Another one bites the dust

I passed I passed I passed!!!

I took two versions of the medical boards and I passed them both.  One decently and the other with a score I'm happy with :)  I will not end up in rural Idaho for a family med residency.  I'm not limited in the fields I'm interested in.  No, I won't be doing surgery at a big academic center, but I never wanted that anyway.  I don't care to sit in an ivory tower in medicine.  I'm here to help people.  And now I can move forward, focus on an upcoming shelf exam, and not get a nauseous feeling in my stomach whenever anyone talks about boards.  hahaha except in 1 year I'l be taking step 2.  It really never ends.  Taking both of those plus the physical exam section that accompanies them will cost me a couple thousand dollars it seems, good grief.  I'll think about later though.   For now... HORRAY!  I just wish I'd had the time and energy to do some celebrating.  Nope, worked late 4 nights this week and have to work a call shift tonight, though my resident told me I've worked hard enough all week she won't make me stay all night.  yippee!!! I get to run my 10K in the AM.

I feel like I can finally move forward confidently in my education.  Its one of the few times in my life I have actually been proud of myself.  One others when I opened my college diploma to see the honors status under my degree (I wasn't sure if I'd made the gpa cut until that moment) and when I finished the 2010 Chicago Marathon.  I really struggled some days training for that one what with giving things up over the summer and taking time from an education I'm paying about 50 grand a year for.  I guess I was also pretty proud of myself for getting my life together this past year and improving my medical school grades all year.  Not that they're super stellar but I like to say B's are for Balanced and Blonde (my mom added that one, Kate came up with the first).

To be honest, why I'm so proud of these scores is in the past I have not been the most successful at working far in advance on things and sticking with them (also why I was proud of this past marathon).  My MCAT studying was a complete failure, somehow I still pulled a score that would get me into schools on that but I have no idea how.  I was afraid with boards my studying would become just like that of the mcat.  I know I could have done more, I refused to fully give up my life and probably never put more than 9 hours a day in.  I always cooked nice meals for myself and got in a workout at least 6 days a week.  Yes yes I did isolate myself in MI for 10 days, but even there I took plenty of time and watched a movie to chill in the evenings.   But I pulled through, and that's what I'm most proud of.  I didn't quit halfway there (there were days I wanted to), I made myself keep going and it paid off.  Now that I know how to study for these things I even see an improvement for my Step 2 score.   Proof that hard-work and perseverance pays off, parents are right, funny how that works.