Psalms 13

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him, ” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. 

Emphasis added.

This Psalms says what's on my heart tonight. I'm comforted, because despite any storms in my life, the Lord has been good to me. No foe, no enemy can take him away from me.

The city that never sleeps

As a sort of final hurrah of my summer vacation, my friend H invited me to visit her new home, NYC, for a few days! Twas mucho fun! I didn't take too many pictures but here are some parts of our adventures..

The first full day I was there, there were preview performances of shows for the upcoming fall Broadway season at Bryant Park. We decided to check it out, and despite the heat, it was worth it just to see the Mamma Mia cast perform. You'll see my friend and myself laughing in the beginning of the vid at how COMMITTED the guy in the mustard yellow shirt is to the performance! He is so into it! Love it. Sorry for the shakiness and my constant zoom adjustment though. :(

 

We made a stop at my smarty pants friend's school, Columbia. This area reminded me of the Lawn at UVA.

Okay. So about this musical.. I knew I wanted to see a Broadway show while I was in NY, and had a list all ready to go of possible ones I was interested in. H thought we should go to the theaters the day before to scope out the availability of each show, and whether it was likely that we would be able to see it for cheap. This was the first and only place we stopped by, because the man we spoke to that worked there hyped it up for us, telling us that tickets were sold out until next year, and people coming out of the theater said it was hands down the best show they'd seen. We were sold! Hence, we were there the next day from 2:30pm-7:00pm waiting in line for standing tickets, and excitedly, were able to get them..

But like most things that are hyped up, this did not meet expectations. I still can't tell if I am disappointed because it didn't live up to what was advertised, or if it was just a show that I wasn't crazy about, regardless. It does have some merit though-there are a few hilarious scenes and characters, and some of the songs are pretty good.

The line I stood in for 4.5 hours

There was also a lottery for front row/balcony seating. Didn't win.

Times Square never gets old.

Back home. Thought it was a cool scene of the train station.

We also ate A LOT and had fun just people watching in the subway, Central Park, and other parts of the city. Most importantly though, I was glad that I was able to hang out with my buddy, even just in her apt, since I don't get to see her in person too often.

School starts tomorrow for me. Praying that this year goes well!

NBDE 1 done!

I took the first part of my dental boards on July 13, and after a couple of weeks of cruel uncertainty, I got a letter last week saying I passed! Praise God!

In case some dental student stumbles upon this blog looking for NBDE Part 1 advice, here’s what I used and how I studied. I know I was Googling like a madwoman for any help while I studied, and came up with very little that wasn’t an advertisement or geared toward international students who, according to the random forums I would get weirdly sucked into and panic over, study for six months to a year straight to take the test. Uh no. I had less than a month for this.

How long did I study?
-I took about 20 “hardcore” days to study. I was in a Pathology course this summer as well, and while I tried to study for both that class and boards, boards definitely took a back burner while I was taking the class. So I didn’t really start until school was officially out.
-By “hardcore”, I mean a minimum six hours of uninterrupted studying a day. A few days it would be less, but most of the time it was the norm. Also, I basically said goodbye to a social life. Fourth of July was a bust, and friends/family got used to me answering the phone in a whisper because I was in the library so much. 

What did I use?
-Dental Decks, 2012-2013 edition, but I think they're basically all the same.

Not my picture. Thanks internet.

-Board Busters, first edition, courtesy of my generous roommate. There's a second edition, but unless they're correcting for the atrocious spelling errors from the first edition (have these people never heard of spell check? It's pretty bad), there's no need to pay more for the second edition.

Again, not my picture. And again, I used 1st ed.

-Old tests. This was probably most useful in getting used to how the questions would be asked, and simulating the actual test.

-Wikipedia. When you're in the thick of all this material and you want to remember that little tidbit from yesterday's study session, this is your best friend.

I wouldn't suggest more than three main sources of study material (not including Wikipedia), because 1. there's only so much material that one can memorize in a few weeks, so any extra info that may be in other sources will just be that-extraneous, and on the flipside 2. there's probably going to be a lot of overlap, so it's not necessary and it'll be easier to stay organized.

How did I study?

-I initially started with the Decks, but when it got boring/confusing after a point, I started reading Board Busters to get the general outline of the subject, and then used the Decks to quiz myself and glean any info I might have missed from the book.

-About a week before my test, I started taking practice exams, 200 questions at a time, while finishing going through Decks/Board Busters in between. I then went over questions I got wrong to make sure I understood the concept.

-Prayed a lot. Asked others to pray for me.

And after all of this, I took the exam. I actually pushed back the date (originally supposed to take it July 9), and I think those extra days helped. Also, I used the entire eight hours to take the test. There were a ton of questions I didn't feel confident about, and didn't feel confident about the results coming out of the exam. Thankfully, though, the test is now just pass/fail and not scored, so even though there's a high chance I barely made it over the threshold, I still made it and if I can, definitely anyone can. ;)