week to retain my sanity and show how I'm progressing. I'm only doing the first 4 NBME exams. 5&6 have been released, but I think that doing more towards the beginning will just stress me out.
• Green is Subject Based:
  
• Biochem, Behavioral, Micro, General Path, and Pharm...clustered towards the beginning because they're the basis of path.
  
• Orange is system based:
  
• First Aid is my systems based approach as a guiding outline
• HY Anatomy and Physiology for each system to refresh myself on the basics of how it works, innervation, etc.
  
• Rapid Review and BRS for the Pathology of each system
• Organizing notes placed into FA
• Pharm reviewed with the relevant pathology
• 50 RANDOMIZED Kaplan QBank questions per day

Oh yeah, I'll be studying in VT with the girlfriend who is taking the MA Bar in July...it will be nice to spend some quality time with her before she goes out into the real working world of environmental law somewhere between Bangor, ME and Washington, DC. Hopefully we'll motivate each other and I won't end up sleeping in my tent two weeks into this when we both get stressed out and start tripping over each other in her tiny apartment.

I'll definitely be posting about my progress, at least once a week. For now though, I have to go get a hair cut, do some laundry and get the rest of my affairs in order before I leave for VT.