USMLE preparation: Day 11

Today's the first day that I'm really glad I'm doing this Kaplan thing. Over the past week, I've been making my way through anatomy, histology, and neurology (ick). I could have done this all on my own, but that would have meant slogging through old notes and review books - a significant portion of that time would have been dedicated solely to finding and organizing the material, much less reviewing. However, I'm particularly pleased with the post-chapter questions Kaplan supplies - the majority of them are straight recall, and not the third or fourth order questions like the USMLE will ask. After every one of their review books, though, they offer an assessment that is in the style of USMLE questions. This I like; I can find questions on my own (and I will, in fact, shell out for UsmleWorld - reputedly the best Q bank out there...sorry Kaplan), but having them correlate so closely with what I'm doing at the moment is a refreshing way of measuring performance. The assessments are going well, so I guess I can move on.

So I'm done with that - it wasn't that bad. I TA'd anatomy, so I was pretty familiar with a lot of the information. Now, though, I'm starting biochem - my arch-nemesis. It was by far my weakest subject, and while it's not supposed to be that "high yield", they're still valuable points I can mop up with a little effort. So that's this next week for me.

In other news, things aren't looking good for Annie Le, but I find it horrendous that Fox news jumped the gun and prematurely reported that they'd found a body. I tuned into the live feed of the press briefing at Yale, and could tell from the body language of the folks setting up cameras and microphones that there was no body; they were too business-as-usual, too calm - they were joking around too much for there to have been a body. The bloody clothes in the ceiling are the most ominous piece of evidence yet, however...so much was made of what she was wearing when she was last seen (brown skirt, green shirt), that the investigator's reticence to disclose whether or not they were actually connected to her further deepens the mystery; it almost seems as if the clothes found were not the clothes she was reported as wearing - hopefully they aren't. It's a stretch at this point, but I still hope for a happy ending.