It's done!

After a month of whining and complaining about how much I have to study for step 2 of the boards, it's done! I left the house at 8 this morning and drove to Portland (not so far in that I had to deal with rush-hour traffic), and was seated at a computer, which became my home for the next seven and a half hours. It was a joy.

Here's pretty much what happens: I go in, check in, make sure everything is in the computer correctly, listen to the rules, and follow one of the proctors to my computer. This is just at a testing site, not specific to the USMLE, so there are people there taking other exams--for example, I saw at least four family medicine doctors there for their recertification exams. So after signing in, there's a ten minute "orientation" on the computer, pointing out what each of the buttons on the screen means. Then the test begins. There are eight blocks of 46 questions, with an hour given for each block. There's also 45 minutes of break time to use at any point between the blocks. Any time that isn't spent answering questions goes toward the break time--you don't get more time on the next section if you finish one early. I'm a fairly fast test-taker, so I had time left over after each block, so I signed out and walked around the courtyard for a bit, cleared my head, and went back in. By the end, the proctors were very used to seeing me coming up and signing in/out. I did four blocks, broke for lunch, went for a bit of a walk (since I had so much break time built up already) and came back for my last four. By the sixth block, my brain was fried and I was doing all that I could to just read the questions each time instead of clicking a random answer, but I made it through. The score for this one will come in about six weeks.

In other news, I bought a car yesterday. It really wasn't planned. When Alex and I picked up the parents at the airport, Mom suggested going in and test driving some cars so I have an idea of what I'm looking for. Well, before I knew it, I was signing the paperwork for a 2008 Volkswagen Jetta. We're picking it up tomorrow, so pictures will probably appear sometime after that.