It's entirely premature to be happy about how I did. While studying I made incredibly stupid mistakes like reading addition signs as subtraction signs (which, of course, produced the wrong result). The test itself was fairly short - some 15 questions - so even one of these stupid mistakes would be enough to have a respectably negative impact on my grade.
As an aside, to anyone who wonders what Calculus has to do with medicine (a question I've gotten a few times, actually) - here's an easy answer. Careless mistakes on math tests get you to fail. Careless mistakes in medicine kill people. Therefore, people who habitually make careless mistakes shouldn't be in positions of medical responsibility, and failing a course in Calculus keeps people from entering medical school in the first place.
That said, I /think/ I did fairly well, and I'm sure I didn't do /too/ badly. I was happy enough with how I thought I did to go get a bottle of my favorite hard-to-find wine at a nearby restaurant afterwards (which, for the record, I'm not drinking all at once).
Speaking of wine, I also had my first soft drink in about a month today before the exam (I've been, fairly successfully, working at fixing my diet of late). It's shocking how sickening-sweet that soda tastes after having broken the habit. I don't even want to get another... (My favorite wine was still awesome though). Actually.... on the off-chance anyone is actually reading my blog, the wine is Eroica Riesling. It's grown in the US, but is an absolutely phenomenal Riesling in my opinion. And it's only ~$25 / bottle. ... and I think it's making me ramble a bit in this post: hopefully, future medical school reviewers who have found this site will be willing to overlook that, just this once. (Please?)
Back to the test, its results, and their impact.
The registration deadline for the fall semester is, I think, approaching quickly. Once I'm sure I've done well on this exam (assuming that is the case) I'll have a lot of decisions to make, without an entirely satisfactory set of information to base them on.
1: Do I continue the medical school courses in the fall Semester, or opt out for nursing?
- If I got an A of some color on this, as I hope, I opt to schedule med. school prereqs.
2: Do I (need) to take a second semester of Calculus? If so, do I take it now, or do that next summer and dedicate the year to pure science courses?
- I don't know what the best plan would be. It would be helpful if I could isolate math in Summer again, as it's my weakest point, but I need to talk to an academic advisor of some color.
3: How intense do I want to make my curriculum?
- I can, technically, take nearly everything at once. Taking Gen Chem/Bio/Physics/Organic Chem/Calculus/Bio Chem at the same time strikes me as begging to fail, though. Or, at the least, asking to perform sub-par. That's an overwhelming schedule. I need to decided how to split things though. Again, an advisor can hopefully assist here.
Until I find out how I did for sure though, I shouldn't get ahead of myself.
