All nighters

[solitude]

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I am easily distracted and I have 2 daughters and my wife likes her husbands(I'm lucky!) Anyhow I work 40 hrs a week and go FT school-My best time to study is midnight when I get off work and I'll go till 3-4 each morning and then I'm back to school at 7:30-the worst hours for classes but the only one open. I make up the sleep on Saturday afternoons-after all the day football and before the night game! Whoo-Pig Soooie.

Um, what?

 

[el.harpo]

a few of you mentioned time management. how?
i'm extremely organized, detailed, meticulous, and try to study aorund 4-5 hours a day for my classes.
yet when test time rolls around, i find myself very lost/short on time. and this is not good, considering the intense semester i am taking.
i've taken a few shortcuts (e.g. taking neat notes in class so i won't have to rewrite them later and waste more time, or not worrying about reading every word in the book) but i'm still always short on time.
i really don't waste time watching tv either. i have it on for background noise when i'm doing something non school related.
help!

I don't know intense your semester is but I would definitely recommend that you don't fall behind. One thing that worked out for me in my crazy semester was making an exam schedule at the beginning of the semester and just making sure that I had enough time to study for each mid-term. It also helped to know which classes would allow me to drop a mid-term so that I could selectively drop some of the mid-terms. Also, make sure that if you're dropping the mid-term that you still learn the material because if your semester is crazy then your finals week will he hell and you don't want to re-learn anything at that point.

One other thing I did to help with my crazy semester was to stay away from time consuming homework assignments (which is basically pretty important when it comes to time management). We would have a ton of physics homework that would be worth about 5% of our final grade and it wasn't really required to learn the concepts. I opted to not do them when they conflicted with any exam. Hope it works out well for you.


EDIT: Oh and I would definitely limit my SDN time 😛.

 

[LJoo83]

hey 🙂.
thanks for your immediate response.
part of being anally organized (all the four highlighter colors represents something in particular!) is having a 18 month planner that not only has an overview of the entire month but broken down into larger squares per seven days in the pages following. which means it gives me space to write down my tests!

but between taking chem 2 lab, organic 1 lec (1 doesn't have lab but chem lab is a prereq for organic 2 lab), a&p lec/lab, physics 2 lec/lab, and molecular biology i can't afford to fall behind.

yes, i know how crazy i am.

you did make a very good point of weighing my options in regards to what is worth the effort and time. i think that's my stumbling block; i'm so detailed i get caught up in the, small, unimportant matter.

 

[fyi411]

How often do you guys (med school or undergrad) pull all nighters? I might have to do one tonight I'm wondering how badly it will affect my performance...

Never
because some classes are not worth it😀

 

[Dianyla]

but between taking chem 2 lab, organic 1 lec (1 doesn't have lab but chem lab is a prereq for organic 2 lab), a&p lec/lab, physics 2 lec/lab, and molecular biology i can't afford to fall behind.

Your time management skills sound fine. Your heavy courseload is the problem.

 

[**ALIEN**]

hey 🙂.
thanks for your immediate response.
part of being anally organized (all the four highlighter colors represents something in particular!) is having a 18 month planner that not only has an overview of the entire month but broken down into larger squares per seven days in the pages following. which means it gives me space to write down my tests!

but between taking chem 2 lab, organic 1 lec (1 doesn't have lab but chem lab is a prereq for organic 2 lab), a&p lec/lab, physics 2 lec/lab, and molecular biology i can't afford to fall behind.

yes, i know how crazy i am.

you did make a very good point of weighing my options in regards to what is worth the effort and time. i think that's my stumbling block; i'm so detailed i get caught up in the, small, unimportant matter.

YOU SHOULD BE FINE, AND I DONT REALLY SEE THE NEED I MEAN YOUR COURSELOAD ISNT THAT HARD.

ITS FUNNY HOW MANY PREMEDS WHINE WHEN THINGS ARE PRETTY SIMPLE!

 

[Skaterbabe74]

It also helped to know which classes would allow me to drop a mid-term so that I could selectively drop some of the mid-terms. Also, make sure that if you're dropping the mid-term that you still learn the material because if your semester is crazy then your finals week will he hell and you don't want to re-learn anything at that point.

.

I wish I went to a school that had classes that let you drop an exam! The most any of our profs offer is to drop an assignment or two, or maybe a quiz. I definitely agree with the whole setting priorities in terms of weight of an assignment but for problem-intensive classes I've found that even if the homework isn't worth much (typically 10% for my physics classes for example) I need to do the problems anyway to save study time for the exams so I might as well do them when I'm supposed to and get the points for them.

To the OP - I rarely pull all-nighters because they don't work well for me typically, but I am a night owl so my best studying time is between 10pm and 2am. I just try to avoid 8am classes whenever I can lol (I still usually end up with at least one 8am class/semester though - damn those early morning chemists and biologists!). I also frequently do the wake up earlier than usual to study thing. For example, one semester I had my Organic II and Physics II finals on the same morning one right after the other. I studied for a week for the Organic final (Organic is my nemesis) but still had a lot to cover the night before so I studied that for a few hours in the evening, went to bed around midnight and woke up at 4 to study for my physics final for a few hours. Then the hour and a half before having to leave I switched back to a final organic review, went and took that test, got out of that with an hour to spare and did my final physics review. I was brain-dead for the physics final because the organic final was awful, but still managed to get an 88 on it.

 

[Sondra]

My M1 class has tests on Monday and Tuesday every three weeks. I find it really hard to sleep Monday to Tuesday, so I usually stay up all/most of the night and review old tests. I don't try to learn anything new.

I don't think it effects my performance on the test. I usually get such a rush when I sit down to the test that I don't feel tired. Then, I get some lunch with friends and then I sleep the day away.

 

[polycon7]

Oh gosh. All nighters are painful and I've had my fair share of them, especially with me missing alot of school for athletics. I think I only had one exam where I was affected by lack of sleep. I'm a night owl though..peak studying time is after 10pm. I really have to change this habit.



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[docmode]

My aero-engineering friend from MIT stayed up days at a time very often completing projects and problem sets and was never alone. She seemed very used to it and never complained. I always felt a bit guilty with my "pre-med" schedule. It paled in comparison and difficulty!