I am very happy to have passed my CS exam,with high performance, I took my CS on June 28th, in Philadelphia only 2 IMG there, everyone else was AMG grad. I thank god this is over, i would like to thank this forum, study partners, Goldusmlereview cs review workshop, UW and FA, I thought I'd give back a little, and help ease your minds the most I can. Because before receiving my CS results today. I was very anxious about getting my CS result especially with extra 1 week wait. Its not an easy pass, I don't think anyone walks out thinking they did perfect. I took out a total of 20 days for the CS prep time, I felt the gold cs workshop helped me the most, their Sps were very similar to the exam and they pinpointed what mistakes I was making. Although the day before any test, I try to relax, and just look over things I tend to forget. I felt confident walking in for a variety of reasons with exposure to the SPs and intense 1on1 practice helped alot in conditioning me and i spent alot of time with study partners.
I thought it was going to be an EASY test. I was done with my step 1 and I had just finished and passed my step 2 ck with results that I was quite happy with. And history taking and dealing with patients has always come easy to me. and 2ndly. I studied abroad, in a country where I had to learn the native language in order to communicate with patients and pass my finals. It was a hard task, the locals didn't know a word of english, which is my first language. Trust me it wasn't easy at all. So i know how many of you feel going in and communicating with a patient in english if it isn't your first language or your not comfortable with it.My clinical skills and other aspects were quite good, my medical school trained me well in that aspect.So I walked in to the test center, thinking this is gonna be easy, I get to speak in English finally.. how hard could it be.. if i could do it , in another language, this should be simple. With the First patient, the nerves hit my hand starts to shake I dont know why, patient introduced themselves as soon as i walked in, perhaps the patient noticed the nervousness in my eyes after the 1st case I calmed down and aced the remaining 11 cases felt much better.gathered myself, and continued on,I kind of played the whole "actor" theme well i think, I pictured myself as an actor , saying the write lines, asking the write questions, performing the right maneuvers,
.I remembered to use the ophalmoscope for a case. so i went to grab it. coudln't get the light on. after messing with it.I didn't wanna waste time calling the proctor to fix it, as i was short of time already, so I pretended that the light was on .. and used it anwyays.So my exam ended. I left went down the elevator.for weeks I was thinking of the worse possible scenario of failing. just b/c Ive had friends who've gotten double 99's and failed the step 2 cs. so im like if they can fail anyone can.instead of worrying about everything we do wrong, i believe we are our own worst critics,think of everything we did rightlike for example I know performed well in alot of aspects, i was polite, i dealt well with the "hard to deal with patient" I made eye contact, I showed empathy,i washed my hands, i counseled, asked permission and all that good stuff.I dont think it's impossible to Pass. in fact, lookin back now that im done it seems quite simple,Even if you start the process of the CS thinking its going to be easy like I did, dont take it too lightly , You can mess up on the simplest of things,again for me. time management i can't stress enough was my biggest enemy.so that's my story, good luck on everyone waiting for the results and taking it in the new future
god bless you all for the help thanks for the help
edited by nasab.sarah on 8/25/2013

thanks for being my study partner all the best sarah

congrats

thank you. which systems would you examine in a case? did you examine only the pertinent or did you also examine other systems?

thanks sarah