WILTIMS #365: The end is in sight (with a large telescope)

Yesterday we had our first class meeting of third year. Class meetings become a big deal this year because, outside of our day-to-day clinical work, we have a lot of other things we need to start doing in order to pick a career path and then apply, interview, and match into a residency. It seems like that's all forever away but, just like applying to med school, it is a looooong process to move on to the next step in our (unending) education.

We met from 9am to around 4:30. In the morning we heard more about where we are now. A big upcoming event for my school is the site visit of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) which is the organisation in charge of the accreditation of medical schools in both the US and Canada. So we heard what the school is doing to ensure our full-reaccreditation and what we can do to help.

We were also reminded about third year study strategies and bitterly reminded that we need to start thinking about the next giant board exam on the horizon. Step 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) has two parts. One is called CK (for clinical knowledge) and approximates the step 1 exam we completed at the end of last year, but with a more clinical rather than basic science focus. CS (clinical skills) is a seperate all-day endeavor where we are tested on our physical exam and interviewing skills in one of 5 national simulation centers. Both of these are taken during the summer at the start of our fourth year.

In the afternoon we shifted to the longer term plans for our remaining time in med school. We learned a little about the application process to residencies. We were already given some assignments to help student affairs assemble our school's file (called the "dean's letter"). We were also instructed in how the process of procuring letters of recommendation works in medical school (it's very complicated and a little sketchy). Finally, we learned about the chaotic organisation of fourth year with it's electives, away rotations, interview periods and much, much more. I'm still very unclear about how a lot of that will work, but thankfully we have a while yet to figure it out.

At the very end of our day, the dean's let us in on something that was hot off the presses:

YesterdayIL: We graduate on May 24th, 2017.

Almost immediately the classmate next to me had this running on his iPad:

1 year, 222 days, 7 hours, 52 minutes until graduation day