I realize you want an easy answer. I would invite you to approach this from a different angle.
Reading quickly and efficiently are skills to be acquired over time. Drop the "cliff notes" mindset and dig deep. You will be doing alot of reading in medicine. Adopt the necessary skills now instead of looking for easy answers.
When I was a teenager, I read the paperback books that were assigned to us in high school. Classics such as "Catcher in the Rye" (JD Salinger), "A Chocolate War" (Robert Cormier), "Brave New world" (Aldous Huxley), "1984" (George Orwell), etc, were required reading. I did not go to a special school and I did "alright" academically. But I did not have, like kids do today, all of the distractions that serve as obstacles to developing critical thinking and interpersonal skills. Heck, we played kick ball in the streets, hung from trees, played freeze tag, and childhood obesity was non-existent. We had fun as kids and we interacted with each other. Our parents had to hunt for us in the neighborhoods and drag us back home kicking and screaming because we wanted to be with our friends. Today you have to PUSH the young kids off the couch and pry out of their hands "their" cell phones! Crazy!!!
I rarely reply to SDN Pre-Med students. What does a pre-med under 21 year old know?
I replied to you only b/c you got this thread going.
Kids today just don't have the interpersonal skills necessary for relating to adults (like Attendings, Residents and Patients in hospitals) and they prefer to whine, play the martyr role and bitch about how unfair people are to them. I have zero patience for them. If you see the computer exams are really difficult for you, then there is something about you that you are lacking. You are missing some necessary skills. So what should you do?
Adopt those missing skills.
Simple! It costs nothing. But it does mean spending less time on Youtube and Facebook and, um, reading.
I enjoy reading The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, books on my iPad, and I listen to audio books when I drive for long periods (30 minutes). The critical thinking skills one develops when adopting these undertakings can not be exaggerated. It goes without saying that the computer based question exams are all about critical thinking. There are alot of facts thrown at us in the medical school exams that are extraneous. They are not relevant and are placed in the exams on purpose to make you stumble. Look out for them. Expect them. Get ready for them. Be aggressive. The test authors are NOT your friend. They are TRYING to make you stumble. So what do you do? Beat them at their own game.
When you read for a lifetime, whether you are my age, or as a late teen, early 20 something year old, you should have adopted decent reading comprehension skills and, of course, critical analysis skills. Facebook, Twitter, and SDN posts where ANYONE CAN POST ANYTHING WITHOUT REPRISAL, do not help you for much in life, other than satisfy immediate gratification and down time.
Read.
Practice questions 50% of the time while the other 50% of your study time should be course material.
But you're just a pre-med student, so you don't have to worry about this yet. But adopt healthy reading skills now. When you get into medical school, you should tackle these things seriously
And for God's sake, if you get into medical school, and the professors call on you to read cases outloud, read with confidence, authority and not stumbling on pronunciation. Laughing at these foibles in class only make you look unreliable and immature. Who would want you as a doctor?
Medical schools are too soft on applicants as to qualifying issues other than MCAT and GPA
They need to do a better job of screening applicants to see if they have the wherewithhall of having the right stuff (Tom Wolfe!!! ha!)
Now there's a great book!
Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Oooorrraaaahhhh!!!
Off we go into the wild blue yonder.....
If you use them during class you'll actually see how inadequate they are for your lecture tests.
