One thing you get to look forward to after your second year of med school is the “Boards.” My friends and I made a pact that nobody is allowed to talk about the boards until after Thanksgiving.  However, we have broken that rule multiple times already.  We try to get around it by saying the “B Word” instead.  I am definitely gonna be in trouble for posting this…

Anyways, all I know about the B word is that I have to take it in June, it is really hard, and it apparently tests really random things.  It always makes me laugh when one of my professors will stop in the middle of a lecture and say, “This is board-relevant,” or “This is high yield for the boards,” because it is always some really random fact that they are only telling us because it is on the Boards…not because we really need to know it.  Things like “Olfactory neuroblastomas are associated with Trisomy 8,” or “Amiodarone and bleomycin are known causes of interstitial lung inflammation”  I don’t even know what amiodarone IS, but apparently I need to know that it can cause interstitial inflammation because somebody decided that it is going to be on the Boards.

Nevertheless, I always highlight and star whatever they say and try to file said random fact into a special folder in my brain I have started for the B word.  I haven’t officially started to worry about the B word, but I can definitely see that happening sometime in the future.  If those are the kind of facts I am going to need to know, it might not go so well.

I don’t even know what I need to score on the B word to pass.  All I know is that it is coming whether I want it to or not…