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It’s times like these that I wish I had kept a diary when I was younger. So that I could look back and remind myself why exactly it was that I wanted to be a doctor again. It’s funny how I’ve been so passionate about my motivations, and then the night before the day that I need it, I realize that I’ve taken it for granted for so long that I forgot what it was in the first place.

This is MCAT take II. Mission: complete the test. Yeah, I’ve dropped my bar pretty low, I mean, who can expect to get a high score when I couldn’t even finish the test the first try? It’s time for me to move on with my life, because I’ve let this one test occupy me for too long. I don’t need to go to a good med school, I just need to go to one.

After the whole exploding-egg-walking-out-on-MCAT fiasco, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

At first I felt ashamed of myself for not being able to finish the MCAT on the day that I registered for. My mom kept asking me to move the test date back so that I would have more time to prepare, but I kept telling her that I would be ready. Everybody called and emailed me beforehand wishing me good luck, and congratulated me afterwards- and I had to embarassedly explain that I never finished the test.

Now I realize that stepping out was not only the right decision but the brave one. All my life I have been trained to push myself harder no matter how extenuating the circumstances. Once in elementary school, I contracted severe poison ivy which swelled my entire face, but I still wanted to go to school. If I had indeed forced myself to finish the entire exam with a fever, my score would not have reflected my actual capabilities. Sometimes I just have to know when to step down.

I’ve registered for an exam on Friday, Aug 21 – in about a week. This time, it is a 2pm exam, so hopefully sleeping should not be a problem for me. I will also have a little bit more time to prepare, and should not feel as stressed. Hopefully the second time around should go smoothly, as long as I take care of myself and stay away from microwaved eggs.

5/5/3 Took a week break from MCAT studying, and about to go eat Primanti Brothers burgers for half off — yumm!

8:00 am Wednesday. 15 nervous yet eager aspiring doctors walk into the Prometric testing center on Old Lee Highway.

9:00 am. Already one of them walks out. She has had a nervous breakdown and canceled her test with only the first section completed.  After calling her mom to pick her up, she lies on the front lawn, crying and hating herself for being too weak.

What circumstances led the poor unfortunate girl to this state?

4:00 pm Monday. Happy with the 40 on her practice test, she feels ready-to-go and confident for the actual test. In a cheerful mood, she banters into the kitchen to find some study fuel and finds a warm hard-boiled egg in the microwave. She innocently raises the egg towards her mouth and bites down.

!!

The egg explodes in her face, burning her upper lip and right cheek. Her lip immediately swells until it looks like she had just gotten a collagen injection. Faced with this painful nuisance, she shrugs and continues to study. It’s just physical pain – no reason to let it affect the MCAT.

10:00 pm Tuesday. Like a good student, she prepares to go to bed, but a nagging headache is keeping her up. She tries listening to the Les Miserables soundtrack, but doesn’t fall asleep until past 2 am.

6:30 am Wednesday. She notices a new small blister on her scabbing lip; probably just another blister from the burn.

7:30 am. She binges on coffee and red bull to supplement her four hours of sleep.

8:00 am. The test starts. She reads the first passage. Didn’t understand that – move on to the questions. Reread the first passage, still don’t get it. Move on to the second passage. Repeat. and repeat again. She feels her body getting warmer and warmer, her head lighter and lighter. Time’s up, you have a ten minute break.

9:00 am. Excuse me, but how do I cancel my test score now?

9:30 am, in her mind. Crystal, you failed. All you had to do was get enough sleep last night. You prepared so hard for this. You let yourself and everyone down. You wasted 225$ and all your time.

10:00 am. The late-blooming blister from this morning has spread to three times its original size across her upper lip. We should probably go see a doctor.

2:00 pm, doctor’s office. You have a fever and your burn has incited a secondary viral infection.

And that, my friends, is what we call a series of unfortunate events.

Today, I walked out on my MCAT because two days ago, an exploding egg burned my lip, which initiated an infection, which caused a fever.  FML.

Apparently exploding eggs are quite common.

Crystal,

You’ve come this far. You’ve prepared as much as you can for this exam. And you are prepared, you know it. Just take a look at your practice test scores and you’ll know that the real one will be a piece of cake. The only thing you can do now is to get in the right mood.

This exam will not be difficult. You should not be scared of this exam. In fact, it’s the exam that should be scared of you. It’s just a challenge, like a video game obstacle course, and you there to knock down all the questions. Think of the baffled look on the question writers’ faces when you’ve completed their game.

No matter what, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, your brothers, your friends, they will all be proud of you and will always be there to support you. Look at your hand – see that ring grandma gave you before she died? She is watching you from heaven and will always guide you.

I’m proud of you too. Because you know what? You are going to be a great doctor. If this exam can help get you there, then great. But it doesn’t matter if it can’t, because you are going to follow your dreams no matter what, and you are going to do the best that you can do. In the end, tomorrow is not everything, and good or bad, its mere completion is just one step closer to your future.

Love,

Self

Preparing for a test requires much more than just studying. A lot of overachievers, myself included, tend to excuse ourselves from self-care when cortisol levels are high and time is in short supply. It’s like I can somehow only manage to prioritize one thing at a time in my mind, and right now the test comes first; all other activities detract from time that could be better spent studying. However, healthy habits such as sleep and diet are important, and especially more so during times of high stress.

In six days, I have to take the (so far) most important exam in my life at 8:00 in the morning. With a total length of over five hours, oft remarked to test endurance more than ability, the MCAT,  needless to say, does not spare lightly those who enter even remotely tired. After two weeks of religious studying, I’ve gotten to the point where I miss questions not due to unfamiliarity with the material, but due to sloppiness. Fixing my sleep schedule will probably gain me more points than any amount of studying can now. Considering people tend to be more alert a few hours after waking, I must wake up at 6am to maximize my 8am focus. Easy, right?

I wish.

I am a recurrent insomniac, especially during times of high stress. I feel most comfortable during the hours between 1 and 3 am. My regular bedtime is 4 am, and I wake up after lunch. Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep until 6am, and woke up at 4pm. I’ve slowly whittled down my bedtime and pushed up my alarm; last night I slept from 2 to 8 am, forcing myself to wake up despite feeling completely useless all day. However, I still have a long way to go until I train my body to function in the morning.

I also barely eat. Well, to begin with, I never really had good eating habits. I definitely did not consume a balanced, nutritious diet. I can be health-food conscious, in fact, was so for a few months when I tried vegetarianism, but to do so requires, well, a level of consciousness that does not come naturally. Every morning I drive to Starbucks and order a cup of coffee, which keeps me going until I almost pass out around dinner time, which is when I’ve realized that all I’ve had all day is a coffee.  I also snack. A lot. Combine all my eating faults, and the result is that I end up relying on late night snacking as a means of sustenance.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. We have all seen those students who are so stressed that they forgo meals to make time for school. I used to skip lunch all the time in high school so that I could finish the homework due in my afternoon classes, and simply buy a bag of chips from the vending machine. But now, I end up studying less than if I had been eating because I just don’t have the energy to continue, almost passing out by the end of the day. I guess I’m not so young anymore, huh.

I also used to exercise regularly. Every day while studying in Oxford I would start off by running to give me energy for the rest of the day. Now I’ve replaced my morning jog with expresso. I don’t have time to run – I rationalize. Instead, I have time to waste four hours lying in bed every night wishing that I could fall asleep. Exercise would have helped me gain energy, eat right, sleep better, and just improve mood in general, all not only conducive but downright necessary for effective studying.

So if I could go back in time and talk to myself before any moment of high stress, I would advice myself to:

• Establish a regular and sufficient sleep schedule. Wake up before lunch one day and you’ll realize that the amount of time in your day to study has vastly expanded. If you are getting ready for a specific test, practice waking up every day in time to get your body used to functioning at peak efficiency during test hours. Start early, as in, not one week before your test like I did.
• Eat right! Get enough nutrients, you don’t want to look like a walking ghost. Take vitamins if you have to. Remember to eat regularly.
• Exercise, at least a little bit in the morning every day to pump yourself up.
• Surround yourself by people who care about you. It makes things much easier, because they will remind you when you forget to take care of yourself. I’ve told my friends about my sleep problem and they will call me in the morning to make sure I’m up. My mom will force me to eat, even when I protest that I’m not hungry.
• Read the news. It’s easy to become self-absorbed when we have a big thing coming up. I mean, how can anyone think about anything else other than your test? Take a reality pill, and realize that there are more important things in the world than you and your test. Keeping up with what’s going on with the rest of the world will help to keep things in perspective and at least make you feel a bit less anti-social as you hole yourself up in your room/library cell.

The next few seem.. well… obvious, but I’ve forgone them before in extreme stress situations, so I might as well mention them.

• Shower. You’ll feel better, trust me. At least do it for consideration of your family/dorm mates.
• Get dressed, nicely if possible. No, don’t bring out that ball gown, but don’t spend all day in your pajamas. I used to think that I could shave off precious time if I never had to change clothes. However, I find that I have more confidence when I feel like I look better. In fact, I usually go to all my exams at least a little more neat looking than my usual self. Why not study this way too?
• Get out of the room! Are you really going to get that much done in the time it takes you to drive/bike/walk to the library/coffee shop?
• Be nice to others. Sometimes people will ask me for a favor and I will immediately reply, sorry I don’t have time, I’m studying. Taking a little bit out of your day to help someone else can actually do you a lot of good. You deserve the occasional break, and the fuzzy feeling you get can get you to focus better.

I generally hate when people say, “Take care”, especially in emails, because it is tossed around as a polite way-out by those who don’t actually care. But I don’t mind telling myself and others who need to hear it every once in a while.

Take care,

Crystal

Dub. Dub. 

I’ve heard theories about mortality that limit the number of beats our hearts can handle in a lifetime.

Before I committed to taking this exam, my mother would nag me daily about wasting my day lounging in front of the TV, precious time that could be better spent studying. These days, the nagging is gone; in fact, she has even been acting unusually nice to me lately. Yet, my life swapped one nagger for another, and this one a hundred times more pernicious:

My self.

My body tells me to take it slow. My head grows dizzy after studying for hours straight on little sleep. Meanwhile, every beat of my heart throws on a new bout of guilt. While driving my brother to his doctor appointment I am calculating how many hours I’ve studied today and how many more hours are left in the day. My stomach suppresses my appetite such that I realize it’s 9PM and I’ve survived the whole day on coffee. 

But it’s affecting my performance. The more practice I do, the more questions I miss. The more questions I miss, the more frustrated I become, and the more questions I miss. 

So what if the test is in a week? I am officially declaring a break for the day. No more thinking about the MCAT. (OK, declaring a break as soon as I finish the practice book tomorrow morning, but then I promise I will really take a break).

I try really hard to not be neurotic, but everything tends towards the state of lowest energy.

I pretend to not care about my grades. I pretend that I know there are more important things in life than the three digits of my GPA. But that’s only because I know I will be fine. It’s like the rich man claiming to not care about money.

I’m freaking out about taking the MCATs. I have to test in less than a month, and I really don’t know anything about chemistry. I also can’t motivate myself to study – after only studying for a few hours a day I stop and make excuses for myself about how I can’t possibly absorb anything more. And then I start to think about how if I don’t do well on this test, I will not get into a good school – scratch that – I will not getting into my top choice school. How if I don’t get a high score on the science section, the admissions panel will take one look at my Bachelor of Arts degree and recommend that I try across the street at their law school.

When was the last time I took a standardized test anyway – four years ago with the SAT? And remember how silly you thought it all was after the fact? Stop worrying…

And it is 4:35 am and I can’t sleep, which means that my stress-induced insomnia has returned yet again.