See You in Austin!!!! #SNMA #AMEC #AMEC2016

Running for National President-Elect!

The time is finally here, and I am so excited!!!! Tomorrow, I will be flying to Austin, Texas for the Student National Medical Association’s Annual Medical Education Conference, and I look forward to all it has in store. This conference will be the culmination of a lot of hard work by many individuals that took place over the past year. It will also end my term as the National Osteopathic Schools Co-Chair, and I’m looking forward to seeing a great turn out at some of the workshops my co-chair and I have put together. If you’ll be in attendance, you should definitely make room in your schedule for the “Mind, Body, and Osteopathy: A Whole-Person Approach to Mental Health” workshop on Thursday from 5-6pm lead by psychiatrist Dr. Vania Manipod of freudandfashion.com. We will also be holding our Osteopathic Schools Reception on Friday from 6:30-8:30pm which will focus on diversity in osteopathic medicine. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pre-med, MD, or DO student because both sessions will have something for everyone! For the premedical students, there will be sessions on applying to medical school with AAMC and AACOM representatives, and our keynote speaker at the Saturday Banquet will be Dr. Damon Tweedy, the author of Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine. I could go on and on about all the events that will take place, but I’ll just sum it up by saying this year’s AMEC will be amazing!!!!

 Also, if you’ve been reading my posts for a while then you already know how much I love SNMA. So much so that I will actually be running for the position of National President-Elect! I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to promote my platform and show my passion for continued leadership within SNMA, and even if I am not elected I know I will still be involved with the organization for years to come. The above picture is my campaign flyer, so if you’ll be in attendance, you will definitely see me around, and I’ll probably hand you one. Anyway, I need to finish packing, but I will definitely make an effort to update my Twitter and Instagram accounts throughout the conference. Looking forward to seeing some of you again and meeting some new faces in Austin. Oh, and if you see me, don’t be afraid to say hello :-)

New Phone = Better Selfies

A Post for the Pre-Meds: Check out PreMedStAR.com!

Happy Monday! It’s a super busy time, but I wanted to take a quick study break to make sure my premedical student readers know about PreMed StAR, the Online Recruitment Network for Pre-Medical Students. With PreMed StAR, students can be directly recruited online by medical schools. It just opened up for pre-registration, and for the time being one year membership is free for those who register during this period! The site is www.PreMedStAR.com and you can also find out more and like their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/PreMedStAR. Please share this with all your fellow premedical students so you can all get recruited!

Medical School: Year Two, Term Two = Done!

Another end of term smile :-)

I can finally breathe again! If only for a few days, LOL. Last Friday, I completed my final gastroenterology exam and ended the second term on a good note. This means I now get to enjoy one full week of vacation before hitting term three with full force. It also means that I only have three more months of classroom learning to go before I take my medical board exams and start clinical rotations for the next two years. At this point, I am just sooooo ready to be done with sitting in a classroom all day, and I can’t wait to spend my time in the hospital being more hands on. I know as a medical student, I’ll be at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to what I’ll actually be able to do on rotations, but right now I am so ready for a change!  

No greater feeling than having an empty to-do list!

The above picture is my current situation and what I like to call a picture of happiness. This is the white board on my wall in my room, and not having anything on my to-do list is making me smile non-stop. I had originally planned to spend this week doing nothing but studying for my upcoming USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Level 1 exams, but I realized that I was extremely burnt out and needed to slow down my pace a little bit. Between dealing with more mandatory lectures that usual, constant board studying, exam studying, and dealing with workshop, speaker, and other issues for the upcoming SNMA Annual Medical Education Conference in a few weeks, I just really needed a break! And all of this is not counting my daily responsibilities of being a mother and handling other miscellaneous items like appointments and such. I wish I could say I feel guilty about not using the week to study, but I really don’t. Last week, I finished my first pass through UWORLD, so I am still on track to reach my goal of doing at least 6000 questions before I take my board exams. I have been staying pretty consistent with my study schedule since I started in December, so I figure a week-long break won’t hurt too much. Plus, I still have three solid months left to address my weaknesses.  

The past few days have been spent catching up on phone calls, emails, and other things that I have been putting off, so technically I am just now getting to really take a break. I am looking forward to doing nothing but watching television, pleasure reading, and spending more time with the little one over the next few days.  When I return to school on Monday, we will be taking the COMSAE which is basically a mini board exam to assess where we are at, and then a couple of days later we will take the COMAT shelf exam for OMM. This will serve as a good baseline to let me know where I currently stand, and it will probably get me right back into focus on what I need to do over the next few months to improve.  It’s only going to get busier for me from this point forward, so excuse me while I go relax!