Boards Day was on Wednesday, June 18. This date is BURNED into my brain, because I’d spent about six months (since I’d picked the test day) remembering it as an important date. BURNED.
Anyway, the day went just fine. I woke up around 7, and ate breakfast while doing 25 questions on USMLEWorld. The idea was to get into the groove of answering questions, since I had noticed from practice tests and doing sets of questions that my first block was always my worst-scoring, regardless really of the difficulty of the questions. At the practice session, there was a 10%-point difference between my first and second blocks of questions. That is kind of ridiculous. So anyway, the plan was to simply answer questions in a timed setting (25 questions instead of 48 questions like a real block would have), and not score the block or look at answers.
Hahaha, like that was going to happen. I ended up scoring okay on the 25 questions, and I skimmed over the answers of the ones I’d missed. I don’t recall if any of those questions ended up on my actual exam, but more than anything, it was a way to soothe my Savage Test-Taking Beast.
Left the apartment at 7:45 AM, with plenty of time to get to the test center by 8:30. However, they were doing construction on the highway near my apartment, so a 13-minute drive (I’ve timed it) took nearly 45 minutes, instead. I was going out of my mind in my car, eyeing the left curb, wondering if I could squeeze by. It turned out fine, because I am stupid and somehow got it into my head that I had to be at the test center 30 minutes prior to the scheduled 9 AM start time, when it fact it is only suggested that you show up 30 minutes prior, and instead I could not be more than 30 minutes late. Oops. So, all that sitting in my car yelling, “OH MY GODDDDDD, 8:17 AM!!!!” was for no real reason. At least it got me awake.
I had planned on eating a real lunch sometime in-between testing blocks, since you schedule your own breaks between the 7 hour-long testing blocks. But I brought a ton of snacks and drinks, and simply ended up eating a granola bar or piece of fruit in-between most blocks, instead of having a real lunch. Post-lunch food coma was not something I wanted to contend with. I lost track of how many blocks of questions I’d done, and completely lost track of time because you aren’t allowed to bring watches into the testing room. All I knew of time was the tiny countdown clock in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It felt very post-apocalyptic or Brave New World, if you ask me.
As for the actual test itself, it was basically the Best of Times and the Worst of Times. I would get incredibly, almost laughably straightforward questions, followed by questions with options A through J and the most convoluted patient histories. During one block, I spent all of my remaining time trying to figure out one question that I just didn’t “get” — and I finally understood what they were asking for, and the second I reached out to grab the mouse and change my answer, the computer program’s dialogue box popped up and told me my time was up, and switched over to the “take a break” screen. SERIOUSLY. It was unbelievable. The only thing that made up for it was when I got a question that I never ever would have known, if I hadn’t miraculously looked at ONE study sheet I’d made back in August 2006, when we first started histology, during my last day of studying on Tuesday. I have no idea what possessed me to actually read the study sheet I’d dug out from under my bed, but MAN, am I glad I somehow looked at it.
So, you see, it was both the Best of Times and the Worst of Times. I can think of no other words to describe Boards than those of an author who pretty much embodied the dread and joy of learning in my youth. Yeah, I just compared Boards to Dickens. But like reading Dickens, studying for Boards is finally over, and I never ever ever have to do it again. Yay!
