In my previous job, I did stuff. I put in the hours at the office and most of the time I had something to show for my time at the end of the day, week, or project. This is not the case with school and it's starting to get to me.
We're on a true pass/fail system in that my grade is registered as a Pass no matter how high above 70% I score. There are no honors, no percentage, nothing to indicate how I did in the course. All that matters is that I get above the 70% that is required to pass the class.
This system is awesome because it creates a low-stress environment and a very collaborative atmosphere within our class. People help each other out all the time and I know that if everything went to shit, I would still pass medical school.
On the other hand, I find it very hard to find the motivation to do as well on exams as I would like, because, well, who cares. It's all the same in the end. A Pass is a Pass.
But it's not. I am capable of being in the top 25% of my class.* I was up there in anatomy and I should continue to be there throughout the rest of the year. I need to learn this stuff well now so I don't have to relearn it next year when it really matters. I just cannot find the motivation to study that much, though, when all I get at the end is a percentage on a screen.
I have no problem putting in the work throughout the week to be prepared for lecture. I've turned school into an extended 9 to 5 where I go to class in the morning and prepare for the next day's lecture in the afternoons, coming home around dinner-time. I have a goal of finishing a chapter or a subject and at the end of the day, it's done.
When it comes to learning stuff for the exam, though, I completely shut down. There is no end to what I can know or the depths of my understanding. I can always do more and the goals of being done are not as clearly defined. Instead of chipping away at the work, I stop studying altogether. I think I've watched a whole season of "Survivor"** in the past three days instead of memorizing random genetic diseases.
Maybe it'd be easier if I was coming straight from undergrad or my break from school wasn't over 5 years long. Maybe I would have accepted my fate of living with my nose in a book a bit better. I really don't think that's the case and instead the problem is that my personality does not naturally fit with this way of life. I like seeing the product of my labors and I'm not good with delayed gratification, neither of which are conducive to pre-clinical studying.
Alas, my personality won't change and neither will the next year and a half of school. In fact, it's only going to get harder. So instead of accepting my lackluster grades (I was below the median in all four subjects tested last block), I'm taking a more proactive approach and learning how to do better with each exam. Mostly, I'm strengthening my motivation muscles and gaining a bit more pre-exam work ethic with each test.
Thus far, this has been successful. My downfall with the first block exam was not covering some subjects until a couple of days before the exam. That stressed me out incredibly and I just gave up on Histology. This block, I made sure to cover each lecture/subject during the week and my levels of stress were significantly lowered these last few days before the exam. The material is still really shaky, though, because I've only seen it once or twice, again adding to that dreadful feeling of being overwhelmed. To help with that, next block I plan on reviewing the material on the weekend so I don't go weeks between seeing it the first and second time.
Moral of the story is that I have to re-learn how to study so that I don't get so overwhelmed right before the test that I completely shut down. It seems pretty basic but it's been a pretty big struggle for me. Luckily, I'm getting better and I can only go up from here.
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*While we are true pass/fail, we're kinda sorta ranked. Our class is divided into quartiles based on scores and that distinction goes into our dean's letter for residency application in some sort of coded way ("Student was exceptional/satisfactory/etc.") depending on where we fall. However, this ranking is heavily skewed towards clinical grades so an exam here or there in the first or second year doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. This also contributes to my lack of motivation right now.
**Reality TV is my guilty pleasure. I recently discovered that I actually like "Survivor" and I have plenty of seasons to catch up on. Bad idea.
