I thought initially that this quarter would be pretty light since it involves only 5 classes (with 2 midterms and 4 finals). However, it turns out that these classes involve lots of busy work. Here's the breakdown:

1) Practice Management III - One midterm, a final, and a project
2) Contact Lenses Grand Rounds - Weekly quizzes, grand rounds every Tues night, a case presentation, and a case report
3) Ocular Disease Case Management - Weekly quizzes, weekly homework, and a cumulative final that spans Ocular Disease I-III
4) Health Promotion - Quizzes every other week, a final, and a project that is broken up throughout the quarter
5) OHP III - this is the lightest load, with one midterm and one final

Of course, this is on top of 12-16 hours of clinic a week. Even though there's a lot of busy work, it seems that the hardest class will be Ocular Disease Case Management - basically every week we have a discussion that involves the instructor shooting off questions to the students, and if they get the question wrong, you get marked down. Basically, participation is graded, and you have to know your stuff pretty well.

Despite all of this work...I can't believe this is my last quarter of classes!!! Once Spring quarter is done (which I'm sure will fly by super quick), then it's off to rotations!

We're smiling wide because we're done with our last day of NBEO Part I!

So this is how our national board exam went...NBEO Part I involves four 3.5 hour sessions of testing, 125 questions each, for a total of 500 questions, and each day involves two sessions. The times are 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM, then a 1.5 hour break, then 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM. My classmate and I left early (at about 7:15 AM) on both days since we didn't want to risk being late at all, even though the location took about 10 minutes from where we lived. Ironically, one of my classmates happened to leave his lights on inside his car for a couple of days and he discovered that this battery was dead on the morning of the first day. Luckily he woke up early and still made it over to the testing site with plenty of time.

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The 2-day marathon starts tomorrow!!! I'll be doing some light studying today then this evening I'm going to take it easy and decompresss. Wish me luck!