I have so much I want to tell this kid, and my typing is so damn slow.
Ray, I’m a 48 year old medical doctor myself, and have been exactly where you are. I am not the only medical doctor on this site, but I’ll let the others introduce themselves. We and you have much to talk about.
First thing for you right now is USMLE step I. Everything written above is true, but right now, nothing in the world is more important than passing step I and getting it out of the way. So, for the time being, I’m not going to address anything regarding women or mgtow. This is just exam advice and useless to most anyone here except you. (sorry guys. useless for you but critical for Ray).
Unless it’s changed, it’s going to be about 800 questions over 2 day period. It will be broken up into 4 blocks, one each morning, one each afternoon, each block about 3-4 hours. Yours will probably be on computer. In my day, it was a couple of pencils and paper exam books and answer sheets with blocks to fill in (I’m old like that). As much as technology of test administration has changed, the material has been mostly the same forever. You’ll likely be answering many of the same questions by tapping a box on a computer screen.
But 800 questions is no joke regardless of how they are presented. The fatigue factor can become significant in a marathon like that. You probably already have some old exam questions or review books with exam questions in them. If you don’t, get some now.
These are very valuable for multiple reasons. The first is that you can practice reading and answering speed with them. You can get to a point where you can judge the time you’ve spent on a particular question by your breathing. If you know you have about a minute to answer each question, and your average resp’ rate, then you know you have about 10-15 breaths to answer each one and then MOVE ON. Treat them like women: no individual one of them is worth that much to you by themselves, so don’t spend much time or attention on any one of them… tap and move on! 😛
Practice testing yourself with blocks of 200 questions at a time, for periods of 3-4 hours at a time without taking a break. Do this at least twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, just like the exam. This will give you an idea of the stamina necessary for finishing as strong as you start. Endurance matters as much as speed here, so practice under conditions as similar as possible to the ones you’ll face on the exam. Your brain is adaptable and it will adjust to this. If you find yourself needing a candy bar or water practicing this way, bring a bar and a bottle of water (assuming they still allow this?) to the actual exam. If the lecture halls in your school where the exam is going to be given tend to be cold, set the thermostat in your place the same temp. If you need a sweater at home, get accustomed to that and bring one to the exam.
The other thing practice questions are good for is allowing you to measure where your strengths and weaknesses are, and allotting study time accordingly. Once you know the subject where you are answering a large percentage correctly, allow less time to review that subject, and more time on the subjects where you didn’t score as well. This is a nationally standardized exam where every question counts the same, and they are evenly distributed among the all the material of the first two years. So things that are relatively rare in actual practice get the same number of questions allotted to them as things that are common. Review books are written this way and are a useful tool for figuring out which things you need to spend more time on.
It can feel good to go over the questions of the things that you are nailing at 90% correct answers, but this is not helping. It is actually a waste of study time. If 71% passes, scoring 90% correct on physiology is a waste if it means you are ignoring some other subject like say, anatomy where you are only scoring 40-50%. If you practice test and score 90% on a particular subject, don’t send anymore time on it. Pass is what matters most here. When you find yourself scoring 90% on every subject, you can go spend time on your favorites. Until then, distribute study time proportionately to where you are weakest.
Last, and this is most important: the questions on this test must be written by experts. There is no single person with a wide and deep enough knowledge base to write questions on all those different subjects. They have to hire experts in each field to write the questions for that field. Generally, they find these experts from the lists of authors of the articles and books published on each subject, and there are just not that many people both qualified and willing.
These same people get asked to write questions by people who are publishing review books with practice questions in them. they are probably in academics and get asked to write questions for the semester exams given by their own institutions. Asking the same people over and over every year…to write questions on the same topics over and over…year after year… eventually, the same questions start popping up. Even experts get lazy, or busy. For example, there are just not that many different ways to ask a question on microscopic differentiation of astrocytomas. Review 8-10 of these questions, and you’ll likely see one or two of them on the exam. These questions published in these review books are available to everyone so this is not cheating.
Though it’s obviously impossible to review 10-15,000 practice questions for this exam, if you somehow did, you would probably recognize most of the real exam questions as soon as you saw them. However, it is possible to hit 400-500 hundred per day for a week or two before the exam. 200 in the morning. 200 in the afternoon. Review time in the evening on the subjects with your lowest accuracy on those questions during the day. Shower, sleep, repeat…. Eat the same things and the same times every day that you will be eating on exam day. Sleep and get up at the same times as the day of the exam. Some people even recommend trying to study under the same type and intensity of lighting as you will have on exam day.
I’m not certain that lighting makes a significant difference, but I am pretty sure about the fatigue factor. 200 questions at a time, twice a day (or whatever current conditions for the exam are. You can probably look this up on line). Mimic and get accustomed to the exam conditions, whatever they are, in your practice sessions leading up to it. Turn your phone off for each 3-4 hour practice period.
Last, to blow off steam, heed the advice above about porn hub or working out. Hired girls are not worth the list of potential risks, which is long. As was once explained to me by an older doctor when I was at your stage: every vagina contains a potential bullet (std) and every one of your sperm cells is a lottery ticket with a million dollar annuity paying out over the next 18 years. Every stripper/prostitute is likely on drugs and living with some criminal loser who subsidizes his income burglarizing houses his stripper-prostitute has cased for him. For the time being, treat them all like kryptonite…
We’ll get to mgtow philosophy, women and relationships after the exam…
Look, it's not my fault that tornado dropped a house on your sister. Now get back on your broom and get your ass out of here... and take your monkeys with you
Smitty the Great One 4 years, 10 months ago.
