Thoughts:
I gave myself a 100% chance of failure.
Does anyone look at scenarios and calculate the probability
that a certain result will occur? Not sure what you do, but I definitely do
that. And my outlook through the second half of the exam was yp… I am
definitely failing this test.
The Exam
Today, I took my second and final part of the two day exam,
the beast known as Step 3. I described the first day in another post so I won’t
go into that here. Let’s start with the length of the exam. It was longggggg
(notice the extra g’s.) It was 9 hours long! I used almost every minute of it.
The night before I tossed and turned because I was sick. I
couldn’t stay asleep. The first thing on my mind was that I would have a
problem with the stamina for the exam. But, surprisingly, that was not the
case.
Rather, walking into the exam center, first thing I did was
use the bathroom with ease. Lol. One must be free before battle. I then took a
huge swig. Actually… multiple swigs of my monster energy drink. Then I took on
my first block.
I ended up finishing almost two monsters for the entire
exam. I pulled through stamina wise. I did not lose energy. I did not get
tired. That was a good thing.
Now the content of the second day. The second day is divided
into mcq and ccs. There are 6 blocks of mcq. For me each block was 30 q long
and 45 min in length. Whilst doing the mcq I was holding on to the hope that I
just might pass. I saw a glimmer of light. However, when I hit ccs blocks that light got dimmer.
After
each ccs block, I had a mini mental fight with my negative voices. You missed
this. You missed that. By the end of the exam, the negative voices had me
thoroughly convinced that failure was a 100% probability.
Why did I think I failed? In my first ccs case, while I treated the patient appropriately I did not do some of the routine counseling, like counseling on
smoking cessation etc. Also, one of my patients actually seemed to get worse
with the treatment that I instituted, and then when I advanced the clock and
the case ended. In retrospect, after running through the cases in my mind, I
believe that I treated the patient appropriately. But, and that’s a big but, I
can’t be sure because the cases just seemed to end abruptly.
Now, hours after the exam, after speaking to friends, running
ccs cases and mcq’s through my mind, and reading about others experiences
online a sliver of hope rose again that I just might pass. 3 weeks of torture.
Pass or fail. It is something that I have to deal with.
Update:
My friend told whenever I feel like I failed an exam I
usually do well. He was right! I passed!!!!
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