It’s almost time for us to take our exams… On May 25th, we have our last semester test for the pre-clinical years and on the 27th we have our OSCEs! I’m quite excited that these will be our last exams for the preclinical years but also at the same time, I’m pretty overwhelmed. There is just a lot of content to learn and revise in such a short amount of time 🙁
What we’re going to be tested on…
For the semester exam, it’ll be on the content we’ve learned for this semester. It’s about the gastrointestinal system and although students from previous years have said that this sem’s content is easier than the previous sems’, I don’t think so. There are a lot of processes to learn like the liver processes and there are just a lot of transporters and enzymes to memorize. I’ve been looking over my notes for the semester and to say I’m stressed would be an understatement.
On top of this, we have the OSCEs! If the OSCEs were to only test us on this semester’s knowledge, it wouldn’t be that bad. But, this time we will be tested on examination skills and practicals we’ve done in both Years 1 and 2. To be honest, this is not so bad but we also have an anatomy station in the OSCEs that will test us on all the anatomy we have learned in Years 1 and 2. I have a month left to revise for all of these and I am not sure if I’ll have enough time.
Being Strategic...
As you can see, there’s just a lot of content we need to cover so I’m trying to be strategic about which topics to prioritize. For now, studying for the semester exam is my priority because it is a standalone exam and I need to pass it in order to progress into year 3.
For the OSCES, I’m going to focus on nailing the examination skills and the practicals first before I move on to revising anatomy. There’ll be 5 stations for examinations skills/practicals in the OSCES but only 1 station for anatomy. I’ll still be fine I do well for the 5 examination skills/practical stations even if I don’t do so well on the anatomy station. Obviously, I’ll also try my best to revise for anatomy but I don’t really know how far I’ll get since we have limited time now. I was actually planning on starting revision 2 weeks ago but we had this 5000-word literature review to write and I spent way too much time on it. So now I have to work with the amount of time I’m left with. (If you’re interested in what we had to do for the 5000-word literature review, check out this blog here!)
I’m just trying to keep calm, stay focused, and trying to tell myself that I can do it. After all, I’m not far from going into clinical years and now all that stands between me and the clinical years are the exams!
During this exam period, we won’t be very active on this page or our IG but feel free to check out our other blogs if you would like to hear about applying to medical school or our lives as medical students!