2nd day: practice questions over tiny details?

[Command]

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Hi, I just finished my 2nd day of med school.

Our profs give out sample study questions at the end of each lecture as well as pre-lab quizzes. I felt like the questions were asking about the tiniest bit of detail over what we've learned. Like for an organelle, we have to know a list of every single function and everything it produces.

Do I have to just tough it out and memorize everything? How can I recall such tiny detail when an exam covers 3 weeks worth of lectures?

 

[Ismet]

Do I have to just tough it out and memorize everything? How can I recall such tiny detail when an exam covers 3 weeks worth of lectures?

Welcome to med school. Enjoy your stay.

 

[ChEMD]

Hi, I just finished my 2nd day of med school.

Our profs give out sample study questions at the end of each lecture as well as pre-lab quizzes. I felt like the questions were asking about the tiniest bit of detail over what we've learned. Like for an organelle, we have to know a list of every single function and everything it produces.

Do I have to just tough it out and memorize everything? How can I recall such tiny detail when an exam covers 3 weeks worth of lectures?

Right now you're not really at the point where you can distinguish between what is a tiny insignificant detail and an important detail. I remember thinking certain things were insignificant details all the time when I first started out, but some of them actually turned out to be pretty important.

For now, I would say tough it out and learn as much as you can for your first few tests. One of the best skills you can develop is the ability to determine which details are likely to be tested over and which ones are not, but developing that usually takes a few tests to determine how your professors like to ask questions.

Spaced repetition is really the key to memorizing details, and it's usually a lot less stressful too.

 

[DrEnderW]

Join the party!

Repetition, repetition, repetition over days/weeks instead of a couple days before the test. You can consult books like BRS to see what is very high yield to help.

As an ex-athlete, I've likened it to training during pre-season. You start off getting extremely sore and can't fathom how your run times are suppose to decrease and your lifts increase all while practicing hours a day. However, your body begins to adapt and it's not so bad anymore. When you look back in 6 weeks, you suddenly realize you're stronger, faster, and smarter.

The same thing happens in med school mentally/intellectually. You adapt and can start synthesizing and remembering quantities of info you didn't realize was even reasonable a couple months prior. Get a schedule down and hammer away.

 

[PL198]

Everything that is ever on a slide in class, is 100 % fair game for an exam. The balancing act is figuring which of those tiny things to focus on

 

[Command]

Thanks for the responses.

I need to change my studying habits from undergrad then.

 

[maxxor]

I need to change my studying habits from undergrad then.

Yes!

 

[Ismet]

Thanks for the responses.

I need to change my studying habits from undergrad then.

Yep. And now is the best time to realize that.

Usually in-house exams are pretty detailed. If you go to a P/F school and don't care about rocking the exams, then you can kind of figure out what level of detail you need to learn in order to get the score you want. But before you figure that out, you need to study hard and take your first exam to see where you fall, then adjust from there.

 

[DermViser]

Hi, I just finished my 2nd day of med school.

Our profs give out sample study questions at the end of each lecture as well as pre-lab quizzes. I felt like the questions were asking about the tiniest bit of detail over what we've learned. Like for an organelle, we have to know a list of every single function and everything it produces. Do I have to just tough it out and memorize everything? How can I recall such tiny detail when an exam covers 3 weeks worth of lectures?

Welcome to medical school. Now you know why med students are stressed.

 

[001100010010011]

Yeah, man. Learn everything. If you don't get CSF rhinorrhea then you're just not concentrating hard enough.

 

[operaman]

Yes, welcome to med school. Part of the minutiae is simply that you don't yet understand how these tiny, seemingly insignificant details will come into play in the future as you learn path and pharm and whatnot. The other is that the prevailing thought in many schools is that if you know the details then you probably know everything else (not necessarily true!). Now that everything is going multiple choice, these sorts of questions are how faculty make sure you've learned everything. It's also because many of them are not trained in writing questions (great article by the NBME awhile back where they took class exams from various med schools and evaluated them by the standards they use for boards and found that most class exam questions are not that good).