Surviving Midterms
Midterm week for first year dental students can be defined as crazyinsaneroughexhaustingunhealthystressfulwth all lumped together. Looking back, I only totalled about 6 hours of sleep during the first two days of midterms. Preparing for the triple jump (T3) exam pretty much killed any semblance of a normal circadian rhythm in my body. What's sad is that I actually got more sleep than MANY of my classmates.
Exhibit A: Me gorging on on extra large bag of Cheeto puffs at 2am while studying for the MCQ exam. Did you know that one serving of Cheeto puffs (13 pieces) contains 144 calories, 15% of your daily recommended fat intake, 7% of your recommended saturated fat intake, and 12% of your daily recommended sodium intake? Midterms are definitely UNHEALTHY.
Exhibit B: Me falling asleep during the COMBOT midterm because I only got 2.5 hours of sleep the night before (thanks to triple jump presentations). COMBOT is a computerized test where you have one minute to identify specific structures or landmarks on a diagram (i.e. which cranial nerve is the arrow pointing to). After one minute, the screen switches to the next diagram and you can't go back to the previous question. I put my head down after answering question #55 and when I woke up again from my slumber, the computer was already broadcasting question #58. FAIL...
Exhibit C: My exasperated groan when I realize that it's 11:30pm and I have 7 lectures to review for the morphology midterm. And the fourth lecture on occlusion contains 122 slides...
Exhibit D: Trying to finish a drawing of an anterior tooth and a wax-up of the mandibular central incisor in less than 2 hours. Two hours may seem like a lot of time, but it's not. Especially if your near perfect wax-up suddenly chips off midway through the exam. HIGHLY STRESSFUL.
Exhibit E: Apparently they conduct dental school interviews during the week of midterms. Basically, all of the dental school interviewees get to witness us in our most ungraceful zombie-like state of being. I bumped into a group of interviewees when I exited from my T3 presentation, right as I was about to collapse from exhaustion. The interviewees also walked into Guggenheim right before our morphology midterm. They were treated to a scene of first year dental students wired on energy drinks and having anxiety attacks over the contents of the morphology midterm.
