Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Hitting The Wall (that was previously closing in)

My board exam is one day away and I find myself posting. Why you might ask? Because I am sick of looking at this shit, plain and simple. I fiddled my entire summer away going to school, followed by evenings of board review. In a cruel twist by Mother Nature, the weather this summer has been unbelievable. I have done very little in terms of ‘fun.’ Will it even be worth it? Seeing as my plans to specialize are currently non-existent, I would say no.

So will I pass? I think so. I feel like failing this test is pretty difficult to do if you kept up in school and studied for a bit. You can get something like 60% right and still pass. However, doing WELL on this test has become ridiculously difficult since the format change. According to the 1998 scoring converter, I am consistently averaging a 91 scaled score on the old exams. This is what one would call, bad ass. However, judging through various unofficial sources and random test taker experiences, a similar raw score by today’s standards will come out in the low 80s or so. So what’s the point? I honestly couldn’t have studied much more this summer, so this is the best I can do given these circumstances. Could others have done better? Of course. I think that if I knew 100% I wanted to specialize I would be motivated a hell of a lot more than I currently am. At most, I could see myself in a GPR which doesn’t really require stellar scores. It is hard to force more hours of studying when I see nothing to gain other than a number that will mean nothing down the road (as long as it’s at least 75).

So I’m not worried about failing, but I also feel like I could have just studied A LOT less, enjoyed my summer, and squeaked by just as easily. I’m stuck in that foggy grey area between amazing and just above average. I have a feeling I’ll end up in the above-average category when all is said and done. And at this point, I don’t care at all. I just want to be done, and then I want to forget that dental school exists for 10 entire days. Who knows though, maybe I am being overconfident in my passing ability.

These last few days have just been a waste. I can’t motivate myself to do ANYTHING. I have studied a bit..but it has all been fairly unproductive and my brain refuses to allow any more information in. My body and mind are simply stalled. I can’t progress with my post-test plans until the test is over, I can’t start cleaning my apartment because I don’t want to misplace all the papers and study books I have lying around. I also can’t study because I just don’t want to. I can clearly still bitch and moan about it though.

This is not the first time I have felt like this. I completely blew off the last 2 or 3 days prior to taking the DAT and thought I was screwing myself in the process yet here I am, 2.5 years later doing the same thing. I did fine on the DAT though, so hopefully this will happen again.

I swear I will be doing cartwheels all the way home Thursday evening. Then I can focus on the important things in life, like how big of an HD tv I should buy as a post-boards/birthday treat.

Well, I better get back to buying vintage Nintendo games on ebay because that is what I do when I have giant exams coming up.

I look forward to the day when someone can ask me about neurofibromatosis and I'll have no clue what they are talking about.

Screw this test.