Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Time

If there's something everyone can relate to, it's not having enough time. In medical school, I've found that there's never enough time for sleep; never enough time for exercise; never enough time for grocery shopping; never enough time for errands in general; never enough time for friends; never enough time for family; never enough time to do all the required reading; never enough time for study and review. Yet, somehow, I manage to keep up this blog. . .

Today, I barely had enough time to finish the Customized NBME Exam. We were told that the clock in the upper right hand corner of our screen would not be the official amount of time we had. They, the professors, were giving us 30 additional minutes.

Uh huh. Right.

I was so nervous about this exam, I wasn't taking any chances. I would finish the exam before the clock read 0:00:00. I was slow at first. It took me a good half hour to adjust to looking at the monitor instead of having a paper exam that I could take notes on or circle/underline "buzz words." But I picked up some time on some easy questions and finished the exam with 0:02:17 to spare.

Unfortunately, many of my classmates didn't finish before the "unofficial time" ran out. When the clock read 0:00:00, it locked them out of the exam and they could not finish. Minor technical difficulty. The professors and IT people were working over the phone with the NBME people, but they couldn't come up with a solution.

So, what happens to those who couldn't finish? It's unclear. Of course, the rumor mill is working overtime. I've heard everything from "I'm sure they'll get to finish sometime later this week" to "They'll just have to eat those points" to "They'll have to take the whole exam over again" to "Everyone is going to have to take a NEW exam."

Thanks to my mad studying, I think I did OK -- I don't want to take another exam. But bottom line: I don't have time for this . . . nonsense.

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