I'm guessing there's a certain aspect of it you can't prepare for.
I'd be curious if any of you current students could confirm or deny, but I'm preparing for it like boot camp. Before I headed to boot camp, I spent a lot of time doing push ups, pull ups and running. And that was all well and good, but there's really no amount of preparation that gets you ready to do those push ups with 4 huge guys screaming at you and 1 standing on your back. Preparation helps, but there's a certain aspect of it all that you can't wrap your mind around until you actually get there and do it.
Hopefully that's not too much of a comparative leap, but it makes sense in my mind.
Yes. There is nothing you can really do to make vet school not kick your ass sometimes. It is important to "get to know yourself" as a student though and know what works and what doesn't for you. But other than that, you just kind of have to hit the ground running.
Memorize the PowerPoint slides word for word.
/bitterness
Just kidding. Not really.
Yes... the level of detail in vet school was a shock for me. I would think, oh they wouldn't really want me to know all those numbers or acronyms or growth factors. Oh yes they do.
I go at the material this way...
I do something really similar to you. I've seen classmates get really hung up on making perfect study guides and flashcards and drawings and had it not really help them... ultimately there is no substitute for repetition. By all means, make yourself flashcards if that helps! But don't spend all your time getting your flashcards ready and have no time to review them.
---I think it is important as a first year to remember that no one studies the same way and there is no one right way to study. Don't make yourself anxious if other people are studying a different way than you. Just do what works for you. You may need some trial and error to figure out what that is.
---I think it's best to come into vet school with guns blazing and then you can back off if you're doing fine. It's better to put a lot into it at the beginning than be playing catch up and hoping you're not failing.
I can tell you what I do. It has worked really well for me. But obviously it depends on the person! Here is how I do things.
--I go to lecture and take notes. I have also had equal results with listening from home and taking notes. My goal at this point is information collection: make sure I write down all the information in a way that makes sense to me.
--After I come home from school I review each lecture from that day. I aim for half an hour per lecture but it can really vary. My goal at this point is understanding: I look up words I don't know, I email the professor if I have questions, I ask my study buddy to clarify things for me. I try to reason out things that weren't explicit in lecture... for example if there is a list of clinical signs for some disease like "tachycardia, dehydration, acidosis, oliguria" I will realize that the dehydration is causing the tachycardia/acidosis/oliguria and may reword the slide to reflect that. It makes it way easier to memorize later if the information is organized.
--The week before a test (we usually have Monday tests) I go over each test lecture once by myself, just reading the slides. I'll do this after going over my regular daily lectures. My goal at this point is starting to memorize things.
--The weekend before the test, I get together with my study partner in crime extraordinaire and we spend about 10 hours each weekend day reading the lectures out loud to each other. It forces us to put things in our own words and explain things to each other to make sure we really understand things. At this point I use a lot of acronyms and mnemonics to keep track of things that I can't reason out intuitively... I prefer to consolidate / integrate information but sometimes that isn't possible.
--I do use old exams to quiz myself the night before the test, mostly to reassure me
but also to make sure I haven't missed something obvious.
Hope that helps
Oh, and I'm crazy. Most people don't study that much and do just fine.