Three exams down, I’m sitting here waiting for Monday and preparing for Wednesday. Tomorrow, cumulative final exam scores will be posted and I’ll find out if I have passed Course Four, or if I’ve failed and required to remediate over the upcoming summer.

Getting to this point has been a long week.
Monday: practical.
Wednesday: Course Four exam three.
Friday: cumulative course final.

Quite drained post-exam Friday, spent most of Saturday outside in a hammock. Back at it today— will take some serious effort to remember or relearn the material from earlier in the year, but I’ll manage. It’s my final obstacle to summer… Assuming that I passed Course Four.

That’s a big asterisk, though I can’t do much about it anyway. I’ll find out tomorrow if my work paid off, if my study grind was effective. It has been disappointing to note the lack of correlation between the input effort and the output exam scores. Earlier in the year, I was quite cavalier about my exam performance, and able to skirt by the pass/fail mark without much effort. Now, I am quite under the gun, flailing a few points below passing, and it seems all my muster adds up to a ‘barely pass’.

As long as I pass, I’ll be happy. Even if I don’t pass, not the worst thing in the world to remediate. Although, my summer would have a lot more adventures if it lacked a remediation! I’ll be able to soak up the sun and revel in nature.

It feels like I’ve gone from fall right back into summer— entering the med school tunnel back in July, I now see the end and realize it’s already the middle of May. To a New Englander, the seasons haven’t shifted nearly enough to reflect the passage of time. The end of winter is marked by the final snows melting, and the summer starts once everything has warmed up. I miss formal seasons, and Tampa goes from really hot in the summers to dry and hot in the winters. It’s almost hypnotic, the lazy shift from fall to summer and back again. Time passes very differently down here.

This will be my final foreseeable Tampa summer, as I’ll be up in Lehigh Valley, PA by this time next year. I’m excited to get back to a temperate part of the country, where I’ll see that snow and watch it melt. I’m also mindful of my last tropical summer: I’ll be roadtripping for about five or six weeks, going out west to CA and up north to my NH home, so my remaining time in FL will be exploratory and joyful in nature.

At this odd juncture between the end of MS1 and the start of my final summer, between studying for my final final and unsure if I’ll be remediating failed coursework, things are quite good. It’s a practice to enjoy where you are, rather than where you will be— otherwise you spend the weeks leading up to an exotic vacation worrying about preparations, and all the time at the destination concerned about the state to which you’ll return.

I’ve repotted a struggling succulent, taken out the trash, and washed a full sink’s worth of dishes. Today has already been a good day and regardless of how the exam report unfolds, tomorrow will be fine. Just one step at a time.

Long Form Sundays

• On the last three steps (or maintaining discipline as MS1 ends)
• On the rhythms of life and riding the wobble (or the end of my CrossFit Gaspar journey and the start of Jiu Jitsu)
• On being alone versus being lonely (or coming to grips with the absence of invitations)

On Death Podcast

• With Jasmine Kashkoush
• With Carly Waldman
• With Preethi Rajan