I PASSED THE COMP!!!!

Two very exciting things happened to me today!

1. I found out that I passed the comp, and with a fairly safe margin! I didn't do outstanding, but I did well enough to pass, and my score also equaled a passing score on the step 1 exam! I really was not BS-ing last week...I truly was nearly certain that I had failed the comp. My score definitely does not correlate to the percentage of questions that I was confident on. Passing the comp with this score makes me feel good for one very major reason...it means that I was able to achieve a score good enough to pass the step 1, with basically no meaningful studying. Of course I've been studying the whole time I've been here, but never studying specifically for the step. That makes me confident that finishing Kaplan will get me around a solid 225-230 and Falcon will hopefully get me the extra 20 points I really want on the exam. Oh - another big bonus for passing the first comp is that heather can now come for 5th semester party! Otherwise, it would have just been too close to the second exam to have a multi-day visitor.

2. I got my reminder from USAir that my flight home is approaching. Specifically, I have 33 days and 18 hours, but who's counting? I can only hope those 33 days fly by as quickly as the past 19 months! I will be literally dancing down the aisle. In fact, they may have to detain me to put my seatbelt on. I don't know how I'm going to be able to sit.


Oh...and just to help some people out, I'd like to share a little pearl of wisdom that I've acquired during my time in Medical School. I probably should have learned and applied it earlier, but such is life...

In most situations, don't go against the much larger group, and don't always be the one person to throw out the unpopular opinion. Sure, there are situations where something needs to be said, or a group might need to be brought back on task. But, the vast majority of the time, you will lose, and you will look like the asshole. Even if you're right...if you're going against everyone else, you're still probably going to lose, and still probably going to look like the asshole! And especially, DO NOT go behind people's backs to try and prove your point! Take it from me...being the asshole can wear on you after a while.

You can still think, or maybe be 100% certain, that you're right (Darwin knows I do), but sometimes it's smart to limit the people you tell those things to.