81 Days: Changes Already?!

So I was taking a break today, and looking at the website trying to find those NBME self-assessment tests and figure out when I want to take my first one, and I find THIS.

Step 1 - Change in number of items/Delay in score reporting

Basically it says that they are reducing the number of items on the test to 322 and that I likely won't get my score until July 14th. That's not too much more of a wait than normal, and while I am sure that every second will be torture, but I am not going to complain about that yet.. I'll reserve the complaining about that for the weeks between when I have no studying to do and nothing on my schedule except for waiting for those scores to arrive.

The harder thing is deciding if I want to complain about the smaller number of questions. And on that point I am torn. On one hand, the test is going to be a marathon, and getting in with slightly fewer questions might reduce the fatigue factor a little bit. On the other hand, I am generally of the philosophy that the more questions on a big test, the better off you are. There is certainly going to be a bunch of things on this test that I just don't know. The material base is simply too broad to be completely prepared. That being the case, I think that having each one of those questions with a lower weight is a good thing, is an important thing. Plus, the theory that I have heard on the internets is that one of the reasons they are cutting the number of questions is so that they can have more of the not friendly multimedia questions. Likely not good for me. Obviously nothing I can do about it, but I might complain. I haven't totally decided yet.

I spent most of today studying for tomorrow's exam in our clinical foundations class. Not terribly productive. I don't mean to say that having solid clinical foundations is not important, because of course it is. But this class is poorly structured and not terribly useful and I spent a whole day that could have been used for more productive things, like studying for the terrifying cumulative pharmacology exam that I have on Monday. But what are you going to do?

Back to that.

Introductory Note:82 Days

Dear USMLE Step I: We'll be spending some quality time together on June 15th. It's going to be a big day for me, so I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself before we meet in person. I'm a 27 year old brunette 2nd year medical student who enjoys reading and playing ultimate frisbee. I'm also a pretty smart gal and a rock star of a standardized test taker. I'll be spending the next 83 days single-mindedly training to utterly destroy you. It's nice to make your acquaintance.
Love,
Me