Dear Answer Key: STFU

After studying for the MCAT for almost two months, if there's one thing I'm growing tired of besides studying the MCAT, it's sassy answer keys.

and not the good kind of sassy

It goes like this: I see a problem. Oxidation-reduction equations. Titration curve problems. Whatever. And I flip out, because that's what any normal human does when confronted with a chemistry problem. And then a tiny neuron at the back of my brain goes: no! no wait. . .

yes, I have anteater-shaped neurons

And suddenly I know I know how to solve the problem. I am an oxidation-reduction genius. I could titrate HCl with my hands tied behind my back and my eyes blindfolded. I am Einstein and I am taking the MCAT and nothing has ever been easier. And, champ that I am, I go to the next problem. And the next. And the next. And then I hit the answer key. And I have gotten almost every question wrong.

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Everything is in vain."

Alright. It's OK! I say to myself, attempting to back away from a panic attack as if from a cliff. It's OK! This is a hard test and you're still figuring things out. This doesn't mean you won't be a great doctor. Who are these MCAT creators, anyway? Who do they think they are? Do they think the complexities of the doctor-patient relationship can be condensed to a multiple choice test? What is medicine coming to?!?


In a matter of minutes, I have effectively transformed all my anxiety into anger. Or what I think is anger, until I read the answer key explanations, and realize the true nature of fury.

 and it looks a little like this

Example Answer Key Solution:

1. (D) This is a very straightforward item that asks us to determine the identity of Compound A. Simply by looking at Figure 2.0 we can easily deduce that the 766 cm IR signal is from a meta-disubstituted aromatic compound that includes a highly electrophilic halogen and an isopropyl group.

bitches be flippin'

First of all: WHAT. 

Second of all: "Straightforward?" "Simply?!" "EASILY DEDUCE?!?" Don't even play, answer key. There ain't a single straight, simple, or easy thing about that problem. (Nor, in fact, is there anything homosexual, complicated, or prudish.) 

And so instead of rereading the problem, noting my mistake, and attempting to improve next time around, I begin to verbally abuse the answer key:

What are you without me, anyway? My stupidity is necessary for your very existence. You should be reveling in my ignorance, answer key! Screw you and your smarmy explanations! You know that in the real world you don't have all the answers. You couldn't last a single day in my shoes, answer key. I didn't take the MCAT to make friends. I can see straight through you. You can leave anytime you want to. Here, let me help you. . .

in the shallow end, where you belong

But you know what they say: the best vengeance is an MCAT score above a 33.

Organic Chemistry Is Hard (In All The Right Places)

I have a v. dirty dark secret: I love organic chemistry.

Yeah. I said it.

I. love. organic chemistry. o-chem. orgo. that class that everyone complains endlessly about. the course that turns pre-meds into anthropology majors. yes. that one. can't get enough. If I had my way, I'd draw resonance structures all day every day. and night. all night. no sleep. just resonance.

If I ruled the world (and for some reason the MCAT inexplicably continued to exist), the Bio section on the MCAT would be 75% orgo and 25% bio. You know why?

Because organic chemistry is sexy. 

see what I did there?

From day one I  knew that I was going to fall head-over-heels for organic chemistry; my genius of a professor began the first class by loftily throwing his scarf across the podium and announcing "no need to fear--in organic chemistry all we have to do is learn the choreography of the electrons' dance." My first thoughts were:

1. I love you.

2. You are so gay.

Over the period of the semester I was proven correct on both accounts--little did I know that the electron's dance involved a pole--and I derived infinite pleasure when the professor spent a substantial amount of time repeating the phrase "backside attack" while describing SN2 reactions.

didn't even see it coming

The point is, organic chemistry is by far the sexiest subject on the MCAT, and it's not just because the Kaplan Review book references "Hey Ya!" while describing immiscible solvents ("shaken like a polaroid picture"). It's because:

1. To the uninitiated eye, oxygen-containing compounds look like little people. Specifically, little people getting it on.

 if only I had the foresight to create this poster instead of this blog

2. Like a pair of lovers, organic chemistry uses a secret language. Except instead of "pumpkin," we call each other. . .

is that extensive nomenclature or are you just happy to see me

3. There's alcohol. Everywhere. 

I blame it on you

 4. All it takes is a little heat. . .

. . .to double in size

5. Or a cold finger. 

. . .to make her sublime

Like you may have predicted: this blog was a quickie. 

In conclusion--and only tangentially related--if you have to take the MCAT, at least you can take it while Marie Curie glares from your nether regions.

 

hey girl hey

Whats Thish Schwords?, Or I'm A Scientist Please Don't Ask Me To Read Anything

First: apologies for the blogging reprieve! I have, I am horrified to tell you, been too busy studying to make fun of how much I've been studying. But now I know how epoxides behave in acidic and basic media! And how to brominate a double bond in an anti-Markovnikov fashion! Facts sure to get me all the boys at next weekend's rager party.

especially this one

Just for shits and giggles, I brought along the Kaplan MCAT Verbal Review book to the library this afternoon for a little light reading in between pounding organic chemistry (motto: "Carbon Is A Whore") into my skull. And there, in the first section, was this sentence:

The MCAT Verbal section tends to be the scariest for students. . .but remember that Verbal is the section that is probably the most responsive to strategy.

First of all:

 I do not read books, Sam I Am/I do not read or give a damn/

except if it's on the Medical College Admission Exam

Second of all: "Most responsive to strategy?" What is the Verbal section--a drunk sorority girl? No. Let me tell you something top-ish secret-ish. Here is my no-fail strategy for doing well on the MCAT Verbal section: read the passage before you answer the questions.

go ahead and send me one. you know where I live

But seriously, as all of you know from reading this blog, I have a way with words. No strategy necessary--they just flop into my arms and I have my way with them. And if you're not convinced, let me tell you a fun fact: I majored in Writing in undergrad and am currently getting an MFA in poetry, so at least two large American Universities have declared officially that I do not suck at This Whole Literature Thing. So admittedly maybe it's a little biased of me to make fun of pre-meds who struggle with the verbal reasoning section. (But seriously: go become podiatrists already.) For realsies, though, you can't tell me that the verbal section is hard when everything you need is right in front of you (it's just like Dorothy said after waking from a coma). Looking at the passage is like looking at a treasure map with an X the size of your face. Truly.

For being so gifted in the ahhhhrts, however, I don't have that 14 in the bag. Here's another secret: while I don't always do as well as I could on the MCAT Verbal for the simple reason that the passages are deeply uninteresting, when I do do as well as I could on the MCAT Verbal, I always reference this meme in a clunky and incoherent manner.

blame it on the aaa aaa alcohol

And by "the passages are deeply uninteresting" I mean real deep, like wow look at all these fish with blinking body parts kind of deep. Here are some of those deep deep deep things you are likely to read about on an MCAT Verbal section:

1. A stance on a "controversial" political issue that is neither controversial nor interesting. Example: drug legalization. I mean, really. No one cares. Not even my highly politically-informed cat, Mittens Romney. 

just when you thought only canines were against you

2. An overly complicated explanation of a branch of philosophy, most likely dealing with aesthetics or the sublime. I mean, really. Don't think you can throw me off my game by quoting Kant. Change that Kant to a Kan, my friends. Philosophers are just men who spend too much time thinking and not enough time attending to their facial hair.
 

3. An exploration of Native American myths. I mean, really. I didn't think I signed up for the MMCAT (Medicine Man College Assessment Test).

4. A scientific article on geological formations and/or astronomy. I mean, really. There's a reason I'm becoming an expert on people and not an expert on rocks. (Though I know some days you may feel as if the "people" vs "rocks" venn diagram is actually a perfect circle.)

Now that you know what to expect for the passages, here are the top three questions you will likely encounter: 

1. The author of this passage would most likely agree with which of the following statements. This is when I use my lifeline number 3 to call up and ask the author myself. "Do you agree that Celtic folktales play an important role in the ethical development of our culture?" I ask. "Who the hell is this?" the author says.

2. In the context of this passage, the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious means. . .

you can do it, doc!

3.  All of the following would weaken the author's argument EXCEPT. One thing I resent about these questions is how the EXCEPT is in all caps. It's like yes, I see what you did there, negating all the things. No need to be so showy about it.

And so it goes. My point is, it's okay if you find the MCAT Verbal section more challenging than predicting the product of a reaction the length of your arm--we just can't be friends. Ever. No ifs ands or EXCEPTs.

Ideal Gas: Silent But Deadly

That chortling you heard from a few cubicles over? That was me, reading The Gas Phase chapter in my MCAT Chemistry Review Book.

let it all out, mr. president

It's true: I may be an accomplished poet/scientist. I may pay bills a week in advance. I may color-code my planner. I may only date men I'd want to marry. I may listen to Gregorian Chants. BUT (or, as I prefer, "AND") I consider fart jokes to be the crème de la crème of humor. And here, in my MCAT book, are so many gas jokes just waiting to squelch to the surface. 

The chapter begins with a description of The Gaseous Phase, which previously I thought of only as the rather fruitful hour after one eats a burrito. 

don't worry, stomach, it's just a phase

Apparently, however, there a few different types of gaseous phases, including Ideal and Non-Ideal. (Thesis title: "A Damaging Dichotomy of Beauty: An Argument for Unidealizing The Gaseous Male Gaze.") An Ideal Gas, I have discovered, is like an Ideal Woman in that they both occupy no volume.

. . .except in certain places, obviously

Assuming a gas doesn't act like, well, a gas, allows us to call it Ideal. Molecules of an Ideal Gas have no intermolecular forces and therefore interact about as much as New Yorkers on the subway (Motto: Ignore Everything). Once one has set these certain parameters of behavior i.e. made shit up, we can proceed to understand how that gas would act if it were Ideal, which it isn't, so, really, what's the point? It was then that I ripped up my notecards and asked my Ideal Woman to bring me a sandwich.

The golden equation for this chapter, reincarnated in every possible way over a series of 10 pages, is PV=nRT. The MCAT book suggests that I remember the variables of this Ideal Gas law by "sounding it out: 'piv-nert.'" (A "Pivnert" presumably being an adolescent pervert who has not yet reached his prime.) This mnemonic, I regret to say, is not the most useless one the book has offered so far. No, the Horrible Mnemonic Winner of the Chem Review book is probably the device offered to help me remember Avogadro's number: I should recall that Mole Day is celebrated on 6:02 on October 23.


Too bad all I can think of when I hear the words "Mole Day" is how our well-meaning high school chemistry teacher had our class sew moles from a cloth pattern, and how every day for weeks afterwards we would arrive to find the fabric animals placed, by boys who shall remain nameless, into increasingly creative sexual positions. 

close, but no post-coital cigar

Thankfully for the people studying nearby me this afternoon, the chapter on Gaseous States ended as quickly as it arrived. But not before the MCAT Book made its final, hilarious declaration: "Expect that the MCAT will treat gases with the level of attention that is appropriate to their importance in our physical lives." My juvenile sense of humor combined with my intimate knowledge of gastrointestinal activity (thanks, Crohn's disease) puts me smack dab, nail-on-the-head, miles away from the center of this Venn Diagram:

lucky legolas

If the MCAT actually treated gases with an attention "appropriate to it's importance in my life," the entire exam would be fart-based. And that, my friends, would truly separate the doctors from the pre-meds.

One Month Left Before The MCAT, Or Why I Have Turned Into A Bitch

I am not a naturally angry person; I'm much more comfortable becoming increasingly paralyzed by anxiety. But recently, everything has changed. Every heavy-breather, every person who gets to the front of the line and STILL doesn't know what kind of coffee she wants to order, every dirty pan in the kitchen sink, every pen that refuses to gush forth ink at the slightest press to the paper makes me want climb onto the nearest roof and shriek until my lungs give out. 

 a rough self portrait

To think that therapists spend trillions of hours a year trying to convince their patients to embrace their inner rage, when all those troubled people had to do was try and prepare for the MCAT.

I'm not sure what it is: the vast amount of information, the fact that no one around me has any idea what I'm doing or why I'm doing it, the vast amount of information, the pressure to succeed, the vast amount of information, or the vast amount of information. I mean, seriously, I'm pretty sure some dorkus sat down one night and was like: "just for shits and giggles, I'm going to try and condense four one-year classes into one six hour exam." It started as a joke. But suddenly the American Medical Academy of Whatever was all, "YES. Perfect! Exactly the sort of legal torture we've been looking for!" And the MCAT, with its fury-inducing confusing passages concerning selectivity for snail shell color and redox reductions, was unearthed from the underworld. And I wept. And I tore my hair. And I yelled at my mother. And I ate too many gummi bears.

 I am a neurosurgeon