"If you are taking the MCAT this summer, why don't you apply this cycle? You never know God's plan may just be that.."

Hopefully, Mi doesn't mind me using her comment as the title of my new post. But this is certainly a question I've had to really think about over the past couple months.

The short answer is as of now, I'm not prepared to apply this cycle. That said, I'm going to keep my options open for applying to med school this year for obvious reasons, I want to be a Doctor. Complicating things somewhat is the fact that my family is seriously considering moving BACK down South this summer, yeah I know, that same "South" I've said many times I'd NEVER return too, LOL!!! So I'll need to see how things fall into place over the next couple months since this will be a major change for all of us, most especially my 9th grade daughter.

Moving on to MCAT studying, I'm almost done with the EK verbal book, scoring "9's" on the most recent 2 chapters. EK questions are much harder than the actual MCAT verbal passages, so while I'd like that score to be higher, I'm not all that upset with where I am right now. I've also added the first chapter of Physics to my schedule and so far, so good. But I haven't finished Chemistry, so I'm going to have to really get to work to make sure I stay on schedule to be ready by August 16, 2011.

Speaking of schedule, what I've realized is that students prepping for this test should understand that a schedule that works for one person, may not work for someone else. And folks should always be open to changing things up a bit to accommodate your study needs. Again, I find it much more challenging to study for the exam because I haven't had the classes necessary to sit for the exam in over 20 years, but I would have been bored to death retaking many of these classes (plus I realized I really didn't need to after trying an online chem class through MIT).

Another epiphany of sorts I'm having is about becoming a Doc that regularly sees patients and I think a lot of my shift in career thinking has to do with the empty nest I'll have by the time residency rolls around. Areas I like and may have mentioned before include Geriatric Oncology, Preventative medicine/Epidemiology, Neurology, and of course Pathology. And in thinking of moving back down South, I also think about how much I would enjoy being a country Doc, the kind that makes house calls to elderly patients. Or a Doc at a health clinic for the poor. Of course, the potential problem I see in these fields is a HIGH amount of patient noncompliance. And I'm not sure how well I would react to that in the sense of thinking it would burn me out mentally to regularly see people literally and slowly killing themselves because they won't take care of themselves/follow doctors orders. In other words, how much can I "help" a person who won't "help" themselves?

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about what the future holds because it's always pretty damn interesting, whatever happens!!

God's plan and YOUR plan?

If I had to characterize my life so far, I'd say that my plan and God's plan, which I think is what your life ends up being, haven't always been on the same "page". Now don't get me wrong, I don't have ANY regrets about anything in my life but there are certainly a few things I would do differently if I could.

These days I'm much more contemplative than usual thinking about why a new, local cancer research fellowship opportunity hasn't come through yet (although a couple opportunities are available if I'm willing to move), then 2 things occur to me: 1) This is probably the worse time of year to be looking for one considering the fact that many of these positions were likely filled last year and 2) Maybe this isn't what God wants me to do right now.

You know when I really, really think about it, doing another fellowship seems like yet another subconscious attempt to find something to do other than med school. And I think the reason it hasn't worked out the way I want it to is because I don't need ANY "get a PhD instead" distractions to getting into med school, especially not now when my MCAT studying is going so well. At least, that kinda makes sense to me, LOL!! And the reality is that working in ANY other type of environment would NEVER be satisfying for me long term and would serve as a constant reminder that I'm counting down to entering med school in the Fall of 2013.

Which brings me to the fact that I'm being pretty heavily recruited my Big Pharma companies despite the fact that I'm not actively looking. At least I wasn't until a few days ago, and I've been interviewing ever since. Normally, that would be a good thing because I think I need a little more to do (and I almost can't believe I said that!! :)). And no I'm not talking about anytime soon, but certainly by July 1, I'm gonna need more to do! So I'm looking at a few positions and NONE in management. EVER AGAIN!!! And not surprisingly, I'm kinda restricting myself to work in oncology/cancer.

So, I guess I'm not sure if it's a good thing because it's not my number one choice for what I want in my life right now, and that's okay because I'm learning that things like this aren't a coincidence. And a count down to starting med school while making great money is as good a plan as any!!!

Ho' Hum!

Nothing much to report for this week, other than I've started going through a few of the chemistry lectures from this site run by MIT which has free online coureses in hundreds of areas including premed courses:

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

For whatever reason, acid/base chemistry just isn't "sticking" consistently and given how critical this subject is to understanding physiology, I figured I'll get it "down pat" NOW, then only have to review later! I'm also pretty sure I'll have to go through a few of the Physics lectures too!

The goal now is to finish (again, LOL) the TBR Chemistry 1 Book by the end of the week! And I'm gonna have to get moving with my studying, 'cause time is flying by!

NO maternal support, part 2

Well to be quite honest, I've been dealing with this lack of support thing from my Mom since I flunked out of college in '87. And right now, I'm not all that comfortable providing too many details about the situation, suffice it to say that I'll just have to work a little harder to tune out her opinion than I have in the past. And that unfortunately, our relationship will very likely NEVER be the same now that I'm crystal clear about where my academic goals stand with her.

Moving on, my MCAT prep is at all time high, and again to sound like a broken record, fine tuning my verbal strategies has been critical to my success in both Bio and Chem. I've also realized that many of the Bio questions are answered from the info in the passage so if you don't do things like intrepret info from graphs well, you're gonna be toast. In the past, I'd been relying on my knowledge base to get me through and that was some what of a mistake given my gaols of scoring 10+. Sure knowing things like where in the krebs cycle NADH is produced is helpful, but not if you're not also able to answer questions like how changes in the pH of the inner mitochondrial membrane can affect it's function. THESE are the types of questions I hadn't focused as much on in the past but because of my decision recently to focus on verbal FIRST in my MCAT prep, I've been able to address comprehension/application type questions and score well on ALL my practice tests lately.

And here's an embarassing fact. The AMCAS exam 1 is the SAME exam I took in 1991 and scored ~17 on (or was it a "15")? I'd been partying VERY late the night before (stupid) and obviously didn't prepare well before the exam. So far, I'm acing this exam and while I'm aware I can't count this as a legitimate "score" and this is the easiest of all the AMCAS exams, it's telling to me and indicative of my improvement that I've aced everyting except the PS section which I didn't take yet, and my score is 11+ in both the verbal and BS. The last time I took this exam in 2002, my score was an overall "26". In other words, I've only completed the verbal and bio section (which I haven't even completed preparing for yet) and already I've scored much higher than I did on the real thing. D*&N!!!!

At any rate, while the "score" isn't "real" the improvement IS real, and that's my PRIMARY concern these days!!!

Congrats! You're getting 80% of the MCAT questions correct!!!

Of course the only problem is that 80% equates to score of "11" and that's where I am now in both verbal and Bio. I'm at a "13" in my chemistry prep, so all my hard work is definitely paying off. Yep, this prep is going better than it ever has and now looking back, I can so easily see where my previous attempts at studying between 2003-2007 were a complete joke. A joke, which is reflective somewhat in my score which was in the acceptable range for some lower ranked MD and DO schools, but not acceptable enough for me. Plus I'm reminded of the problems folks in the mid-20's MCAT score range occasionally have passing the boards. Yeah I know, passing the boards is about a lot more than MCAT scores, but I'm trying to stack this thing in my favor now so I'll only be fine tuning my skills along the way.

The problem is that most nontrads don't have the luxury of being able to focus ONLY on the MCAT because our lives are much too complicated for that. But given how well I'm doing, I'd have to advise other nontrads to NOT work for at least a couple months so that you'll have one less thing of the 100 other things nontrads have to focus on at a time. Especially if the thing removed from your "plate" is a stressful job!

Man, I'm so very thankful for a supportive family right about now! :)

Edit: Everyone is supportive EXCEPT my mother, which comes as NO suprise. Details later.

I'm so irritated............

with the up and down roller coaster of working on verbal questions and I feel the way my "middle child" in the photo looks. I took a "half" exam and got a "5" earlier in the week, as in a F-I-V-E!!!! And none of the work I did in Ct.3 Bio fared much better with a score of "7".

So when I get in ruts like these, I know that's my clue to slow it down some and relax, so that's what I did....well, kinda. I did relax a little but I did NOT stop doing practice problems, instead I threw out my most recent strategy and set about to get yet another one. Now, I'm back to NOT reading the questions first choosing instead to write a 1 sentence summary of each paragraph's main idea as I go along. Main idea, I hadn't been "getting it" very well and that's the most critical thing to determine when doing these questions, at least I think so. I'm also still not underlining sentences in the passages, only circling "usual" words or words used in a context different from their actual meaning. And like before, tuning out what I know about a particular subject and focusing on what the author is saying is still difficult, but it's getting much better.

Better to the tune of scores of "7", "8", and today a "10". Not only that, I'm only missing one problem in most of the passages I do, however there's still one or two problems where I'll only get 2 or 3 right and that's keeping me from having a killer practice score. URGH!!!

Anyhoo, this is what I'll be working on all weekend in addition to reviewing my college Bio book, covering the material in Ct3 of my EK book.

A bad case of boredom!

My mother, the avid reader in my family, always says that anyone who gets bored is an idiot because one can always pick up a book and read it. Well I guess I'm a BIG idiot because I'm feeling pretty bored these days with ONLY having to study for the MCAT and take 2 classes (well, 1.5 classes since I only look over the Bioinformatics stuff every now and then). I guess I'm so used to burning the candle on 3 ends pun intended, that I almost don't know how to act when I have a "normal" schedule. And it hasn't helped that I had a one and a half week long flare up of my GI condition combined with PMS. Yeah, I've been pretty much a mess (and a witch) for the past week or so, LOL!!!

Jobwise or should I say fellowshi pwise, things are looking very good with the exception of that fact that the soonest I could start an off campus NCI sponsored fellowship in my new grad program is August 2011. So I'm looking at returning to the NCI (on campus) as a fellow since it pays a LOT more and offers more opportunities to do the kind of research I really want to do. At this point, I've narrowed that specificity of the kind of research I want to do to breast cancer, since I've learned the hard way that not keeping an open mind project wise is a great idea. I figure I'll have my time as a post doc to really focus on cancer health disparities research should it come to that.

MCAT news isn't as promising as I'd like it to be, I ended up with a "6" and "7" in the next chapters of the EK 101 problems book, so I started from scratch, retooling my strategy to approaching these problems and so far the results are the best yet, I scored a "13" on the AMCAS MCAT exam 1. Now this exam is known for being the easiest of all the ones available to take, but it's still an ego boost to me. When I consider the fact that I kept records of how I scored when I took this same exam 3 or 4 years ago, the improvement is pretty significant, an increase by 5 points.

So how did I change my verbal strategies? I went back to the EK verbal prep book which focuses on the question stems pretty significantly and being able to answer the questions without reading the passages. I also do NOT highlight ANYTHING in the passage as I'm reading because I realized that I rarely go back to what I highlighted in the passages looking for answers to the questions. I've also started reading the questions before the passage again, this time with an eye for figuring out what the question stem is asking for. Of course, it's still hard for me to tune out whatever I may know about the subject and focus on the question, but I'm pretty determined to get this worked put by August. A "13" is a pretty good start, I'm just hoping I can keep it up!

Who ya' gonna call?

Okay I couldn't think of a title, so I figured a line from the 1980's song Ghostbusters was as good as any!

Research wise, there's not much I can report on these days for "political" reasons, but I did have great meetings with some of the faculty today in my future department. I also had to really think about whether or not I'm ready to leave the lab type work behind and the answer so far is a resounding "HELL YEAH"!!!!!! Tomorrow I go back on campus to attend a lecture on Translational Informatics and network, so that'll be fun!!

MCAT wise, I'm FINALLY up to scoring "9's" in the verbal section and I'm so happy about it! I'm almost half-way through the EK verbal problems book and I'm getting concerned that I may run out of problems to do. NOT!!! I'm not doing anything new in General Chemistry other than what I mentioned before and I'm finishing up the second chapter in the EK Biology book as well. So overall, things are still moving well with my MCAT prep!

Change to MCAT study schedule take 13, LOL!!!!

These days, I feel like my life is one big epiphany after another!!!

It occurred to me earlier this past week that having a study schedule like the one I first posted is a pretty dumb idea because for me, I have definitive strengths that don't require the same effort study wise as my weak areas and definitive weaknesses that require treating my study like I'm taking the class for credit. Case in point, my biology review has only required only giving a once over at the review materials in the EK biology book then diving right into the problems in the 1001 Biology Question book. OTOH, my Chemistry review has required that I regularly go through related chapters in the Chemistry book I used as an undergrad Chemistry major. And I suspect Physics will be the same as Chemistry, with my Organic review a little of which I've already completed, being a lot like my Biology review.

The really great news in all this is that I'm very pleased with my improvement in all the study areas, again owing this change in my performance to my approach to the questions/answers. For verbal, changing a test taking strategy I'd had for most of my life has been quite a chore (that is, NOT reading the answer choices before reading the passage), and while progress has been slow, it's also been quite steady in this area, from 7to 8. OTOH, I approach my science passages in the exact opposite way that is, I actually answer some of the questions BEFORE I read the passages, finding again that the right answer can often be gained by the info presented in the question itself (I hope that makes sense). I've also noticed that the strategy of reading science questions like verbal is paying off BIG time too, with my scores in Bio ranging from 11-13 regularly with very little review!

In the end, I think what nontraditional students preparing for the MCAT have to understand is that a rigid study schedule like the ones you see suggested by those test taking companies aren't very helpful to someone who hasn't seen this material in the classroom in 10+ years. In other words, you can NOT just say I'm going to cover Orgo chapter 7 in one week because you may finish your review in more or less time, and will likely need more time depending on how you did when you took the class and how long it's been since you've seen the material. So now, I'm just taking it as it comes, still starting off with the 1001 practice questions because that tells me where my strengths and weaknesses area, then tailoring my review for that week based on how I did on those questions.