Wow, it’s hard to believe that I am now officially into week 4 of studying. I still have 4 weeks left, thankfully, as I have cancelled my trip to Paris and pushed back my test date. Yes, I gave up the City of Lights for the Step 1, but I honestly don’t feel that bad about it. Paris will be there, but the Step 1 only comes once. After doing the minimum in every class for 2 (well, 3) years, I am ready to really give this my all.

I have found it to be true though, that with everything you do (really, everything, whether it be writing a book or aiming to be a professional volleyball player), you just need to START. Because when you start, you will figure out along the way what you need to do to get there .When I first began studying for the boards, or even when I started thinking about what I needed to do, I was immediately freaked out about how much material there was and trying to figure out how much and what I would have to do to get there. Now that I am in the groove of studying and know what I need to do on a day to day basis, that innocent unknowing seems to be way behind me.

The biggest challenge, I’ve found, is not the setting up of schedule or even the material, but rather the work it takes to block out all the negative thoughts in my head and depressing those freakouts as gracefully as I can. I’m aware that I’m an anxious person as it is, as calm as my demeanor is. But I’m not an anxious person in that I am shaking or having panic attacks, I’m the type of thinker who attacks a situation/scenario from all possible angles (good, bad and everything in between) so sometimes the bad possibilities freak me out.

However, I have found 2 super important and great solutions to these freak-outs, which I need to remind myself of every morning:

1. Accept uncertainty.

2. Challenge negative thoughts.

So I had to haul ass to the Apple store today, midday, in a suppressed panic about my computer. Whatever would I do if I could not access UWorld??? Watch television, obviously. I have been generally productive so far and would like to continue feeling good about myself in this respect. $170 later (damnit Steve jobs!), I have my computer back, just like brand new. No, seriously, brand new. I currently have nothing on my computer except UWorld, Chrome, and those oft-raved about Gojlan audio files. I have created the ultimate USMLE Bashing machine. Now if only I could say that about my brain as well.

Just beginning to study right now – at 5:34 PM – still got the tail end of biochemistry to read, then review all of FA Biochem, and then go over this morning’s block of questions. Then bed.

But before then – I must buy a new external hard drive to back-up files on this new computer hard drive.

Wise words.

Back to the books. It’s hard to have to prove myself.

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Here’s a mnemonic I made up for the Vitamin Bs:
THIck RIBeye and a NIACe PAN of pie (PY) for COmpany. (Vitamins 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12)

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One last thing: Realizing that I need to have a “review” day for each subject as well.

Me: I love you, USMLE Beast.

Well, here I am, “officially” on Day 2 of studying for the USMLE Step 1. Exciting stuff. *cricket noises*

I’ve realized that the most important thing during this whole process is keeping calm and carrying on. For example, today I am doing “biochemistry.” Now when I go over questions and look in my First Aid binder, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed and feel like I’m never going to get it all done. But when I think to myself, okay, just biochemistry today. That’s it. I don’t have to be ready for the ENTIRE test today, I just need to get through biochemistry. Sounds simple enough.

So as it turns out, in order to tame the Beast, as I have nicknamed the Step 1, GI Jane needs to keep her cool. I can’t imagine that Joan of Arc looked at les Tourelles and was like “WTF!!!!” She was probably like, “Let’s go!” And let’s be clear here, taking the Step 1 is akin to going to war with the English. Except the English is my self and Joan of Arc is myself.

But I regress. (I must profess – I love analogies and parentheses, and will use them both profusely in this blog).

I got an email this morning from my contact at Columbia Business School about a healthcare startup workshop later this month which I am pretty psyched about. I love getting into these things and learning about a completely different side of medicine.

Oh, and lastly, I’ve deactivated my Facebook profile for this process. Disconnected and it feels so goooood.

My friend P sent me this great article in the New York Times about memory and how to improve your memorizing skills. As it turns out, memorizing is in fact a skill you can improve, like singing or painting. Sure, some people have the innate ability to be the Picasso or Pavarotti of memorization, and you may not, but there are still ways for you to improve.

“What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly,” Cooke said.

And there is even scientific evidence of their mediocrity: the brains of mental athletes are actually not very different from the brains of memory laymen.

One especially interesting they found was that “mental athletes were relying more heavily on regions known to be involved in spatial memory. At first glance, this didn’t seem to make sense. Why would mental athletes be navigating spaces in their minds while trying to learn three-digit numbers?“

The answer to this enigmatic nut significant discovery goes all the way back to the fifth century BC: “After a tragic banquet-hall collapse, of which he was the sole survivor, the poet Simonides was asked to give an account of who was buried in the debris. When the poet closed his eyes and reconstructed the crumbled building in his imagination, he had an extraordinary realization: he remembered where each of the guests at the ill-fated dinner had been sitting. Even though he made no conscious effort to memorize the layout of the room, it nonetheless left a durable impression. From that simple observation, Simonides reportedly invented a technique that would form the basis of what came to be known as the art of memory. He realized that if there hadn’t been guests sitting at a banquet table but, say, every great Greek dramatist seated in order of birth — or each of the words of one of his poems or every item he needed to accomplish that day — he would have remembered that instead. He reasoned that just about anything could be imprinted upon our memories, and kept in good order, simply by constructing a building in the imagination and filling it with imagery of what needed to be recalled. This imagined edifice could then be walked through at any time in the future. Such a building would later come to be called a memory palace.”

Why do we have better memory for spaces rather than verbal facts? Because our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t have to remember bank account numbers or grocery lists. But they had to remember where to find food, where the poisonous plants were, where the hut/cave/tent was. Makes sense. In the end, our environment changes but essentially our bodies are still not so different from those of our cavemen friends.

“What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly.”

Since being a medical student (at least in the first 2 years) is no different from being a memory athlete, I think the method of creating memory palaces is something that could be of crucial usage to those who devote themselves to the grueling study of medicine.

How does this work exactly? Well, for example, I would put the disease “SLE/lupus” in the lobby of my school. In the lobby,  two girls named Dana (ds DNA Antibody) and Anna (Anti-nuclear Antibody) Smith (Anti-Smith Antibody) are running around with a wire-loop net (wire-loop glomerulonephritis) to catch butterflies (butterfly malar rash). Dana is having a hard time because her fingers don’t work properly (arthritis). And so on… I actually took an exam  regarding this condition a couple days ago and still remember this ridiculous story.

So this is how I will be studying for the USMLE in the coming weeks. Personally, I think having to create scenarios and situations makes the whole process of studying more interesting and engaging.

See  more accurate instructions on how to create a memory palace here.

I recently attended a healthcare entrepreneurship panel at Columbia B-school. The panel consisted of 2 venture capitalists (VC 1 and 2) and 2 entrepreneurs, one of whom was Peter Frishauf, founder of Medscape. Yes, Medscape. Wow. I unfortunately did not catch the names of the three other panelists but all were very informed and informative.

As a medical student, it was really interesting to hear a discussion of the healthcare system from a purely business point of view. It also made me realize how entering the business side of medicine from the standpoint of someone who actually works with patients and doesn’t just make excel spreadsheets could potentially be a huge advantage. It’s like being the manufacturer of baseball bats who never plays baseball.

VC 1 started off with a really good point. In the business of medicine, there is room for only  things:

solving unmet patient needs

or

removing cost from the system.

Additionally, he added that the healthcare reform movement hasn’t really trouble venture capitalists; if anything, it was just another variable.

VC 2 asked in the business of medicine, “Who is your customer?” Initially, it was the customer was the physician. Unfortunately, doctors lost control to managed care. The future “customer” of the healthcare business is the patient, but before it becomes the patient, there will be an interim step: data companies. A lot of healthcare inefficiencies are due to the disorganization of healthcare information. Think about the last time care was delayed because your doctor’s office lost a file or you yourself couldn’t find your vaccine records. It’s a very common problem.

Peter Frishauf then came in with a TON of highly enlightened points. First off, he made the point that a lot of innovations outside of the healthcare circle are going to affect the way medicine works in the future, such as the iPad. He also noted that there are NO good EMR programs out there (he mentioned one called eClinicalworks, which is apparently terrible). If there are no good electronic medical record programs, it’s no wonder that healthcare is such a mess.

He then said, “Healthcare is a huge battle between the haves and have-nots. Great for the haves.” Good point.

VC 2 then pointed out that he recently went up to a more rural area where he had to go to the hospital. A nurse there pointed out that there is a tattoo to teeth ratio joke – that there is a whole population of people who have given up on their own health. This is a huge obstacle. Who cares if doctors are doing their jobs if their patients don’t follow through or care? At the end of the day, we are our own primary health givers.

The other entrepreneur then talked about mobile health, or M-health. While only a little more than half of Americans have the internet, 83% of Americans have phones. Therefore, M-health could be utilized to make a huge impact. One doctor she knows realizes that a lot of her patients were young females and started a texting program that reminds them about check-ups and to take their birth control pills. What a great idea! Also, this texting program could be really helpful in reminding diabetics to take their insulin.

I’ve just highlighted some interesting points here; there was a lot more said that I unfortunately did not take note of.

One last point, VC 2 recommended that we read a book by Mark C. Taylor called “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities” published last August. In every place where Taylor writes ‘college,’ replace it with the word ‘hospital.’ Apparently, there are some large and interesting parallels when you read the book that way.

Minnie Driver? Is that you?

Here’s a new song from British pop singer Eliza Doolittle, who is (in my opinion) a dead ringer for fellow Brit Minnie Driver.

mp3: Mr. Medicine [Eliza Doolittle]

More than “Mr. Medicine,” my favorite Eliza Doolittle song is “Skinny Genes,” yet another medically themed song. The music video is just so damn… how do the Brits say it?… Cheeky. Cheerio!

ELIZA DOOLITTLE TO RELEASE HER DEBUT ALBUM IN THE U.S. ON APRIL 19, 2011 ON CAPITOL RECORDS

Her website.

Her Twitter.

For now, check out my music blog if it so interests you: