It has taken me almost a year and a half to come to this realization. I have struggled with my grades and my self-confidence as a tried to always seek out the "bigger picture" in whatever we were studying. I lived in denial of the fact that medical school is an anti-intellectual endeavor. But the truth is to do well in the didactic portion of medical school does not require analysis or puzzle solving. It requires the regurgitation of thousands of disjointed facts. And for someone (read:me) whose academic career prior to medical school involved pondering over ONE idea for years, trying to excell in the academics of medical school is a challenge.
So, at the advice of one of my close friends in school, I decided to try to play the game for my most recent test. Instead of trying to understand pathways and signalling cascades, I memorized the facts. I searched through each lecture and wrote out a "testable" question from each paragraph of each lecture as well as the answer. I tested myself on those questions:
- Q: where do corticospinal neurons decussate (i.e., cross midline) in the CNS?
- A: in the pyramids of the medulla
- Q: what periperal neuropathies display a classic "glove and stocking pattern" (numbness and tingling in the hands and feet)?
- A: Guionne-Barre and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
- Q: What are the side effects of antimuscarinics (cholinergic antagonists)?
- A: no pee, no see, no spit, no shit
So, I went into the exam with my facts. No context, no big picture, just facts. I was scared. The test included many case presentations with answer choices below. But I'll be damned if those answers weren't merely a display of random facts! Now, I still did not do stellar, but I did better. And as I go into out final exam in Neurology next Friday I will tackle this test like it is the most competitive Trivial Pursuit game I have ever played!
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