"Surviving Exams" by MSIH first year blogger Tamara Kliot

We finished our first semester exams and are currently on break. As I flew back home, I couldn’t help but think, that means I’m 1/8 an MD! For many of us, this day felt so far away. Exam grades are trickling in and second semester of medical school is becoming an approaching reality.  I have been able to reflect on this past semester with some distance between those intense weeks of eat, sleep, study, exam, repeat. Here are a few tips to survive first semester exams (to future 1^styears)!

1.      Draft a Supportive Team

The amount of information you are expected to know come finals is well, to say the least, a lot and a bit overwhelming. It is close to impossible to catch all the important details mentioned in class and studying this vast amount of information is much more fun when you are around other people. Find a few people in class that you can study with, be it talking about material you don’t understand, reviewing the stuff you know, teaching each other concepts, or just sitting next to each other while you each work in complete silence. Exams can be overwhelming and isolating, but it doesn’t have to be if you find the people you work best with and develop a plan. Check out this fun picture a friend drew while I was studying immunology! I will never forget the unique mechanism Tuberculosis uses to evade the immune system.

2.      Visit the Shuk Often

It’s really easy to fall into unhealthy eating habits during finals. I don’t know why, but I’m always craving large amounts of sugar and salt when exam time rolls in.  Cooking becomes more of a hassle and vending machines seem like a good alternative. Going to the Shuk is an awesome way to fill your refrigerator with brain food. With tons of fruits, veggies, and meats there is bound to be something you will want to eat. Going to the Shuk is also a great way to stay connected with reality, since its always bustling and full of life on Friday mornings. There’s no better snack then fresh strawberries from the Shuk to jumpstart your studying, I’m mean just look at them.

3.      Take Breaks, Unplug, and Recharge

You can’t study all the time. You’ll burn yourself out at some point. Take some time to “do you”. Be it hosting a meal with friends, having dinner at your favorite pizza place, playing bananagrams (my personal favorite), going to the gym, running  through the Narnia of Beer Sheva, or taking a trip to Jerusalem to learn more about infectious disease control. Figure out what you need to do to recharge before exam day and make time for it. Check out everyone’s’ smiles on a mandatory study break our class had in Jerusalem.

4.      Find a Good Study Spot 

When classes end and self-structured studying becomes your 9-5 (or much later) job, its important to find a place where you can focus and work, a place that fits your study habits. For some, studying at home is great, but for others leaving the distractions of their apartment is important. If you like to draw things out, find a classroom. If you like to talk it out, find a public space or coffee shop. If you like complete silence, check out the libraries on campus. You might have to get a little creative during Shabbat (as the library and many other places close), but finding a place you can study consistently is crucial for exam success.

5.      Practice, Practice, Practice

No matter how well you think you know the material, practice is key. We have a lot of NBME (National Board of Medical Education) style final exams and there are loads of practice questions you can do that are written like the ones you’ll see on the final and again on the Step 1.  The only way to stay calm and destroy finals is by knowing your enemy (the exam) really well. Don’t be scared and throw yourself into questions as early as possible. You’ll be thankful you did later.

Saying "Good-bye" to Israel and the 1st Year of medical school...until August by blogger of the month Maia Reiley

I had thought that the days after our exam would be a leisurely time to go to the pool, read, eat lots of falafel and hummus, tie up loose ends, and pack a few things to take back to the US. Instead, it has been a hectic couple of days trying to get the apartment squared away so that we can move out in August, running around to the clinic and pharmacy, squeezing in last minute visits to the people with whom I've grown close over the last ten months and generally feeling guilty about any time not spent preparing for something else. Hectic is not to say bad, though. I finally have my very confusing vaccination history figured out, I took a practice mefloquin pill to make sure that malaria prophylaxis won't make me hallucinate, I can (guiltily) leave the rest of the apartment logistics to my roommates, and I took a lovely walk to the outskirts of Beer Sheva with the mother and daughters of a family I've gotten to know. The northern part of Beer Sheva is on an incline, so if you walk up past the neighborhood of Ramot Bet, you can look out across the desert landscape and appreciate the uniqueness of the city. There is also a hill to hike up, but the children had school the next day, and it would have taken too long. Sorry for the lack of picture; you'll have to come see it for yourself before the mayor's aggressive urbanization overtakes the view.

I'm waiting for my flight to New York to leave now. Today is my first time departing from Ben Gurion airport, and what an experience it is. Waiting in line to check in, I noticed some fun cross-cultural interactions, like a returning New Yorker yelling at an old lady for trying to crowd him in line. I'm not sure how long he's been in the country. Maybe he never got off the tour bus if he hasn't figured out that, in Israel, there is nothing abnormal about people fighting to get ahead in line.

A word to the wise: if you are leaving on a busy Thursday and you have visa stamps from any of the countries surrounding Israel, you may want to show up even more than three hours ahead of time. I suspected there would be delays as soon as the young man checking my passport and boarding pass said “so, tell me about Egypt.” Rather than joining a general line for security, the airport attendants check the sticker on your passport and direct you to a specialized security line. Although there were only about fifteen people ahead of me (“how efficient, this will go quickly,” I thought), due to the extremely scrupulous inspection of every carry-on item, this turned out to take the better part of two hours. Luckily, there was no reason to detain me, so I made it through passport control and got to my gate a full ten minutes before the scheduled boarding time. Sadly, though, this means that I don't have the chance to hang out by the fountain in the center of the airport and send lots of “thank you” emails and irritating “guess what completely mundane thing just happened, which I find suddenly fascinating because I'm stuck in the airport” texts to people.

Oh well, with that, I must say good-bye to Israel and my first year of medical school. I'll be back in August for more adventures. 

A reflection on the first year of medical school: A dedicated professor, small class size and themed dress by blogger of the month Maia Reiley

Today was our last exam. Goodbye to the 6^th floor of Soroka, goodbye to Caroline House, goodbye to the hallways of Deichman, until we start (or technically, continue) 2^nd year in the fall (well, late summer)! The last few weeks, we have been studying hematology with Dr. Moser. He is a very dedicated professor and also a bit of a hero. Shortly before we began our hematology block, he returned from a mission to supply medical care to people in Nepal who had been affected by the earthquake. One day during lunch, he was kind enough to give us a presentation on his time there and field all sorts of questions about the reality of being on a mission. When he is not giving a lecture, he often sits in on other professors so that he can use our classroom time more efficiently when we have a session with him. He is also a vocal supporter of problem based learning, so here is some visual documentation of students teaching students.

One of the nice things about having a small class is that when you walk out of an exam, there is always someone waiting outside. Although most people will say they don't like to talk about the exam once it is over, I think we all benefit from a feeling of solidarity. Even if you are the first one out of the room, there is usually a professor or a proctor who will ask you how it went, what your next block is, or where you are going for the summer. Generally, we all wait outside and chat, then head off to celebrate or pick up whatever we dropped when we entered exam mode. Some people basically had their bags packed and headed to the airport after the test, so today's post-exam hangout doubled as a time to give out hugs and promises to catch up when we see each other in August.

At some point during the last semester, the class go-getters decided that we should have themed dress up days. Yes, this is medical school. Obviously, for our hematology final, we were all supposed to wear red (get it, red like blood?)

Here we are, a little over ¼ of the way to being licensed doctors...

Taking time to enjoy the sights, and the cats, amidst the crunch of finals, by Blogger of the month Maia Reiley

That dazed feeling of being nearly done with 11 months of what you always wanted to do…

We have one more week of class before our final final, and I know that the collective sigh of relief our whole class breathes will be tempered, at least from my corner, by a tinge of sadness. I will be grateful not only that it will be over, but also that it will have happened.

Back to the present moment, though. It is springtime in Beer Sheva (well, high summer by any normal person's thermometer), and there are a thousand kittens to mark the season. Leaving the hospital, going to the SuperSal or the vegetable stand, I will infallibly be surprised by some tiny cats making tentative steps from under a ramp or behind a railing. This type of unsolicited cuteness exponentially increases the amount of time I spend running errands.

Here is an example:

In other news, we took a trip North and saw some very pretty sights, including the Baha'i gardens in Haifa and the ruins of Caesarea. Although I love living in Beer Sheva and the unique perspectives it offers, seeing a beautiful city on a hill overlooking the ocean reminds me that I eventually want to move back near the water.

As an illustration of why, here's a throwback picture from Passover. We took a few buses down to Dahab on the Sinai coast to learn to scuba dive. The Sinai is basically a barren wasteland, in which I wouldn't want to wander for 40 minutes, let alone 40 years, but the Red Sea is a miraculous paradise full of beautiful life forms. As this year wraps up, I am already looking forward to returning to the Sinai and planning new adventures in this amazing part of the world.

But for now, back to the coagulation cascade.

Julia's Top Ten List for Finals, by blogger of the month Julia Rubin-Smith

As November blogger (and December blogger ninja) Ross Green mentioned in his last post, Caroline House is a place where many of us spend a lot of time, especially during exams. For the most part there is a routine to what goes on here, with few surprises (unlike the study room in the student center on the main campus, where a stray cat once climbed onto my laptop keyboard and started inadvertently typing a nonsensical email to my mother). Here are 10 things you can count on seeing here every day:

1) Security guards. Caroline house has security guards on duty around the clock. In fact, it seems that every 15 minutes there is a new one! This serves two purposes: one, keeps them alert. Two, when your dad comes to visit, and tries to marry you off to one of them, the embarrassment will be fleeting. (Hi Adie’s dad!) 

2) Israelis. For those of you who don’t know, Caroline House is the student center for the BGU Faculty of Health Sciences, which includes MSIH as well as the Israeli medical and health sciences students. Israelis who study in Caroline House can be counted on to be there between noon and 7pm, and to be speaking in their “outdoor” voices. The chatter is punctuated by a wide variety of jaunty cell phone ring tones, adding some much needed music to our days.

A typical study table layout. Please don't judge us -
we're very busy, and the Indian restaurant delivers!

3) Junior Israelis. A number of Israeli students tutor local children in math and English. The layout of Caroline house is conducive to tutoring small groups so they congregate here between the hours of 3 and 5pm. I’ll let you imagine what that does to the activity level in the study room.

4) Free dinners. After a few days of studying at Caroline, we noticed an unexplained influx of med students at 6:55pm every day. Turns out, the snack bar upstairs closes for the day at 7pm, at which point the friendly attendant gives away leftover sandwiches, pastries, and soup to beggars 

med students. A great way to save money, though not great for our waistlines!

5) Sweatpants. These are mandatory study accessories for MSIH students. Really, they’re the height of fashion. Some of us have even started sporting BGU sweatshirts, which really round out the outfit. 

6) Sleeping med students. Many of us spend the majority of our days here during exams. We all cope with this in different ways, from bringing our own kum kums (electric tea kettles) to taking cat naps on the couches (and in some cases on plastic chairs). You can also frequently find sleeping med students in the classrooms (during breaks, of course), but that’s a subject for another time.

7) Fantastic parking jobs. See picture. No need for further explanation, I think.

Why would you park there?

8) Sun patches. Now that it’s winter (though it was a balmy 76 degrees today), the sun sets around 4:30pm. I usually go outside for a “sun break” around 3, at which point there is generally one patch of sun on the grass to stand in. On weekends I have this sun patch gloriously to myself. On weekdays the sun patch is completely filled with Israeli students, all standing together and packed tightly as sardines. I don’t know how they do it, but not a single one is ever pushed off the patch and into the shade.

9) Mess. We are slobs. Period. But hey, at least we clean up after ourselves when we leave!

10) Chocolate. Someone ALWAYS brings chocolate. Honestly, I don’t know how we would get through exams without it. Sometimes, when it is not obvious where the chocolate is, an email will go out asking who brought it today. We’re never disappointed! -blogger of the month Julia Rubin-Smith