The second of course is going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line, is changing your answers on an exam at the last minute when you were super confident at first.

And doing it twice.

This has weighed a bit on my mind for the last day and a half. For my Surgery class this semester we had 4 exams. First one I did well enough on, second was so so, and the third I rocked it. Honestly, I wasn’t worried about the 4th. While not mathematically impossible to fail the class at this point, it would have been extremely difficult to fail the class. But obviously, I wanted to do as well as I could. My grade had me in a solid 3.3 range which is sort of my target goal. To end up with a 3.0 would have required me to perform particularly poorly on the exam. I wasn’t too worried about that. On the flip side, I realized it was just within my reach to end up with a 3.7. I didn’t think it was likely, but would have been nice.

Anyway, I walked out of the test, after changing two answers. Now to be fair, one I really was 50/50 on. The other, I reasoned myself out of the correct answer. I knew as soon as I got to my apartment and checked myself I had changed them wrongly.

Well, you can guess it. Had I gotten those two right, I’d have gotten the 3.7. Honestly, I was sort of hoping to do a bit worse, as in had I gotten one more answer wrong, I could at least reassure myself I didn’t talk myself out of the 3.7. But nope. It was just down to those two questions.

I do know one of the other questions I got wrong and honestly, I simply didn’t know the answer. I’m ok with that. We’re not expected to be perfect.

Oh well.

At this point, Surgery is the only class I’m completely done with in terms of all my testing. That grade is locked in.

I still have 7 more classes where I still have final quizzes or exams or other items due. One of those is Pharmacology and Therapeutics III. I’m a long ways from where I was at the start of the semester where I was afraid I’d fail it. Failing now is almost mathematically impossible. I have one last exam in that class. I’ve been meeting with the professor on our campus who is in charge of the class and it’s really helped. The next and final exam is back to an area I have some difficulty in, namely antibiotics, but she was able to give me some suggestions on how to study for the exam, so I’m hoping to do well enough on it.

So long and short, stuff is going well, and I have to remind myself that sometimes changing the answer without a real good reason is the wrong choice.

Just over three more weeks of classes and exams for this semester.

Then one final comprehensive exam and my didactic year will be over. I can’t wait.