I'm doing that too - though I didn't originally set out to annotate RR into FA, I started by just adding in the margin notes and tables, but after two painful years, I found that I learn best by writing things down and just started adding things(probably best to stick with what works at this point). The number of things in RR that weren't even listed in FA got scary... I also annotated HY Molc Bio and BRS Phys into FA - they're short, and I'd rather have everything together - its logistically difficult to hold 3 books at once, and I like to be able to see everything together. I also think I'd just feel better having everything that I need to know in one binder (bc if it can't even fit in one binder, how is it going to fit in my brain??)
Not to be all SDN-gunnerific, but I attached a pic of one of my pages (it helped me to see other students notebooks at my school, so maybe it'll help someone?)... I have really small, (somewhat) neat handwriting, so its still legible... at least I hope I'm able to read it on my 2nd pass.
Someone in another thread was asking how much they could sell their annotated FA for, and I couldn't believe (a) that they would want to get rid of it, and (b) that anyone else would want it. There isn't room to add anything else to mine, and I've underlined just about everything, so I'm pretty sure it'd be useless to anyone else. So, now I'm worried that I need a reality check and that maybe I'm way overdoing this...
Unbinding FA was the best decision ever (I should have done it to all of my 1st year books) - I put it in a Levenger Circa notebook with a nice cover, so at least its pretty and I like it... which is more than I can say for "normal" FA. I really like the "Le Pen" pens for writing on the shiny pages - they don't smear as much as the Staedtler fineliner pens I used for class, and they come in 20+ colors (and they sell them at a Books-a-Million I like to study at, so its convenient if/when they run out). I'm a huge school-supply nerd, so new pens and nice notebooks are just little tricks I play to try to get excited about all of this.
Regarding timing, I started mid-March, and am just now finishing my first pass (I have part of MSK and Cardio remaining) - 3 of those weeks were part-time (still in MS classes), then a 2 week break (not planned... minor family emergency), and then ~5 weeks of almost full time studying (I have one class that's still going on, so I'm maybe at 75% max effort?). I've been doing questions from a Kaplan book and from the Robbins question book, but no world yet (I feel a little guilty about this, but it was just too depressing when I had no idea what the questions were asking - I wanted to at least look at everything once).
I definitely didn't think that the first pass would take this long. I was thinking I'd spend 5 weeks on the first pass, 3 on the second, maybe do a third pass, and then do the final 10 days. Granted, I'm doing a lot of writing, I've been a having a hard time making myself work for more than 8 hours a day, and I'm realizing that I basically learned nothing over the past two years (I'm about in the middle of my class, but our curriculum is NOT AT ALL tailored to the boards), but... even then, its been slow. So I guess I'd warn anyone who's just starting to not underestimate how long the first pass will take.
Other than that, I alternate daily between being excited about how much I'm learning and terrified that there's so much I didn't know until now. Not to mention certain that I'm not going to remember any of this come test day. And worried that I won't be able to Match. Oh and worried that even if everything works out, health care reform will f it up and I'll have gone to school for waaay to long for nothing. There's a lot of worry.
I take my test May 26th, so I have 22 days left. My plan is to finish MSK and a class project tomorrow (an unfortunate interruption), then finish Cardio and take NBME 4 on Wednesday. Hopefully that will scare me into working harder... from then on out, I'm going to do 100 world questions a day (at least) and memorize things in the afternoons. Ideally I'll finish all the world questions and have time to redo the ones that I've missed.
Where is everyone else in the process?