This coming week is going to be pretty busy. On Tuesday we have a Strab midterm then a Low Vision lab practical in the evening. Since we don't have a reading week this quarter (due to boards), we will have to prepare early for our finals, which begin on Feb 9th...that's less than two weeks from today! Right after finals is the time I'll start to hit boards material hard...I'm planning to do a minimum of 6-8 hours a day until boards. One of our KMK board review instructors told us that boards is not necessarily a test of knowledge, but a test of hard work (something like that). In other words, lots of self-motivation is involved since the only real guide is yourself, and you don't necessarily have a class to follow or pre-set study schedule laid out for you. By the way, Dr. Cheatham of KMK told me that their review book will now be spiral bound - hopefully that will be easier to handle for the next year's KMK students. Well that's all for now, I'll be kept busy with the whirlwind of the coming week but stay posted for updates soon!

As I mentioned in my last blog, I took the KMK NBEO review course this past Friday thru Monday. Let me tell you a little about the people that teach this course. The name "KMK" is basically the initials of the three founders of the company, Dr. Kyle Cheatham OD, FAAO, Melissa Cheatham, MPAS, PA-C, and Dr. Kevin Wood, PhD. There is also an additional instructor, who is Dr. Wood's wife, and her name is Dr. Sarah Wood, OD, FAAO. Dr. Cheatham and Dr. Wood were good friends in college and decided to start up this company. Through their efforts, they were able to help raise school NBEO I averages. From what Dr. Cheatham told me, he said that last year, the average pass rate for KMK students is 91% (and the national pass rate is something like 75%)!

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Nothing really exciting going on lately, hence it's been a while since my last post...however we do have the KMK board review coming up in a few days - it's going to be 8/9 AM - 7 PM from Friday thru Sunday, then most of the day on Monday! It's going to be exhausting but hopefully it will be helpful. I'll let you know how it goes.

After a long and busy break, I'm back to school again. The past two weeks were filled with catching up with family time and doing wedding planning stuff - I didn't have as much time to stay home and relax but that's fine because I tend to get antsy when I stay home all day. With the beginning of the new year, I can't believe that I have only 1.5 yrs left! After I get through boards part 1 this March, it will pretty much be downhill from there. The next few weeks will be pretty busy since I have to squeeze in boards review between bouts of studying for lecture exams. Fortunately SCCO gives about a month of time off (besides clinic hours) before our board exam.

Also I signed up for this board review course by KMK. Basically it involves a huge boards review book and a few days of in-class review, which will take place mid-January. Since our boards are now taken later (i.e. August of 3rd year before, and now March of 3rd year) and the structure has been changed, I'll see how it goes and tell you if it worked out for me. So basically, there's very little information as to how exactly the questions will be presented because the NBEO said they made it more clinically relevant, vs rote memorization type questions. My class, as the first to take this restructured exam, is pretty anxious since there is very little to practice with as far as sample problems. So all we can do is just review our material and see how it goes...!