In Which Alex Says “And” A Lot

I just took the National Board Dental Examination, Part I. And here’s the thing… the freakin’ thing takes over your mind. I was talking to a few of my classmates who also took it early, and I wondered aloud if they were experiencing what I had been: “In all of our lectures, do you keep picking up random facts and thinking damn, THAT’S what the answer was?!” They said that they too were experiencing this. They agreed: it is an unpleasant side effect of answering so many questions — your brain is constantly searching for the answers.

So, at the end of the day you sit there and think WOW I’m glad to be done with that. Then your brain says “well, you might have to take it again if it didn’t go well.” And then another part of your brain says, OK X percentage results in passing. Do you think you got that many right? Well, you think: I got Y percentage on that half practice test I took… that was good enough for passing. Yes, your brain replies: but the actual test was a hellish journey through arcane facts — do you think you did that well again? I really don’t know.

And then a part of you is so happy that it’s over for the time being that you’re just giddy. I stood in the kitchen, watching the bread for my sandwich toast… and I started thinking this thought: “Toast sure is great. Is there anything better than toast? Hot, crispy bread. Wow, toast is great. I should get the word out on toast.” And then I caught myself: “Heeeey now, you’re just happy that you don’t feel guilty every moment you aren’t studying for boards, because you took them!” And you circle back around to “But you might not be done studying — you might have to do the same thing all over again, but in the beautiful month of May.”

AAAAAAAHHHHHH.

I paid $265 to take this test on a computer, and it takes them 3 weeks to get the results back to me. THREE WEEKS. So, I anticipate I’ll be like this until then.

Right now, I’m sitting here on the couch next to Mykala, and our cat George is gently purring as he sleeps on my lap. I don’t care how I did.