October 30, 2000
My immunology exam is over. It was OK. Meaning that I'm pretty sure I did OK, but the test itself sucked.
An open letter to Dr. Chess:
Dear Leonard,
Here are some key concepts that I would like you to work on before the Immunology course next year. Please learn them well, as YOU WILL BE TESTED on them in the form of an ambiguous, poorly written multiple choice exam.
1.) Proofreading is good
2.) For a multiple choice test, printing the questions and the answer choices on the SAME PAGE is another good idea
3.) If you are to stress the importance of "brevity" with the regard to our written answers for the essay questions, please do not go on to expound on that principle for 5 minutes in your slurred droning, hepped-up-on-moonshine voice when people are trying to TAKE AN EXAM, for Chrissake. That is also very bad.
Oh, and I'm sorry that you have ankylosing spondylitis. Bummer.
Best wishes,
Michelle
I tried to be Little Miss Good Test-Taker after I finished the exam, double checking my answers and re-reading my essays, but I was just so sick of the material that I was going to barf. While re-reading, the voice in my head was like, "The TH1 cell activation events lead to the elaboration of a set of cytokines that blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH! Shut up! SHUT UP!" After that, I decided it was time to go home.
Anyway, after the exam, I went over to check my campus mailbox (something I haven't done for...oh, about two weeks) and received the my registration program for the USMLE. Insert ominous music here. The USMLE, for all you people out there with real lives, is the United States Medical Licensing Examination. It's a series of three tests that you have to take to get your medical license and practice, so you don't become one of those scandelous plastic surgeons that they expose on Hard Copy. (Except on Hard Copy, it wouldn't even just stop there. The "doctor" giving botched boob jobs and killing patients by leaving gangrenous scaples inside their body cavities would be, like, a DENTIST. This is not to disparage dentists, merely to note that they should not be performing nose jobs.)
So, the USMLE. Basically, this test is going to blow. Step I (the first test that we have to take this June) covers everything we've learned first and second year. That's a lot of stuff. I can barely remember the material for the test I took two hours ago. So there is some apprehension. Right now, the Boards seem so far away that it's not ever real yet. But stay tuned for Spring Fever, aka The May Pre-Boards Last-Minute Freak-out. It's going to happen.
Wow, it's just non-stop fun around here. OK, I'm going to stop talking about school now.