I chose to take my Step 2 Clinical Skills exam in Los Angeles because my younger sister lives there, and…why not?! After taking Step 2 Clinical Knowledge back home in New York, heading to Kansas City for the American Academy of Family Physicians National Conference, and a couple relaxing days hanging with my sister in LA, I buckled down and focused on the reason for the visit out west.
Traffic in LA is notoriously awful, so I gave myself over two hours to drive my sister’s car the estimated one hour to my exam. I had planned to stop for some coffee at the McDonald’s down the road from my sister’s apartment en route to the exam, which is when things turned sour: while attempting to pull into the parking lot, I ran straight into the curb! After hearing a loud bang, I carefully pulled into the parking lot and quickly learned I had given myself a flat!
As you can imagine, it was not an ideal situation. The exam was stressful enough, but now I wasn’t even sure how I was going to get to my exam!
I thought fast and drove my sister’s car with a flat tire back to her apartment, ran up and told her what was going on (her face of concern and fear for me was the sweetest), and called an Uber. I somehow made it to my exam with 15 minutes to spare, and we were able to deal with the flat tire once I got back home. Luckily, the exam went a lot more smoothly than my trip to the testing center did!
When preparing for Board exams, we are often advised to have a backup plan for transportation (have a friend on call, Uber/Lyft downloaded on your phone, a taxi number in your address book) in case disaster strikes on the day of the exam. I never took this warning seriously, but after having lived through an almost Board exam horror story, I highly recommend everyone have a backup plan just in case!
