In this, my first installment of Residency Chronicles, I want to share with you how I ended up buying a car. As many of you know, in March I found out that I matched into residency in the US, so starting July 1st, I’ll be a brand new PGY-1 on the East Coast! In the US, life without a car is really difficult, so I knew that I would have to start thinking seriously about procuring a vehicle a few weeks ago. As I saw it, my options were: Buy new Buy used Lease For many, leasing is a great option but I knew I didn’t want to – I don’t like the idea of paying for something and ultimately not ownin ..read more

If you constantly feel like you don’t have enough time to achieve certain things in your life, then I think this exercise in time management is really the place to start. A lot of people are very inaccurate when it comes to estimating how much time they have for activities. I bet if you asked a random group of people why they don’t learn a new language, someone will reply that they “don’t have time,” but this exercise might go to show you that you do, in fact, have time. This exercise was really eye-opening for me, and so I created a free printable/downloadable worksheet that you can access an ..read more

New year, new me… or maybe, new year, same me, new useful skills? For me, the time around New Year’s is always special. I take some time to contemplate my life choices and map out my future, and then I try to divine how I can work to achieve my goals. I also always make resolutions. They never (ever) end up working out for the whole year, but I do them anyway, because 120 days of reading a book is still way better than 0, right? But for this blog post, I’d like to share four life-altering skills you can acquire this new year. They all take some work (all good things in life do, right?), but th ..read more

This month I am once again making January wallpapers…but otherwise, this month will be a strange one for me — the first month that I will take a deliberate break from Instagram, the first time since this account’s inception in 2018. I described the reason for my hiatus on my account, but the TL;DR version is that Instagram has become increasingly frustrating, and it has been impossible to reach my intended audience, regardless of the amount of work or effort I’ve put in, So for a little while — who knows how long — I am going to take a break from Insta and channel my energy into other things ..read more

A lot of people considering attending medical school are curious about what the process is like in various countries, so I’d like to talk about two regions that I get a lot of questions about. As a graduate of medical school in Europe, but having grown up in the United States, I have a little knowledge about both: let’s start with Europe first, which I know a lot of my American readers are rather unfamiliar with. I will only be discussing medical degree programs that teach in English. Most countries have medical schools for their own citizens, in which case the language of teaching is the loca ..read more

If you’re like me, you get discouraged when you don’t know how to make an impact as a medical student. Sometimes there are clinical rotations that are poorly organized and taught and you feel like even just being there is a huge waste of your time. I know the feeling, believe me. In this post, I’d like to share some of the things I do to try to make every rotation that starts off terribly a bit more useful. This blog post will have two parts: 1) how to make the most out of bad rotations and 2) how to be useful as a medical student. How To Make the Most Out of Bad Rotations Not every doctor is ..read more

This blog post is a compilation of the things I wish I had known going into preparations for the OET Medicine exam. Hopefully it’ll help you avoid some of the mistakes I made. A bit of context: as an international medical graduate pursuing residency in the United States, you need ECFMG certification. In order to qualify for that, you must take the Occupational English Test for Medicine (OET Medicine) and pass with a “Grade B” or higher (350 points or more on each of the four sections). THINGS TO KNOW First and MOST IMPORTANTLY: this is the thing that I did not realize until it was almost too l ..read more

For Step 1, I put together a set of notes on a Google Doc that I shared with those interested in it. For Step 2 CK, I made comprehensive notes over the past few months, which I unfortunately cannot share due to copyright reasons. I made those notes very detailed; these are much more high-yield and to-the-point. (We are referring to this document as a ‘snippet’ of my Step 2 CK notes because they don’t include the massively detailed UW notes I made during my first pass.) I will be making notes for the remaining couple hundred questions of UW first pass, as well as all of my 2nd pass of UW on Goo ..read more

MAKING CONNECTIONS 101 Everyone tells us that networking is so important but no one ever really teaches us how to do it. I’ve had no formal education in networking (in fact, I don’t think such a thing exists), so I’ve had to learn on my own. I am by no means an expert, and these are my own experiences in networking for my intended career in emergency medicine. I’m a medical student and so my advice is generally oriented to the medical field, and specifically to applying to residency. I do believe that the basic tenets of what I describe will be relevant to other specialties as well, be it law ..read more

Lecturio is one of the most well-known medical student resources, and until recently, one that I was entirely unfamiliar with. I’m excited to get a chance to explore the online platform and share some of my experiences with you, because I frequently get questions about whether or not I recommend it. Let’s dive right in. What is Lecturio? It’s an online platform that has two main pillars: the video library and the question bank. It covers the basic sciences and clinical medicine, and to my surprise, it also includes prep material for other exams (like COMLEX and MBBS), and it has preclinical m ..read more