It is Done

"Real peace will arise spontaneously
When your mind becomes free
Of attachments,
When you know that the objects of the world
Can never give you what you really want."

-Theragatha

...that is of course unless you have just completed a first anatomy lab exam. At this point, 1 hour after completion, I feel VERY attached to knowing what I scored on this, the first "real" exam of my medical school career. The nervous energy outside the lab, that you could cut with a dull knife, is behind us.

The set up was about 40 stations with multiple questions per station with 90 seconds per station. Each station included a specimen of some kind...a bone, a body part with a pin in it, an x-ray, a plastination. All stations has multiple questions. All fill in the blanks (no multiple choice).

The challenge to this type of exam is the time, and the specificity. The challenge of time is worse on those that need a few more minutes to think thing thru. On this exam, if you can't generate the answers in 90 seconds, you are forced to leave that to think about the next station. The specificity is most frustrating. You can study everything on a given section on your cadaver (and know it well), and because of your cadaver, not have a good representation of a certain detail of that section. Waldo's Rule (the name of my cadaver at UAB) sez, THAT (which your cadaver does not have) will be the thing that has a pin in it for the test. That was the case today.Ugh!

Another challenge to the scoring is the weight. If you missed the identification of the specimen, then you likely missed the follow up questions such as "what is it's insertion?, what is the blood supply? What part of the brachial plexus does that come from?...and so on. Thus each station is 3-4 points.

So I likely passed (based on my gut feeling and comparing answers with folks afterward), and will likely understand what I missed when I find out what I missed, but I'm dismayed at my errors. Scores should be ready tomorrow after the instructor contemplates the grade range. So while I search for intellectual nirvana and non-attachment, it is important to find out if I am on the right track about studying. And while "A's" are not my goal, I am amazingly "attached' to this first test score. But it is time to put it behind, clean up my apartment, and plot the study schedule for the next 3 exams coming early next week. I'll become more unattached after exams I think. For now, Nirvana will just have to wait.

 

Addendum: I passed the lab exam, but I could have done better. Exactly what I thought happened...missed the tag, and then all 3 or 4 of the follow up questions for that tag. That's is 3-4 points each right off the bat.  Made some really dumb mistakes. I will incorporate what I learned for the next exams. It's going to be a long summer, not to be judged by one exam. Onward...toward Nirvana!