AndyPeckham.com

I started at 8:00 am this morning (Saturday), at the University of Montana in Missoula, and finished just after 1:00 pm.  In case you thought I completely chickened out of taking the MCAT, I actually just rescheduled it for two and a half weeks later.  Today is actually the last day it was offered for 2008.

So, how do I feel it went?  Well, I don’t feel terrible about it, and I don’t feel great about it.  Each part of the exam had some very difficult sections.  The physical science section started out easy but then had some tough physics sections dealing with topics I did not know well.  The verbal reasoning section seemed harder than the last few practice ones I did, which was discouraging, because I had been doing fairly well in VR.  I almost ran out of time on the last part, Biological Sciences, but was smart enough to skip the passage which I was getting hung up on, and then come back to it.  I took 4 practice MCAT’s this last week, and had quite a range of scores (from 31-38), so it was difficult to gauge where I was at.  The times that I scored high were times when I happened to know the topics which were covered really well, and there were few questions on the topics I didn’t know well.  I also got lucky on many of the questions I had to guess on.  Basically, I need to get at least a 30 to start being a competitive applicant.  From the way I felt during the actual test, compared to some of the practice exams, I am pretty confident that I got at least a 30.  Possibly somewhere between a 30 and 34.  But’s that’s a very subjective estimate.

Yesterday I drove here with two of my friends, Chris and Zach, who are going to MSU-Bozeman, but live here in Missoula.  I had originally thought I would have to get a hotel, but they decided to go home for the weekend and graciously offered for me to stay with one of them.  I half-heartedly tried to study some more last night, but knew it was too late to try to be adding anything to my already saturated  brain.  I have this big fat MCAT review book, but I only was able to get halfway through it.  I am sure glad that I rescheduled the test, because although I really could have used a few more weeks to study, I felt much better after studying almost 4 weeks rather than the 1 week I had studied by the time I was first planning on taking it.  Scoring better on the practice MCAT’s increased my confidence as well.

After the MCAT my friend Chris treated me to lunch, and then in the afternoon he and Zach and I went and boogie boarded on a wave in the river that goes through Missoula.  The water was cold, but it was a sunny day, and we had a blast.  I got to take a nap in the sun, and was just so happy and content being outside, in the water, after spending the entire summer in class.  Being finished with the MCAT is quite a relief–I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my back, and now I can catch up for the first two weeks of class I’ve had.

And now I have to wait a whole THIRTY DAYS before I find out how I did on the exam!  I think that is ridiculous, considering it was all done on a computer, and it was all multiple choice except for two essays I wrote.  I really, really do not want to have to take this exam a second time.  In this whole process of preparing for the MCAT, which is basically the culmination of the whole last year’s work (48 credits), I have repeatedly felt like God has been asking me, “Do you trust me?”  Do I trust that regardless of my MCAT score or whether I get accepted into medical school that He is in control and that his plan for my life is better than my own?

29 days and counting…

August 26, 2008

Today I Almost Took the MCAT

It almost would have been easy to pretend like I wasn’t signed up to take the MCAT today.  I slept in this morning, read the news, and then drove into town (Bozeman).  Except that at 11:45 am I got a call from the test center, wondering if I was still planning on taking the Medical College Admissions Test at starting in 15 minutes.

So what happened?  Did I just forget that I was supposed to taking the exam today?  (Those of you who know me well may not be too shocked if that was the case.)  No, I actually just decided not to show up.  So did I chicken out at the last minute?  Actually, not quite.

The MCAT is a pretty big deal.  Not only is it a long exam (5 hrs), covering a minimum of one year’s worth of general chemistry, one year of physics, one year of biology, one year of organic chemistry, an hour-long verbal reasoning section, and two 30-minute essays, but it is also probably the single biggest factor for acceptance into medical school.  Less than 40% of people who apply to medical school get accepted.  For comparison, the GMAT for business school is 3 and ½ hrs long, the LSAT for law school is 3 ¼ hrs, and the GRE for grad school is 2 ½ hrs.  So you really don’t want to have to take it twice.

The plain and simple truth is, I was not ready to take it today.  You are allowed to take the exam 3 times in a year, but medical schools see all of your test scores that you have ever gotten, and take them all into consideration.  I will admit, I am disappointed in myself.  I think what I’m really disappointed in, more than realizing I wasn’t ready to take the test today, is that basically this confirms that I’ll be applying to medical schools next spring, with the hope of starting med school Fall of 2010, since you have to apply a year before you want to start.

I had worked my butt off this entire year, nearly killing myself this summer taking a year of organic chemistry and a year of physics at the same time, completing 16 credits in 12 weeks, while working with the ambulance on the weekends and volunteering with hospice and search and rescue.  All that with the hope that I could send in a really late application to med schools right before the deadline, and then start med school Fall of 2009.  I didn’t realize though that 75% of med schools have rolling admission, and that as competitive as med schools are to begin with, by now almost all of those spots are already taken, so even if I had a really strong application, and somehow managed to get all my ducks in a row with transcripts, personal statement, letters of recommendation etc, my chances of acceptance would be significantly lower than if I were applying in June along with the majority of applicants.

On the other hand, it is a relief.  I decided last week that I wasn’t going to take the MCAT today as scheduled, after taking a second mock MCAT practice test and scoring very poorly.  I had thought that since I completed all my premed requirements in this one year, everything would still be fresh.  As I study though I realize I need a lot more time to review topics which I have forgotten the specifics for.  My brain reached a supersaturation point this summer during O-chem, and not everything made its way into my long-term memory.  I’ve had two other people give me the same advice about not taking it until I feel I’m ready, so that has been encouraging.

I had less than 2 and ½ weeks from the time my second summer session ended till today to study for the MCAT.  I had hoped to study this whole summer but it was literally impossible if I wanted to survive O-chem (God decided to work a miracle and I pulled off a B+ in O-chem both semesters, and A’s in both physics classes.).  Instead of studying every single day, I ended up working with the ambulance 6 of those days, with most of those being 24 hour shifts, because we were really short staffed this month, with not enough people to have two ambulances running at all times like we’re supposed to.  I also managed to work a mountaineering trip in, which was awesome!  (I’m going to post pictures, really I am…)

I find myself coming up with all sorts of reasons to justify not taking the MCAT today as planned.  Some are good reasons, I know.  But of course there is the fact that I have a fear of failure, and that I have an ego and my pride would be hurt if I took the MCAT and got a low score, as I most likely would have today.  I would have been able to make excuses for a low score, but then I would have had to do it all over again.  Right now I’m hoping to take it the last possible date, which is Sept 13.  School start next week though, and I’m moving in to a new place in Bozeman, so I’m afraid I won’t get all that much extra study time in.  If I’m still not doing well on practice exams by then, I’ll consider taking it in January.  I have another heavy course load ahead of me this fall (biochem, neurophysiology, genetics, and more) so I won’t have much time to study, and then I’m afraid I’ll be worse off than now with having forgotten more.

I have to remind myself that God’s timing is a lot better than my own, even though I may not be able to see it until years from now.  It’s really hard for me NOT to lean on my own understanding in all of this and try to make plans based on what I think is the best thing to do.  I keep telling myself, “All I can do is my absolute best, and trust God to take care of the rest.”  Easier said than done.

Alright, well it is officially no longer the same day, and I think it’s time to dream about the Nernst equation, Zaitsev’s rule, Snell’s Law, Henderson-Hasselbach equatio

July 1, 2008

Triage

Definition: the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors (http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/triage)

“This is mass casualty disaster,” I said.  “You have to assess each one and determine whether there is a chance of survival.  If there’s no respirations and no pulse, you have to move right on to the next one.  There’s no time to waste on the ones that won’t make it anyway.”

I said this 30 seconds before starting my fourth organic chemistry exam.  Ironically enough, a few hours later I would be doing chest compressions on a man without respirations or a pulse.  But that’s another story.  The last exam had destroyed me.  I had gotten behind in the reading because of doing a swiftwater rescue class with Search & Rescue the weekend before.  I walked out of that exam feeling worse than I had ever felt about a test in my life.  I was certain I had failed it, and didn’t know what it meant.  Did it mean I was going to fail o-chem?  Did it mean I didn’t have what it takes to finish premed, much less get into med school?  I ended up getting a 62% on the exam the week before, and the fact that the class average was 58% was small consolation.  I felt better prepared for this one—I had actually been able to finish the chapter and do quite a few practice problems.

The exams are passed out and we put our names on the cover page.  You can feel the anxiety in the air, and your classmates either have intense looks of concentration, or nervous smiles.  The professor writes the current time on the chalkboard and tells the class they can begin.  One hour and ten minutes to do an amount of problems which takes you 3-4 hours to do at home.  You briefly scan each page to get an idea of what’s ahead, and then you begin the first problem.  When you get to a problem that you don’t know how to do right away you star it with a shaking hand and move on to the next one.  You work on that for 5 minutes and only figure out half of the steps of the mechanism to get to the final product before running into a wall.  When your mind is blank for more than 15 seconds you star it and move on.  You’ve got absolutely nothing for the next one, so you star it and move on.  Finally a kind of problem that is familiar.  The questions get harder on each page and then you get to the end and there is 30 minutes left.  You look back and half of the problems have been starred and skipped, and a lot of the ones that haven’t been starred you know are only half finished.

“Anti-Markovnikov addition? Hofmann elimination?  SN2 substitution or E2 elimination?  Intramolecular epoxide ring formation?  Dimethylsulfoxide solvent?  Diastereoisomers?  How the heck do I make a triple bond and add an aldehyde?….”

You start scribbling down whatever first comes to mind.  If you know it somehow becomes this but don’t know how it gets there, you just draw it in anyway and see if you can figure out what it reacts with to get to the next step.  You start drawing arrows for the electron pushing even if you don’t know if it’s possible for the electrons to go where they are going.

10 minutes left.  Really, even though you have no clue on some of them, you just can’t leave them blank.  “I don’t know why this synthesis pathway is better than the other one exactly, but it must be because the other one could form multiple products because of competing reactions.”  “Time.  Please hand in your exams.”  You let out a big sigh.  If only you had another half hour…  But at least you triaged well.  You answered the ones you knew, and hopefully got a few partial credit points on the ones which you only knew half of the mechanism.  You even made a long shot guess on the last problem of the test, which will probably not give you any points, but at least you didn’t leave it blank.

I felt better about that test than the last one.  And now it’s time to cram for the physics exam.  When that’s done it’s time to start an 18 hour shift with the ambulance.

I’ve been learning a lot about triaging my tasks.  Each hour of the day needs to be assigned to something.  If I’m not doing homework while I’m eating I feel like I’m wasting time.  I’ve lost over 15 pounds in the last year.  Usually only 5 hours or less goes to sleeping.  I figure one cup of coffee equals one hour of sleep anyway.  But I really don’t like to be in a position where I have to be triaging everything!  I am a perfectionist, and the idea of not doing everything completely and to the best of my ability bothers me.  And then I start getting stressed, and sleep deprived, and become irritable.  And then I don’t like who I’ve become.  I know there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this…

July 12, 2008

It turned out that I got a 54% on that exam.  The class average on that exam was 48%.  Lowest test score of my life probably.  That was really discouraging.  The final exam was the day after my birthday, so all I did on my birthday was study till 3 am.  I ended up doing “well” on the final exam, with a 70%.  Never would have thought that a 70% could be good.

Good news: by some MIRACLE, it turns out I got a B+ for that class!  The teacher insisted all along that the class would not be curved, but I think he might have after all.  That was a huge relief, because I was expecting a C, which would mean I would have to retake the class this fall.

I’m realizing that I have not been trusting God and his plans and his timing.  For some reason I got my mind set on finishing all my premed classes in a year and applying to med schools this summer instead of next summer.  I know that my pride gets in the way often, when it comes to taking on more than I can really handle.  You have to apply a year before you start, so if I can pull this off I could start med school Fall 2009.  Problem is, a lot of med schools don’t recognize my degree from prairie, so I have to plan on finishing a second bachelor’s degree in case, which sets me back again.  Even if I can somehow get a B- in this second O-chem class I’m in now, which is harder than the first, I don’t know if I’ll finish my application to med schools in time this summer.  I have a whole lot to do before then, including preparing for the MCAT at the end of August.

Another highlight: Last weekend I got to go to the wedding of one of my good friends from high school.  She married another of my friends from highschool.  I got to see several of my close high school friends, and my dorm parents and their family, who are like a second family to me.  That was a very encouraging time, and definitely a blessing from God.  I wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip if it weren’t for several people donating money for my plane ticket.  Another blessing this summer: there are two other guys in my O-chem class who have become good friends.  Both are interested in medical missions, and are also into doing outdoor activities, so that has also been a huge blessing for the summer.  God is good!

Just got to survive 4 more weeks.  Search and rescue has been real busy lately (4 calls this week, 2 today), but I don’t have a hospice patient I’m visiting at the moment.

Wow, a lot has happened since I last posted.  This will have to be a summary of the highlights.  I finished up my last semester at Prairie, my parents came up for grad, I graduated, the rest of my family joined us and we spent a few days in the mountains in Canmore, I hung out with Tim Andries, and then drove down here to Plains, MT, where I am at currently.  Right now I am living at Camp Bighorn.  I am volunteering here part-time, on weekends and some evenings.  I commute about 45 miles one way to work doing construction near Thompson Falls.  I am preparing to take a 26-day long Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT) by Remote Medical International at Snoqualmie Pass, WA, starting on July 16-Aug 10.  I added a new album of photos, from my graduation, so check them out if you’re interested.

This Fall I want to start pre-med classes!  That’s a whole long story in and of itself.  Being a missionary doctor has been a dream of mine for a long time (at least since early highschool), but the journey to get there has been delayed for the last several years.  I do not regret doing the Explore internship at all, even though it was very difficult at times, and it changed my plans a lot.  I feel so much better prepared now for whatever kind of vocation I end up in, even being a medical doctor.  This is something that I am still very much in the process of, and I alternate between being very excited and confident that this is the right thing for me to do, and being very intimidated and thinking there is no way I could do it.  It has been a great exercise in seeking God’s leading and learning to trust in him, as well as evaluating my gifts and examining my motivations.

I am really excited about this WEMT course, as I have been wanting to do the EMT training since I was a sophomore in highschool.  The course that RMI offers was the one that really impressed me when I was looking at different WEMT programs, because of its advanced level of training, and with it teaching each step of the EMT training with the wilderness context in mind, not just doing the standard urban EMT training and then adding on a wilderness upgrade.  I just got the textbook for it today and started reading it.  It is an EMT-Intermediate textbook, and is almost 1,600 pages!

Alright, well that is all I can write for now, but more is on its way!

PS The mountains in the title refers to my family vacation in Canmore as well as a daytrip I did with Tim Andries, and the logs refers to my job, working for a log home construction business.

I have now emerged from the world of Explore and am starting to re-enter the rest of the world. I just finished my fourth week of classes at Praire Bible College as a senior, finishing a Bachelor of Arts in Ministry with a double major in Outdoor Education and Leadership. As I have time… (that’s not promising much) I will be adding pictures and stories from the last few years to this website. I will post each time there is a significant addition. So far I have only worked on the Explore section. Seeing as almost my entire life over the last three years has consisted of the Explore program, I thought this was the place to start. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of what I have been up to.