bloggingbio

[bloggingbio]

Day 115

I officially took my first MCAT!

So far I'm not sure how I feel. I've taken so many practice exams leading up to today and I've felt the same about all of them and scored totally different ways, so I'll just have to wait and see how this one goes. The past couple times I've gotten 504s so I'm not sure this time will be too much higher, but maybe I'll have some luck on my side.

Unfortunately I've been doing my research into schools and so far a lot of them have admissions statistics with scores around 515 or higher, which means I will most likely need to retake this again. But I think it was good to at least give it a solid shot before the school year starts and depending on how my score report is, I will try to continue studying for my second attempt throughout the fall. Ideally I'd love to take my second and final attempt right after winter break but again, I'll need to wait and see how this one goes.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 114

Officially halfway through July and 3 weeks away from my MCAT. I've been doing coaching work in the mornings and evenings and switched to working out at 5am before the first job. While it gets a lot of the time consuming activities out of the way early on and makes my day more structured, it leaves me very tired and sometimes interrupts my midday workflow. And ultimately I'm feeling a little burnt out and tired.

If I had made this post a week earlier I would've stated how hopeless I still feel about the MCAT and not improving my score. But as of yesterday I scored my first 504 on a practice test. While it is still very far off from 515, I still think I might be able to get very close by the end of these 3 weeks. My plan is to maximize my CARS and Psych scores as much as possible as those are already strong points for me and fairly easy to rehearse and practice while multitasking with something else. I'll still work on the other science sections and do my best, but I think this might be the most reasonable course of action given how I've been testing and feeling overall. I briefly considered rescheduling the test again but there is no more availability for 2025, so I'll have to wait until January before getting a retake in if I need one. Hopefully I can score high enough that it won't need to come to that, but I'm preparing for both the best and worst case scenarios here.

Wish me luck for these next couple weeks!

[bloggingbio]

Day 113

Officially 1 month into my summer break and I'd say progress has been steady and slow. I've been making some strides in my rowing improvements and have a pretty decent daily schedule going on. I also have my summer jobs lined up and ready to go, which begin next week. The only thing that I'm hesitant on is my MCAT progress. I haven't been able to improve my score past 500 despite constantly changing the way I score on different sections in my practice exams. It should be reassuring that all I'd need to improve would be the science sections, but somehow I haven't been able to make them budge. I suppose I could be more disciplined about practicing the science questions more often, but it doesn't make it less frustrating. Hopefully as I get back onto the water I will be more consistent about using the day to do homework problems and then finally start seeing score improvements.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 112

We're officially on break and I have to say it's very bittersweet to be back home again. I really enjoyed the company of my roommates this past year and it was incredibly sad to move away from them. But I've spend plenty of time driving back and forth between home and campus to say hello to them and help with their own move outs. It's also good that I'm home so that I can focus on slowly bringing myself back to strength for rowing/cross training, and also being able to focus on my MCAT studying.

So far I've been able to identify a lot of weak spots and have been trying to absorb as much information as possible. It's a bit overwhelming since there's a lot of volume, but I've been sticking to a relatively strict schedule and that's helping significantly with time management. And it would likely only be possible by being at home, so for that I am grateful. As of now my practice test scores have been around 500, which isn't entirely great but I keep telling myself it's because I'm only just starting out with the material and I hope to raise it over the course of the next to months. My goal is to hopefully get 115 or very very close as the applications are incredibly competitive. While it's ambitious, I believe with the right mentality and discipline I'll be able to handle it.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 111

It's now the final day of classes and I'm about to enter finals season. I'd say that I've concluded this semester quite strongly, even if it wasn't everything that I wanted. I've significantly calmed down compared to the beginning and recalibrated my med school schedule to reduce stress. And as far as my grades are concerned, I'm set to get As or only be a couple percentage points away from them. I even began correcting my progress in the athletics sense and started returning to competition again. Although I won't be able to cover all the ground I lost I still think I'm in a good position to gain it back over the summer. Now all that's left is to reverse the toll everything took on my body over the course of these next couple weeks and begin building up a good med school application once everything is done.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 110

We are now 11 weeks into the semester and it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. There’s a mixture of good and bad news since so much has happened. For the bad, I’ve decided to postpone taking my MCAT until the summer. Unfortunately with the course load and all the homework assignments I wasn’t able to do and the continuously reducing amount of time, I just knew I wasn’t ready to sit for the exam. Rather than stress myself out further for a result I knew I wouldn’t be happy with, I decided to improve my application with a gap year and delay taking the exam until the summer when I knew I could put all my energy into studying for it and maximizing my score. It’s unfortunate things didn’t pan out the way I wanted to, but I felt it would be worse to waste my time and money on something I knew wouldn’t be worth it at the moment. 

On the brighter side, I’m all caught up with schoolwork and so far my grades are on a good track. Even moreso, thanks to my decision to postpone, I'm actually able to prioritize my health and wellbeing and begin to take care of myself again. I’m working on resuming a more regular eating schedule and trying to go back to sleeping in my own bed again rather than my desk. Hopefully as I restore these better habits, my rowing will also begin to come back to normal. We’ll have to wait and see in a couple of weeks if it all works out, but I’d like to stay optimistic. 

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 109

It's the beginning of the fifth week of the semester and I'm glad to say that I'm all caught up with my classes and their work!

I just had my first Heath Psych exam and I don't think I did too terribly. My notes for that class have always been complete and I even made a Quizlet to study for it. As for Genomics, my notes have also been brought up to date and I'm hoping to make similar study summaries to help out since my exams are still far out and I want to be ahead. With Physics I've finally got myself to finish lectures before recitation and the hw done without outside help. It makes me feel good to be ahead and more self-directed, and hopefully it pays off on the exams now - my GPA could use the boost. (I was also able to get all my research approved and going, which is always nice).

My next thing to tackle is the MCAT classes I've been slacking on. My plan is to take it topic by topic until I'm caught up, and dedicate more of my free time to doing practice questions. I know the more I do, the better I'll get at them (in theory). I just need to be regimented about it and stay vigilant.

Finally for rowing, I've absolutely put it on the back burner. Drowning in stress and playing catch up really took the hardest toll I've ever seen on my own body and I've been suffering tremendously for it. It's ironic that I took a health psychology class this semester as I now have a pretty good understanding of what's going wrong and why. But to summarize, I lost my sleep and my eating habits and physical strength all at once due to stress. While I begin to recover academics wise, I'm hoping to slowly ease back into normal living patterns and hopefully begin to restore my body steadily. It'll be a long while before I'm back to normal (ngl, a retreat or rehab would really do me some good right now), but I'm not too far gone yet I hope.

Wish me luck with everything!

[bloggingbio]

Day 108

Unsurprisingly, I'm back to my incredibly poor update habits again. This time we are three weeks into the spring semester and I can already say I feel like I'm drowning again. I'm actually pretty on top of my actual classwork, but my MCAT prep hasn't been going as great as I feel I never have time to do anything.

I've been thinking about it a lot and I think location is key. I've been blessed with a much better housing situation but the additional comfort might be what is leaving me so unproductive. I think it might be better to try and complete all my work elsewhere before coming back to my apartment, just to ensure productivity. And I'd need to make that switch relatively quickly to ensure I don't lose anymore time on that. I can't afford to mess anything up.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 107

It is now a couple days before the start of the spring semester and I have to say that it's been quite journey the past two months.

I was able to complete my fall semester with only 3 Bs (physics, biochem lab, food science) and see myself being set up decently to have all As next semester to give myself a GPA boost. I've also gone ahead and began MCAT studying, which is incredibly time consuming but I'm hoping the frequency of it will mean I don't actually need to actively take notes but rather just do a lot of practice. I've already gone ahead and designed weekly schedules for studying and food to help keep myself in better shape both health wise and academics wise. Time management will be essential and I don't want to rely on last minute miracles like I did for the fall. Unfortunately it does look like rowing will need to be on the back burner for a bit but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make and it will ultimately lend me more time anyway.

In any and all cases, wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 106

Okay this time the timing is better and I don't have as negative of an update.

It's been about two weeks since coming back from Thanksgiving break and officially the beginning of finals season. Luckily most of my grades have gone in and I only have 3 finals to account for: biochem, physics, and food science. I need to get anywhere from an 83-100 on each to secure good grades and I've made a strict schedule to accomplish that. I managed to sort of stick to being productive upon coming back, but I found I work the best when I'm alone for long periods of time, so I plan on doing that to the best of my ability.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 105

I wish Tumblr had a function where I could see how spaced out each update is, because I swear they keep getting further and further. It's definitely a great visual representation for the state of disarray I always seem to be in. I could really use a schedule for that, but the key would be actually sticking to it which I also seem to have issues doing.

In the best summary I can manage, I'm kinda disappointed in how I'm managing stress and my workload. I've been barely making it by but it's going to come at a price and so I'm trying to do damage control to minimize just how much it's going to cost me. So far I think I'm stuck at having a B in my lab course, which is really unfortunate but I've done the math and there's nothing I can do about it. However, all of the rest of my classes are able to be saved so I'm going to do everything possible to make it so. I've made a dozen schedules, and some have stuck and some haven't. But I'm currently on Thanksgiving break and I'm taking the time to rework my once rigorous routine back into play so that way I can get caught up and stay on top of myself until the end of the semester. It'll be mainly physics and biochemistry studying, but that's fine since that's what really deserves attention. I haven't even had to time to worry about med school prep, but I'm hoping that it can be rushed later or incorporated sooner if my studying schedule actually works out and brings me up to speed.

On the flip side, I also somehow managed to not take my wasted time and put it back into myself since I haven't really been eating or sleeping right at all. It's honestly miraculous given the physical workload I have on top of it. But just like with the academics, I've been taking advantage of being home and trying rejuvenate myself and my diet and my sleep schedule. The goal is that I will be able to return from break with a much healthier and regimented lifestyle in effect.

I don't know how well any of this will work but I really really need to commit to it and give it a shot. I know other people are worried for me and so am I for myself.

Please wish me luck.

[bloggingbio]

Day 104

It must have been at least a month since my last update but I'm honestly no longer sure given how quickly time seems to slip by.

In terms of academic updates, we've made incredibly slow progress in fixing my studying schedule. I've reverted back to block scheduling and have been barely making it by with staying on top of work. I've suspected that it is due to the fact that I love being around people so much that it's been impacting how effectively I study. It's rather unfortunately given that such a positive thing could have such an annoying consequence, but I'm trying to work through it by avoiding group environments when actually trying to get work done. This seems to help. I still need to play lots of catch up, but at least I've found a method for it.

Aside from this, I've also been tasked with additional research duties from both the exercise science and food science departments. Although exciting, it definitely adds to my workload. But at least it's work that I find fun for myself.

On the flip side of work, I was able to take 2 different weekend trips and go to both Boston and a farm with my roommates to have a classic fall experience and see HOCR racing. Although we were all so tired and it definitely put a strain on my workload, I don't think I'd give it up for everything. On a recent phone call with my aunt, I've been told I need to live more and I supposed this was my way of compromising. I still had a lot of anxiety of all that I could've been doing productively instead. But I'm hoping I have what it takes to make up that difference.

In any and all cases, wish me luck! I have a new round of exams coming up to figure out if my new methods are working in my favor.

[bloggingbio]

Day 103

Another incredibly late update with all kinds of news.

To start off, it's officially exam season. So far I've had only one midterm for biochemistry but I got an 81 on it which is slightly disappointing. The only reason it isn't entirely disappointing is the fact that I did not study for it and that I'm grateful to have not failed it entirely. However, there are more to come and I'm planning on spending these next couple days to really get myself organized and on top of things. I've already started this process but I'm hoping to not lose momentum as I go and that maybe I will get a second to breathe once the first round of tests are over. But in brighter news, at least a couple of my classes are going well which is reassuring. The only classes I'm concerned for are General Physics and Biochemistry, which barely a worry for Biochem lab (as these all have mid-80s for overall grades and this doesn't sit well with me).

This past month back at college I've relearned a lot of things about myself and my study process, and that I need to take better control of it if I want to excel at my tasks. A big concern is my inability to get work done when others around me, and that I'm not productive enough during the day and only at night. This sleep schedule can't continue and neither can being sidetracked. I'm reverting back to block scheduling and am going to try to move myself around more until I find more isolated study spots or learn to better adjust to others around me while I zone in on my work.

In addition to this, the rowing seems to be going well. Although I also need to make sure I leave enough room for rest and recovery in the midst of all my academics. It's been fairly imbalanced these past couple days due to exams and procrastinating on work, but hopefully with the block scheduling it will be unnecessary to stay up so late anymore and I can finally allow my body to relax and reset.

And finally, my living situation is so much infinitely better and I'm forever grateful. I know it may sound cheesy, but I'm trying to challenge myself at the end of each week to come up with golden moments from the past few days that make me smile or make me super grateful for everything in life. I think having this is great for putting everything into perspective and also just to uplift my mood sometimes. You can never go wrong with genuine positivity.

Anyway, wish me luck for fixing all my problems in a relatively short manner!

[bloggingbio]

Day 102

This update also came much later than I intended, but I blame it on not having free time or any moments to myself as of recently.

No new updates other than I think classes are going well so far. It's hard to say since I am not in full rowing mode yet and I still haven't had real assignments. But I still definitely need to figure out my studying schedule a bit better. Living with friends is great but I think I might study best on my own and need to manipulate my schedule accordingly for that. I'm also not a fan of all the online platforms being used for all my classes since it means I need to have multiple websites open at once if I want to multitask and it can get confusing.

Hopefully everything sorts itself out and that things run smoother soon. I really do want to have this year be a huge step up from last year and really pull it together nicely.

Wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 101

This post ended up being posted way later than I intended it to be just due to life being so busy. The major updates are that I was able to get some shadowing days in and that my fall semester started and I moved in to my new campus apartment.

The shadowing experience was plenty of fun since I had done it with one of my mother's coworkers and it was a much more comfortable learning environment. I was able to see what a clinic was like as well as surgeries in the OR, and it was reassuring to learn that neither scared me away.

My summer class grades came in and I ended up getting a 4.0 which gave my GPA a small, but still nice and needed boost. My classes for now seem very laid back and relaxed but I know that they will begin to speed up soon so I'm trying to take advantage of the extra downtime while I can. I'm going to try and see if I can get a head start in the work for some of them to make sure I'm not too stressed out in the near future.

And finally, I'm very happy to say that my new living space is better than my previous off campus house by miles. Easily the best decision I've ever made and I've never been happier. Hopefully it stays that way for the year.

In all cases, wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 100

Big milestone for the blog! And very fitting since it's practically at the halfway point of college for me.

It seems most of my grades are set and they are looking pretty good. Now that I have the free time, I'm really trying to pick up speed on other activities and preparing for the upcoming fall semester. I'll probably begin teaching myself physics or biochemistry in these last few weeks before going back. I'm also trying to find more extracurriculars to fill in my schedule gaps, but I need to be careful not to push it too hard because I don't want to burn out or have my new grades suffer. But I'm very anxious that my future med school application will be unimpressive without them.

Speaking of which, I have yet to hear back from my potential shadowing opportunity at a hospital, which is very unfortunate since it has involved months of planning so far. I might continue doing similar commitments throughout the year or doing some volunteering just to keep accumulating hours, but again, I need to be mindful of how thin I stretch myself .

In terms of hobbies I've done a wonderful job keeping up with art and listening to audiobooks. I feel great about the amount of time I've dedicated to the things I love and I'm sure it's doing wonders for my mental health. No doubt it's plenty to keep me afloat for the fall.

And for rowing it seems I need to be patient with myself again as my fitness translates from being outdoors to indoors again. I'll try to be mentally resilient and understanding towards myself and my progress, and I'm hoping to repeat my performance and progress of last summer. It was fun to be able to make big jumps coming back and I'd love to do that again.

For everything, wish me luck!

[bloggingbio]

Day 99

Almost done with all my summer classes! It's the second to last day and I have to say, this is one of the best classes I've ever taken and I'm very happy I did it. Hopefully I can have this professor in the future or at least find another course that is the same level of interesting as this was. Tomorrow is the lsat day and the day of our final and I'm feeling pretty confident since it is supposed to be open ended and I'm planning on structuring it similar to how I've been answering class questions since everything has always been about having open discussions. I'm certain it will go well and be a strong finish, as well as a needed GPA boost.

In addition to this, summer rowing is coming to an end which is kind of unfortunate but I am looking forward to staying up late and sleeping in again. Plus, I need to be able to workout from home more anyway and the 4:30 wakeups were getting to be a bit much. But it was great to have a switch up mentally. I'll also still be over at my lake coaching for a couple more weeks so it's not like I'll be totally gone.

And the best news of all is that I've really kicked into high gear with summer painting and have done an amazing job keeping up with the hobby even through the rowing and coaching and class. Despite technically having more on my plate, my days have been much easier and much more free, so I've been able to give my art more attention. Easily one of the best things about this month and this summer.

Anyway, wish me luck for my final!