M0. Was an engineering major and bio classes were the hardest A's for me because of memorization. Heat transfer, def bods, transport etc., weren't as big a problem. A few friends of mine with an engineering degree who are already in medical or dental school are telling me their undergrad was harder because medical school is just all about memorization and the content itself is not that hard. It's just the sheer amount of material that drowns them apparently.
I suck at memorizing. It wasn't a big problem since I had literally only 2 memorization-heavy courses in undergrad (bio I and bio II) as an engineering major. Even Anki takes too long for me so I would just cram the textbook for a few days before the exam with no particular strategy. This worked for undergrad. Not sure if it will work for med school.
Anyone who was on the same boat? How did you transition from engineering to medicine?
With 2 years in med school will say I dreaded rote memorization... And I hate flash cards. You really can get rid of a lot of it through hard work... mainly by diving into the details of the pathophysiology by reading textbooks. The rest of it you can try to minimize by using clever mnemonic devices and . An example of avoiding memorizing is knowing the random diseases associated with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2A.
You could try to memorize MEN2A is associated with pheochromocytoma, medullary carcinomas of the thyroid, and parathyroid hyperplasia... which all seem pretty random, or you could read up on it and understand they are all derived from neural crest embryologically, and that an early mutation (RET oncogene) of that derivative causes this constellation of findings. If you know what the neural crest derivatives are, then you can derive the findings to a point.
I think spaced repetition works, especially for the more mindless things that you just have to memorize (like what ARE the neural crest derivatives?) but some students may find Anki does not work for them. I think there are
some students who use Anki as a crutch for jamming in random facts without actually knowing the underlying concepts, and that kind of surface-level knowledge won't serve you well when it comes to solving difficult questions on exams... or real life.
It comes down to finding out what works best for you. Experiment in your first months of med school. Mix and match. Talk with classmates about what they do. For most people, they don't end up re-inventing the wheel.
Personally, since I just can't stand flash cards (I'd burn myself out doing something I abhorred, even if it may be more efficacious otherwise), I draw out lots and lots of diagrams, with arrows that link concepts together, especially pathophysiology. It helps me draw out similarities, differences, etc., which is key for making good differentials and diagnoses. It also has good overlap with the fact that much of clinical reasoning is algorithmic.
