I Did It!

After many months of long study days, thousands of practice questions, and more sitting than I ever wish to do again in my life, I AM DONE WITH BOARDS. (at least until Step 2).

Some people have been asking HOW I prepared for boards but I'm going to hold off on that until I know how well I did. I would hate to give out poor advice! I will say that my school provided us with a program that we were required to complete. Lots of pros and cons to this that I'll be happy to discuss in the future. I also supplemented with UWorld, USMLERx and COMQUEST question banks and Pathoma. My ultimate point of reference was the med school bible aka First Aid. 

I have NO CLUE how things went yesterday. COMLEX is known for being very vague. There were a ton of questions where I was able to narrow it down to two answers. Praying that I made the right choices! Throughout the test I just felt so strange, not sure how else to describe it. The exam didn't feel like any of the practice I had done.  

Another issue of note. It was originally my plan to take both the MD boards (USMLE) and DO boards (COMLEX) but I eventually settled on just taking COMLEX. I wasn't confident enough that I could hit my USMLE goal and I didn't want to risk performing below average. Better to focus all my energy on doing as well on COMLEX as possible, than risk having two low scores. I hope I won't regret it! Honestly though, after taking one 8 hour exam I'm not sure where I would find the mental strength to take another. 

So...now we wait. I'm trying to resist the temptation to look up the answers to things or dwell on what I could have done better. It's over. Board scores are a pretty important portion of my future residency application and obviously I need to pass them to graduate! At this point there is nothing else I can do so I'm just gonna celebrate and enjoy life!

The next few weeks are going to be so FUN! This weekend one of my very best friends from med school is getting married in Louisville! After that we are going to Cincinnati for a few days before boarding a plane to SEATTLE! Ahhhh I'm so excited! 

We didn't get to go on a honeymoon after the wedding last year so we're taking our belated honeymoon/anniversary trip now. Why Seattle? Why not? We aren't really big beach vacation people so we decided to check out somewhere different. Our goal is to visit all the Major League Baseball parks - two years ago we went to Atlanta and now we'll check another off our list. 

After Seattle, I have hospital orientation and on July 6th I start my third year rotations. Life is flying by and I'm another step closer to becoming a doctor!

Also, don't forget that Weigh In Wednesday has been passed down to Winter @ No Drama Little Mama so go check that out and link up! As for me? I've been maintaining my Whole30 weight loss and slowly chipping away at my goals. The last week has been hit or miss with my workouts but I'm looking forward to the study-free life.