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Step Prep: Day XIVa (The Clotting Cascade Tribute Post)

Has it really already been two weeks? That just blows me away. Really, for as exhausting and monotonous all this board studying is, the hours and days fly by. Probably because every day feels the same.

I'm in the final stretch, I take Step 1 a week from Saturday, so I really only have 7 days left of studying. Which is probably a good thing, because my mental stamina is fading faster than your libido after starting an SSRI. I've been doing 100 questions + full explanations every morning, which normally lasts me from 8am-noonish. I then take a lunch break and have grandiose plans for the rest of the afternoon, but generally can only really buckle down and really concentrate another 4 hours before the caffeine-induced diuresis and pressure sores on my ass proceed to tell me I need a change of scenery. I go home, telling myself I'm going to "finish", and proceed to "study" till late. By "study" I mean have something open in front of me and distractedly "look" at it while not retaining anything. This has not bode well on me making any progress on any of the items on my steadily growing "You're Behind On This, Get Your Ass In Gear" List.

I'm starting to notice some holes in my study schedule. For example, I only gave myself 1 day to learn micro for the first time, instead of the 652 days required to memorize all the necessary info as I am quickly realizing. But finding time to plug in additional micro studying when I barely have the mental stamina to slog through 80% of the stuff I'm supposed to study for the day has not proven humanly possible. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to remedy this. Without the use of illicit substances.

At least it seems like all the effort has started to pay off, as my QBank blocks have finally started to climb over the last 3-4 days. Of course, each one feels like a fluke to me, and I still expect every next block to come back and give me a big fat 40% in my face, but so far it seems I've been able to stave that off. I think I've hit that quasi steady state where any additional info I learn is desperately trying to offset all the information slowly leaking out of the back of my head. We'll see. A week is hardly any time but a ton of time at the same time.

And only during Step 1 time does that seem like a good sentence to end on.