I am extremely terrified of Neuroanatomy

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My memory already sucks though lol.
black and white/all or nothing thinking at its best :)

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a valid message.
 
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I'm joking, of course. The world would be a better place if we all took a Scotch (notice the singular) every evening.

Well that image just makes me feel even worse lol, my whole class is losing brain cells by the truckload and I'm still one of the worst student except for a few kids who flunked out (as I found out recently).

I hope you ARE joking...


Oh, and I didn't end up drinking, I decided to clean my room instead. I talk a big game about smoking and drinking, but I don't really do it much if at all.
 
Just be a man and grow a pair. You are worried about something new everyday.


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LOL

Ark, you're a funny guy but you need to get off the internet and not compare yourself with other people. Root cause of all your worries IMO.

Just be a man and grow a pair. You are worried about something new everyday.


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It's not so much that I'm comparing myself with other people, it's more that I'm just worried I fked up that exam even though I don't think I did. Also I'm just at a loss as to what more I can do. I mean, I'm studying regularly and keeping up, supplementing my work with Firecracker and First Aid, asking for help, and this is all I get for it?
 
It's not so much that I'm comparing myself with other people, it's more that I'm just worried I fked up that exam even though I don't think I did. Also I'm just at a loss as to what more I can do. I mean, I'm studying regularly and keeping up, supplementing my work with Firecracker and First Aid, asking for help, and this is all I get for it?

Yes, but are you being efficient with your time?
 
I know it sounds too easy to be true, but the chick that mentioned she just reviews the slides is kinda right. If you go to class (or watch online) everyday, take a few notes during the lecture, and fill in the gaps with wiki/Google you should be fine. The first time you go through each lecture just make sure you understand everything on each slide and if you don't get it the first time look it up online until you get it then move on. Once you understand an entire lecture if you just repeatedly go through the slides (each lecture at least 3 times before the test) you should be fine. I started doing this and went from bottom of the class to slightly above average, so it may work for you too. There seriously is something to the rule that people live by about going through everything at least 3 times, it seems like after that 3rd time it just clicks.
 
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Not enough, I suppose. But I don't have access to amphetamine or methylphenidate, so how can I improve on this?

Even if you had access to amphetamine and methylphenidate, you wouldn't become more efficient. You would just think you are bc you'd be feeling high - like a cocaine high. On the other hand you have the real risk of destroying your health.
 
Break down your study methods, and maybe we can help you?

What I do now:

Watch lectures at 2x speed
Review and make outlines of lectures, sometimes rewatching parts
Review notes
On the weekends, review the lectures (or just drink myself into a stupor)


What I plan to do in the future:

Watch lectures at 2x speed
Review and make outlines
Do Firecracker questions and ish
On Saturday, make more condensed outlines of the stuff I've done
On Sunday, quizzing and review

And drink myself into a stupor, of course.



Oh, and I finished the class with an 80%. Not the best, but I'm surviving.
 
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What I do now:

Watch lectures at 2x speed
Review and make outlines of lectures, sometimes rewatching parts
Review notes
On the weekends, review the lectures (or just drink myself into a stupor)

What I plan to do in the future:

Watch lectures at 2x speed
Review and make outlines
Do Firecracker questions and ish
On Saturday, make more condensed outlines of the stuff I've done
On Sunday, quizzing and review

And drink myself into a stupor, of course.

Oh, and I finished the class with an 80%. Not the best, but I'm surviving.

I think I found your problem.
 
What I do now:

Watch lectures at 2x speed
Review and make outlines of lectures, sometimes rewatching parts
Review notes
On the weekends, review the lectures (or just drink myself into a stupor)


What I plan to do in the future:

Watch lectures at 2x speed
Review and make outlines
Do Firecracker questions and ish
On Saturday, make more condensed outlines of the stuff I've done
On Sunday, quizzing and review

And drink myself into a stupor, of course.



Oh, and I finished the class with an 80%. Not the best, but I'm surviving.

This post will be long, so sorry. I just wanted to give you as much information as possible to help you out.

Studying is a technical skill. Remember that. Thus, it can be improved on, measured, what have you. To get the most out of one's study sessions, think of this equation: work accomplished = time spent x intensity of focus. So, replace low-intensity sessions with high-intensity sessions. Meaning, do not just simply review over notes, read the textbook w/o taking notes, (low-intensity), but develop practice and insight (high-intensity) with the information you're given. High-intensity sessions reap more results quickly than low-intensity sessions, so one can spend a much shorter amount of studying with high-intensity sessions that are broken up into smaller segments throughout the day/week once it becomes a habit, making one's learning process much more efficient and effective.

With the current plan you have, you definitely touched upon the 3 stages of studying that I see studying consists of: Coverage, Practice, Insight. Coverage is covering the material, through lectures, reading textbook, writing notes, or getting tutoring. Practice is testing yourself on the material, providing feedback on what you've learned and making you better understand the concepts through a problem-solving mindset. Insight is knowing the concepts to the point one can teach them back to someone, and insight is also the phase where one fixes any flaws, confusion, and kinks he/she/ze have in what they're learning.

So, for coverage, I would say along with watching the lectures, take flow-based notes. Flow-based notes are simply capturing the important ideas and details and finding the connections amongst them, awhile putting that information at the same time in your own words; you can use analogies/metaphors, diagrams, whatever helps you get the main ideas. This makes your listening and reading of the material much more active, because it makes the person put the information received into their own words, which helps in learning the information one time through if you're making the effort to understand it as it comes in. It's a difficult thing to do if you're used to writing word for word what the professor says, which also isn't bad; you can take flow-afternotes, which is compressing the information into flow-based notes after taking down everything in lecture. Having these notes with your outlines will definitely help you see what areas you understand and which ones are weak for you.

With practicing, the more questions you have that make you explain in a variety of ways (draw a diagram, explain the process, how is this connected to that, etc.) the better. With your questions, create mega-study guides, in which you connect the lecture notes and outlines with the questions you're doing. Have them stapled, paper-clipped, put in a folder, whatever. The goal here is that you have a portable study guide you can take anywhere, so you can review the questions, and go through the material and pinpoint the areas you don't understand based on the questions you struggled with as you're on the bus, waiting in line, driving in the backseat of a car, etc.

Finally, with the insight part, if there are things you still don't understand, use the QAT method (Question, Analogy, Test). Make a question of the topic you really don't understand, one that is deep yet simple. Then create an analogy that will help you answer this question. Then test the analogy to see if it is flexible and thorough enough to aid you in answering most, if not all types of questions on that topic. Then, there are mnemonics, compare and contrast, diagramming, anthropomorphization, whatever else you can get through. Finally, but also the most time consuming, is doing deep explanations of the topics. If you're unsure of what this may look like, here is a video:

After all this, to do a final check before the exam, maybe take 90 minutes creating a notes compression for the core concepts, if possible. And then, if you can get your hands on a practice exam, or with the questions you have/created, spend two hours completing and correcting one practice exam. By this time, if everything before this point has been done, you should be high-cruising and the notes compression and the practice exam should just show minor things that need to be tweaked.

Now, the practice, coverage, and insight stages don't really have to be done sequentially. Rather, a better way of doing this is to do each of the three steps for small sections as you move through the material. Each chapter or lecture, do coverage, then practice, and finally any insight steps if necessary. Doing the steps for smaller chunks will quickly give you feedback on your coverage strategy, indicating whether or not you're capturing the important information you need.

If there are things you simply must memorize, use Anki, make them flashcards, and go over them every day. Anki will definitely help you memorize, trust me. Look around the forum for Anki threads and how people have set it up their Anki flashcard.

And just a couple of more tips:

Handling Factually Dense Coursework
  1. Group related facts together.
  2. Translate facts into concepts. Sometimes you’ll only be required to learn a fact, but turning it into a concept, by using metaphors, helps extremely.
  3. Learn visual memory techniques such as linking, pegging and vocabulary association.
Summary
  1. Learn by connections, not by memorization.
  2. Learn things deeply the first time, don’t let confusion compound.
  3. Handle concepts by creating metaphors and analogies.
  4. Remember facts through association first, repetition second.

I hope this helps you out, b/c you do seem like a student who simply is struggling on how to refine their learning methods, and not that you're truly dumb. Moreover, it seems that you may also want to develop "hard focus", which you can read about it Haruki Murakami's book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. But, considering you must be busy, see this article: http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/06/22/on-the-value-of-hard-focus/

If these study tips may not be of your fancy, go to the blog http://drnjbmd.wordpress.com/, which chronicles the journey of med students and has a bunch of great study and work ethic articles as well.

Good luck! :hello:
 
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This post will be long, so sorry. I just wanted to give you as much information as possible to help you out.

Studying is a technical skill. Remember that. Thus, it can be improved on, measured, what have you. To get the most out of one's study sessions, think of this equation: work accomplished = time spent x intensity of focus. So, replace low-intensity sessions with high-intensity sessions. Meaning, do not just simply review over notes, read the textbook w/o taking notes, (low-intensity), but develop practice and insight (high-intensity) with the information you're given. High-intensity sessions reap more results quickly than low-intensity sessions, so one can spend a much shorter amount of studying with high-intensity sessions that are broken up into smaller segments throughout the day/week once it becomes a habit, making one's learning process much more efficient and effective.

With the current plan you have, you definitely touched upon the 3 stages of studying that I see studying consists of: Coverage, Practice, Insight. Coverage is covering the material, through lectures, reading textbook, writing notes, or getting tutoring. Practice is testing yourself on the material, providing feedback on what you've learned and making you better understand the concepts through a problem-solving mindset. Insight is knowing the concepts to the point one can teach them back to someone, and insight is also the phase where one fixes any flaws, confusion, and kinks he/she/ze have in what they're learning.

Wow, there's a lot of good advice here.

The final unit of our year has started, and I'll definitely try to implement what you've covered.
 
Wow, there's a lot of good advice here.

The final unit of our year has started, and I'll definitely try to implement what you've covered.
Oh, you still hadn't figured out that 20 minutes of intensive studying is better than 2 hours of passively flipping pages? Cute.
 
Oh, you still hadn't figured out that 20 minutes of intensive studying is better than 2 hours of passively flipping pages? Cute.

Looks like y'all been sippin on dat dere haterade.

Here's the thing. Quizzing yourself is hard enough. But it's not nearly as hard as figuring out the things to quiz yourself on. You quiz yourself on things that you think are important, only to find out that you guessed wrong on what was high yield, and in the professor's eyes you didn't study at all. That's when you start passively reviewing your notes, because at least then you're casting the net wider, and you might come across things the professor deems is important.
 
Dude, you have really got to nail down how to study most efficiently while you're still a MS1. If you don't have this nailed down by the start of M2, you are not going to have a good time.
 
Dude, you have really got to nail down how to study most efficiently while you're still a MS1. If you don't have this nailed down by the start of M2, you are not going to have a good time.

MS-1 is over, and I'm already not having a good time haha.. And if I had nailed down how to study effectively, we wouldn't be having this conversation lol. If I haven't figured it out by now, I don't think I ever will.

But that's ok. Because I don't need to get into PRS or ENT, I just want to get by, do my time, and get out alive.

Some people have told me that I should consider dropping out of medical school now, and that if I'm not a good student now, I will not pass STEP1 with a good enough score to match into a residency. Perhaps they are right. But I'm good at surviving life. I think I'll survive this too.
 
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MS-1 is over, and I'm already not having a good time haha.. And if I had nailed down how to study effectively, we wouldn't be having this conversation lol. If I haven't figured it out by now, I don't think I ever will.

But that's ok. Because I don't need to get into PRS or ENT, I just want to get by, do my time, and get out alive.

Some people have told me that I should consider dropping out of medical school now, and that if I'm not a good student now, I will not pass STEP1 with a good enough score to match into a residency. Perhaps they are right. But I'm good at surviving life. I think I'll survive this too.


I believe you can figure it out, it just takes trial and error, figuring out what methods work for you. You've already taken that one step in creating a study plan; go a step further and get more detailed with whatever study methods, new or old, that can help you. Try them (the methods) for a couple of hours/days, depending on what the material is and what is the study method you're using. If it gets you to do the work more efficiently and retain the information for much longer, keep it. If not, save it for some other time and keep figuring it out.

Because what you learn now and even later in your medical career will give you an ever-growing foundation of knowledge to build upon. And building the discipline and time management you need to excel in your classes also develops a strong work ethic that can carry over to other areas in your life.

So I suggest to you to check up Cal Newport's Study Hacks blog and Scott H. Young's blog for various studying methods. Both are geared towards high school/undergrad/sometimes grad audiences, but the learning methods suggested, particularly those for factually dense classes, are extremely helpful and worthwhile, especially once you combine the time management skills they offer to implement in order to get more work done efficiently and effectively.

You got this Arkangeloid. Sure, MS-1 is over, but that doesn't mean you can't kick butt now. Every second is an opportunity to change the direction of where you want to go. And it's also great to prove others wrong, so show people that you're not only just going to survive, but thrive.
 
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MS-1 is over, and I'm already not having a good time haha.. And if I had nailed down how to study effectively, we wouldn't be having this conversation lol. If I haven't figured it out by now, I don't think I ever will.

But that's ok. Because I don't need to get into PRS or ENT, I just want to get by, do my time, and get out alive.

Yeah, that's the spirit. :rolleyes:
 
Look, I don't like this, but optimism hasn't exactly been working wonders for me so far.

You don't have to be unusually optimistic, but you don't have to be negative either. Try being positive. Being negative, will only obstruct you being able to internalize the information you study.
 
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MS-1 is over, and I'm already not having a good time haha.. And if I had nailed down how to study effectively, we wouldn't be having this conversation lol. If I haven't figured it out by now, I don't think I ever will.

But that's ok. Because I don't need to get into PRS or ENT, I just want to get by, do my time, and get out alive.

Some people have told me that I should consider dropping out of medical school now, and that if I'm not a good student now, I will not pass STEP1 with a good enough score to match into a residency. Perhaps they are right. But I'm good at surviving life. I think I'll survive this too.
Unless you are failing classes and remediating every block, I wouldn't worry too much about being able to pass boards. Especially if you ended up pulling an 80 in neuro anatomy, that is fine, that is a B in a tough class. I definitely wouldn't quit unless I was actually failing classes. In the meantime just keep positive and try to improve a little/tweak your study habits a little each block, and I think you will be fine as long as the effort is there.
 
Unless you are failing classes and remediating every block, I wouldn't worry too much about being able to pass boards. Especially if you ended up pulling an 80 in neuro anatomy, that is fine, that is a B in a tough class. I definitely wouldn't quit unless I was actually failing classes. In the meantime just keep positive and try to improve a little/tweak your study habits a little each block, and I think you will be fine as long as the effort is there.

If you fail 2 classes at our school they make you repeat the year, if you fail any more they expel you I think haha.
 
If you fail 2 classes at our school they make you repeat the year, if you fail any more they expel you I think haha.
That's a pretty rough policy, but still, if you have scored about average ever since you failed that one class and pulled a B in neuro anatomy it sounds like you figured something out. Some people say second year is harder, but some people also say it's easier. I really think it just depends on the school and each individual person. For instance, some people have a very extensive science background and first year is fairly easy for them because they have already had most of the classes. These people would likely say that 2nd year is much harder, while people with just the minimum pre-med classes would likely have a very rough first year and think 2nd year is easier.
 
That's a pretty rough policy, but still, if you have scored about average ever since you failed that one class and pulled a B in neuro anatomy it sounds like you figured something out. Some people say second year is harder, but some people also say it's easier. I really think it just depends on the school and each individual person. For instance, some people have a very extensive science background and first year is fairly easy for them because they have already had most of the classes. These people would likely say that 2nd year is much harder, while people with just the minimum pre-med classes would likely have a very rough first year and think 2nd year is easier.

My tutor (sigh, she will know who I am if she SDNs) says that second year is significantly easier for her, but she's a woman with opinions quite different from the rest of the class.

I was a liberal arts major who did the minimum premed classes, FWIW. I don't blame my college background for my performance (I know that people in the HuMed program at Sinai do just fine), I loved college and what I studied. But I must admit, I think that I may have been at a disadvantage in Neuroscience compared to a Neuroscience major (though I pity the poor souls who majored in such a horrible subject).
 
My tutor (sigh, she will know who I am if she SDNs) says that second year is significantly easier for her, but she's a woman with opinions quite different from the rest of the class.

I was a liberal arts major who did the minimum premed classes, FWIW. I don't blame my college background for my performance (I know that people in the HuMed program at Sinai do just fine), I loved college and what I studied. But I must admit, I think that I may have been at a disadvantage in Neuroscience compared to a Neuroscience major (though I pity the poor souls who majored in such a horrible subject).
You have to remember that most of your class probably has a fairly extensive science background. What did your Tudor major in, if you happen to know?
 
You have to remember that most of your class probably has a fairly extensive science background. What did your Tutor major in, if you happen to know?

I forgot, but IIRC it was in some science thing like Neuroscience or Physiology.

But I don't get it, if med schools know that liberal arts majors are herpaderps, why do they bother admitting us? Wouldn't they know otherwise by now? I think the problem is more with me and not my major.
 
I forgot, but IIRC it was in some science thing like Neuroscience or Physiology.

But I don't get it, if med schools know that liberal arts majors are herpaderps, why do they bother admitting us? Wouldn't they know otherwise by now? I think the problem is more with me and not my major.
I don't think that all non science majors have a hard time, but it seems like some do. I also don't have any data to support that claim, just an observation. However, everyone is on a fairly even playing field in year two, since most people haven't had those classes. Also, medical schools seem to like diversity, so that may be why they don't mind taking non science majors even of they might struggle a little more on average.
 
Looks like y'all been sippin on dat dere haterade.

Here's the thing. Quizzing yourself is hard enough. But it's not nearly as hard as figuring out the things to quiz yourself on. You quiz yourself on things that you think are important, only to find out that you guessed wrong on what was high yield, and in the professor's eyes you didn't study at all. That's when you start passively reviewing your notes, because at least then you're casting the net wider, and you might come across things the professor deems is important.
1. There was zero percent hateration in that post. That's me stressing something that you don't seem to have picked up. For your benefit. Learn 70% of your material perfectly. Work on the rest later. Don't gloss over 100% and get almost nothing. That's my suggestion. When someone asks something you know, you should damn well know it. When they ask something you haven't done, mark it down as something that needs to be pursued or understood better.

2. Keep explaining the details of your studying...I'm certainly getting some insight into your problems.

3. It's confusing at first for everyone - what's important and what will create the foundation of what I will need to know later are HUGE issues in first year. I used to wish I could hire someone to sit next to me that I could just ask all the most inane questions about "how is this going to be incorporated later?" and "how will this affect my understanding of real patient care?" but certain things are just plain as day.

4. As a personal suggestion, listen to Goljan this summer. As a first year half of what he says is hard to get but it is an amazingly PAINLESS way to get a feel for what topics are super important - or why some funky details you learned in biochem actually pertain to REAL DISEASE PROCESSES.

5. Your attitude is a big hindrance. I'm just saying. You should find relief and excitement each time you read a chapter and get another puzzle piece to make sense of CVS or Renal or Neuro or how anything fits together with anything else. Forget your damn scores and your classmates already!!!
 
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That's a pretty rough policy, but still, if you have scored about average ever since you failed that one class and pulled a B in neuro anatomy it sounds like you figured something out. Some people say second year is harder, but some people also say it's easier. I really think it just depends on the school and each individual person. For instance, some people have a very extensive science background and first year is fairly easy for them because they have already had most of the classes. These people would likely say that 2nd year is much harder, while people with just the minimum pre-med classes would likely have a very rough first year and think 2nd year is easier.

I think MS-2 is also so much more relevant to medicine compared to MS-1.
 
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Second year is easier in the sense that you are learning more relevant things instead of biochemical pathways 24/7 so it's easier to be engaged. It helps you remember why you're in medical school and when you watch medical shows, you have an idea about what they're talking about. It's harder in the sense that the workload is greater than in M1.
 
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MS-1 is over, and I'm already not having a good time haha.. And if I had nailed down how to study effectively, we wouldn't be having this conversation lol. If I haven't figured it out by now, I don't think I ever will.

But that's ok. Because I don't need to get into PRS or ENT, I just want to get by, do my time, and get out alive.

Some people have told me that I should consider dropping out of medical school now, and that if I'm not a good student now, I will not pass STEP1 with a good enough score to match into a residency. Perhaps they are right. But I'm good at surviving life. I think I'll survive this too.

Your pessimism is honestly really depressing.

You failed anatomy. Big whoop. A significant percentage of medical students do that every year. Almost all of them will go on to match into residency.

You got an 80 on neuroanatomy. That's a good score, very far away from failing. If you don't fail anything the rest of the year, you're golden.

Honestly, I think that your studying habits are probably OK, but you are just so ****ing neurotic that you worry about this **** excessively. Seriously, if you get like a 75+ on every course from here on out, I can pretty much say that not only will you pass Step 1, you will get at least a 200, which WILL get you into a residency as an allopathic MD grade, regardless of what the ultra-competitive standards for SDN are.
 
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Got an 80% in Cardio so far, bringing up the rear of the class, but y'all know my motto: if you ain't living on the edge, you ain't living.
 
Got an 80% in Cardio so far, bringing up the rear of the class, but y'all know my motto: if you ain't living on the edge, you ain't living.

An 80% is bottom of class at your school? Exams must be pretty straightforward.

Our class average is usually in the 75-78% range.
 
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An 80% is bottom of class at your school? Exams must be pretty straightforward.

Our class average is usually in the 75-78% range.

I actually was last place once with a 77% on an exam. I've also been last place a couple other times, but in those my scores were below 60%.


I pity the poor patient who comes to me for treatment on some bacterial illness.
 
I actually was last place once with a 77% on an exam. I've also been last place a couple other times, but in those my scores were below 60%.


I pity the poor patient who comes to me for treatment on some bacterial illness.

Yeah, micro sucked.
 
Yeah, micro sucked.

I know I'm going to cause a ****storm if I use the word "gay" again, but honestly, Microbiology is one of the most homo things I've ever seen in medicine. I would rather lose one of my digits than go through that class again.
 
I actually was last place once with a 77% on an exam. I've also been last place a couple other times, but in those my scores were below 60%.


I pity the poor patient who comes to me for treatment on some bacterial illness.
Your class must be very neurotic.
 
Your class must be very neurotic.

The problem is that standard deviation of the scores is super low, so grade distributions are tight. It makes a lot of people really uptight about exactly where they are on the distribution. For example, on Pharma exams, the difference between 3rd quartile and 1st quartile was 4%.
 
The problem is that standard deviation of the scores is super low, so grade distributions are tight. It makes a lot of people really uptight about exactly where they are on the distribution. For example, on Pharma exams, the difference between 3rd quartile and 1st quartile was 4%.
That's just ridiculous. Or grade distributions were much wider. So 4%, that's like max 4 questions on a 100 question test? Are grades A=100-90, B=89-80, etc.? Or are the thresholds dependent on how the class does (i.e. only top 5% gets As, etc.)
 
That's just ridiculous. Or grade distributions were much wider. So 4%, that's like max 4 questions on a 100 question test? Are grades A=100-90, B=89-80, etc.? Or are the thresholds dependent on how the class does (i.e. only top 5% gets As, etc.)

It's P/F, but with internal ranking by quartiles. The rank is given in a code word in the Dean's letter.


To make it even worse, the Pharma exams were only about 60 questions each haha. I was so happy when I got a 91% on mine, then I found out that I was still below average ROFL.
 
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