This is not a good thing. I get my motivation for writing from things that I see or passionate feelings that I have about a certain topic. I do however understand that this site is FOR OTHERS, and it casually focuses around my existence here at school. So with that in mind I give you this…..
I failed. Yep, I sat here before you not wanting to write this but I knew deep down that this is what school is all about. Don’t get it all wrong, school is not about failing. However, there will be days when your thoughts don’t line up as coherently as they did when you were studying. When muscle innervation and hypothetical patient complaints just don’t jog your memory of the correct diagnosis. When you get the spinal nerves for the the patellar tendon and calcaneal tendon switched. (knowing full well that you could have put the same answer for both and been guaranteed to get at least one right……but thought the test deserved better)
The anatomy exam covered 20 hours of lecture…..18 hours of cadaver lab, three text books, flashcards, hypothetical patient diagnosis, and all of the muscles, nerves, arteries and veins in the body, and the action that they all work so hard to perform.
With all of that material studied and having taken the evening before the exam to watch the Red Sox, I walked in to that test knowing that I had about an A- worth of knowledge on the topic. That being said this is what I mean….
If I were asked every question that pertained to all of the information that I was responsible for knowing…..If I were to sit there for a couple days straight and be comprehensively tested with every type of question (i.e true false, fill in the blank, matching, multiple choice) I would have gotten an A-.
The test was 75 questions. All multiple choice. 45 seconds per question, to be filled in using a #2 pencil and a bubble sheet. I sat in the back of the room and with 5 minutes to spare handed my test in. The frustration in a multiple choice test is that ALL OF THE CORRECT ANSWERS ARE ON THE TEST. You are given a test and all of the answers to it and all you have to do is circle the correct ones and hand it back in.
Well…..I am not going to say that this was an unfair exam. There will always be questions on material that I “could have sworn we never covered” or topics that “didn’t deserve 7 questions out of 75″. There will always be information left out and other information that will seem to have taken a more prominent role in your testing . There will never be the option to sit down 1 on 1 with the Professor and be asked every possible question to accurately display your total knowledge on the topic of human anatomy. You are going to get somewhere in the ball park of 75 questions and you are going to be expected to select the right answers for all of them. I failed that first exam. They don’t just give you a Masters in Health Science degree 27 months after you were accepted.
You have to show up, study up and get ready to prove your knowledge day in and day out. This is not a game, the responsibility that you will have when you start working will be that of human lives…..loved ones…family members…the sick and the under-served. You will be glad you did well….and you’ll never EVER mix up your spinal nerves again.
I failed my first anatomy exam and the first exam of my PA school career. I got an 80. Anything under an 83 is failing.