Success

Well, I'm ridiculous. There's no way around that. I think the last time I wrote, I had just finished my first module. Now I'm about halfway through the second, which has presented new challenges, many of which I think are here to stay because they are just a fact of life when it comes to med school. However, I have adapted and I feel confident that with frequent adjustments based on determining what is effective and what is not, I will be able to continue being successful. One of those obstacles wasn't much of an obstacle at all: it was the fear of knowing I wouldn't be able to study over this past weekend because I went to Oregon for Nicole and Grant's wedding (congratulations, kids!...and more on that later) and that proved to be an incredible motivator. So if anyone wants me to be in a wedding or has some other sort of all weekend-long plans (oh, and wants to pay for me to get there since I am broke as a joke!), bring it on because it forced me to be a dilligent studier (student?!) these past two weeks! Many of the study habits I picked up out of this fear of being ill-prepared come September 19 (the day we flew out of DC), like reading last year's MNTS notes on the bus to class and writing out notecards, I think I will end up retaining because they were just good ideas. It's just that now it's possible for me to be doing this blog entry at the moment because I have de-emphasized the study-like-a-lunatic-in-the-afternoons aspect.

Earlier I used the word success and I just thought I'd take a moment to reflect on how that word has now become a sort of relative term for me. For those of you who don't know (and I promise you, I ain't bragging, I'm just trying to provide a framework), I was one of my high school's valedictorians and I played three sports for most of my high school career as well. Then college came along and while it took me a while to adjust to the new challenges it presented, I was eventually able to make those improvements and continue to be successful academicallly (I graduated with honors) as well as balance extracurricular activities and a part-time job in a lab. Before I got to med school, I envisioned things progressing in much the same way because until now, that's what I have always done. I quickly realized, however, that if I were to hold myself to that same standard of getting one of the best grades in the class, I would be entering into a group with which I have no desire to belong.

Oh, the gunners. If you're unfamiliar with that term, a "gunner" in med school is one of those crazies willing to devote their ENTIRE waking lives to getting those few extra questions (seriously, like two or three!) right on the exam that separates the high passers (which does not even appear on your transcript, I might add!) and honors from the passers. Because unlike in college (or at least the university I went to), getting a 93% on an exam does not even grant you high pass (A- to B+ range) privileges when the average is an 88%. My friend Liz joked a few weeks ago that they should put a disclaimer on her transcript indicating that "pass" actually means that she got >85% of the exam questions right and I could not agree more. In college, if 8 people in a class earned an A, they got As. If everyone in the class got an A (which did not happen, I can assure you!), everyone got an A. I knew med school classes would be graded on a curve, but I did not anticipate just how much I would miss the grading scale I grew up with!

To make a long story longer, my point in bringing all of this up is that I will now be defining success a little differently than I have previously in my life. For me, I will continue to strive to correctly answer 90% or greater of the questions posed to me on an exam. The grade I get (which will most likely be one of those "mediocre" passes), does not really matter. I don't feel the need to honor or even high pass all of my classes and if that means not being the world's youngest neurosurgeon to become chief of surgery, I'm okay with that (I don't even want to be a neurosurgeon anyway). I am confident that I will be able to do what I want in medicine if I stick to that. So, that's Patty's new philosophy on how to succeed in medical school while still hopefully making plenty of room in her schedule to spend time with a boyfriend who makes her very happy, to take care of a puppy who borders on driving her completely nuts (though in a very adorable way), to keep in touch with all of her friends and family, both near and extremely far away, and to occasionally eschew studying the weekend before an exam to be there when one of her friends leaves single life and takes up a new one with a man who makes her very happy (and both of whom write such wonderful vows, it makes you [want to] cry).

I have put off studying the urea cycle for too long now, I'm afraid, so you'll all have to wait in suspense to hear how it was in Bend!