That God-awful MCAT

Note: This is the first in a series of posts rehashing the beginning of my summer.

My MCAT was finally scheduled for May 19th at 8 AM and since it was about an hour away from my house, I stayed at a friend's place closer to the test site.

I'm a night owl and rarely fall asleep before 2 AM so although I'd been trying to get myself to wake up early in the mornings leading up to the MCAT, I just couldn't do it and thus got only about 3 hours of sleep before the test. I'm used to doing important things on little sleep so I wasn't too worried about it, but I think it may have influenced how my day was going to go.

Long story short, I thought I bombed it. As I walked out of the exam room I began praying for a 30, which is a far cry from the 33-36 I was expecting based on my practice scores. I had mistimed the Physical Sciences section so I was rushed towards the end and Biological Sciences just kicked my butt and bruised my ego.

Here's an excerpt about the BS section from an unpublished post I wrote the next day titled "Picking up the pieces":

Biological Sciences - Oh boy. This section reduced me to a pile of tears. Well, not during the exam, but immediately after. There were a couple of ridiculously hard sections that I just couldn't comprehend. I read them over and over again and I wasn't getting anything out of them. I don't think more time would've helped either. The worst part was that all the questions relied entirely on info from the passage and so I couldn't even reason my way through it with my background knowledge. More than a few discretes had me scratching my head and essentially guessing randomly, and that hasn't happened on any of my practice tests. It's very disconcerting.

A note about my feelings, also from that unpublished post:

I walked out of that exam honestly in tears. I am not much of a crier so this had clearly been a kick to the balls. I felt like all the hard work I had put into studying for this had been for naught and I had just killed any chance I have of getting into medical school this cycle. But at the same time, I don't think any more studying would've helped much. I may've gotten a couple more discretes correct in the Biological Sciences (BS) but I still would've been killed by two of those passages.

And my thoughts about voiding the results, again from that post:

If I hadn't been leaving the country on Tuesday [three days after the MCAT], I would've totally voided the exam and tried again in a month. Although, I don't think I had another month of studying left in me. I was pretty done by the end of it, so maybe that wouldn't have made a difference either.

On the bright side of things, two out of the four people taking the exam had massive computer failures in that their screens froze for over an hour. Maybe it's because I had people praying for me on two continents, but luckily that didn't happen to me. I don't know how I would've handled that, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been pretty.

Anywhos, I gave myself one day to mope and feel sorry about the whole situation, and mope I did. I held back tears at the baby shower I went to after the test and couldn't speak about the exam without welling up. It was BAD.

I had organized a paintballing excursion for the next day, which was great planning since it totally got my mind off everything. And then I started packing for my Asian adventure that I was leaving for three days after my MCAT. Again, good way to take my mind off things.

Paintball: The perfect post-MCAT stress relief.

The issues, emotions, and events that occurred during my international medical relief mission with the U.S. Navy were enough to keep me even more distracted while waiting for my score to come in (that's a post for another day). So all in all I really only suffered from this experience for about 24 hours.

But I am so glad I never have to go through that again because it's a complete mind-*&^#. Well, that is, until Step 1 rolls around in 3 years.

And now onto the score I received on the day I set foot in the United States again, which I checked at the tail end of a 48 hour journey home that included lost passport scares (plural), a death on an airplane, and a subsequent rescheduled flight. All in all, not ideal circumstances to deal with the feelings of getting my MCAT score back. But again, that's a post for another day.

Without further ado, ta da!

Click to enlarge.

Apparently I do really well when I'm not firing on all cylinders.

P.S. In my original unpublished (for a reason) mopy post, I did a breakdown of each section of the MCAT. Here is what I had to say about the writing part. Pop culture for the win!

Writing Section (?) - I don't even know what this section is officially called, so that shows you how much I prepared for it before the real thing. It was pretty straight-forward and kind of fun, actually. I channeled a bit of Jon Stewart in that I used a Nazi example for one of my responses. I was laughing on the inside the whole time.