annotating FA taking forever

[HiddenTruth]

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So, is anyone else feelign this, or doing this? Or, am I just writing too much. I've been on biochem for 5 days now, and i had 4 days allocated, and that's one of my best subjects. I tend to read and study the respective section and then draw the p/w and write out any relevant stuff in my FA, but it's taking too long. But, I get side tracked and open up Lippincott's if I don't understand something--

I still want to go back through my bigger review books, since I have some time, so I don't knowif doing this FA annotating buiss in worth it. Any thoughts?

 

[Ramoray]

all i can say is you need will power. I mean this is coming from somone who si OCD about details and i never feel complete until i fill and annotate completely and i was doign the same thing, hell FA embryo was taking long, i dont even want to know what most of path or bchem woudl be like. After about a week i just had to kick myself and force myself to maybe add 1 or 2 impor points but then keep telling myself that FA is just for a reminder and a quick over view of the highest yield stuff and I tell myself that I will fill in the details in my head come test time. The reason i am confident in this si that during the shelf for path i didnt have time to study a review book and get the details i was lacking but on the test i seemed to fill in the blanks from my memory and remembered most of the details as soon as i saw a question stem, so for FA its teh same, i think by knowing the basic 2 lines of info they give you, providing you do have a decent knowledge of a subject, I am guessing anything you would haev spent time writing in( meaning you must have knew it well in order to annoate concisely etc) you will remember anyway without writing it and you will save a TON of time. I mean i am TRYING to do this, still sometimes struggel as i feel bad not anootating fully but i keep sayhing you can only take step once and i have to plug along and use eveyr minute wisely.. Of course i will see if i can even keep this up, good luck though, i hear ya it is a time pit.

 

[JMD]

I hear ya... I do a block of 50 qbank questions in about 45 minutes and then spend like 3 HOURS going through them and putting info in FA. I'm trying to convince myself that I'll remember the stuff without writing down every little detail, but I still seem to find myself spending way too much time annotating.

 

[4CDirect]

I think it's called active studying, which I don't do enough myself. My FA is annotated, but not enough if I look at it with just one eye because I can still see vast gray empty space!

 

[badgergirl]

I hear ya... I do a block of 50 qbank questions in about 45 minutes and then spend like 3 HOURS going through them and putting info in FA. I'm trying to convince myself that I'll remember the stuff without writing down every little detail, but I still seem to find myself spending way too much time annotating.

yeah... it takes me so much longer to go through the q-bank stuff after i do them than it takes me to do the questions in the first place. my FA is well-loved at this point, but there are a few more spots that need writing. 😉 i'm getting a little nervous, though... i have only 10 more days!! 🙁

 

[Pox in a box]

So, is anyone else feelign this, or doing this? Or, am I just writing too much. I've been on biochem for 5 days now, and i had 4 days allocated, and that's one of my best subjects. I tend to read and study the respective section and then draw the p/w and write out any relevant stuff in my FA, but it's taking too long. But, I get side tracked and open up Lippincott's if I don't understand something--

I still want to go back through my bigger review books, since I have some time, so I don't knowif doing this FA annotating buiss in worth it. Any thoughts?

Hidden, I can barely read my First Aid because I'm annotated so much. Yes, I agree that annotating is very time consuming (especially if you're annotating from multiple sources). If I don't really understand what is being said in one book, I'll switch over to another, and another, and another until I'm satisfied. Then I'll forget what my original switch was about and have to backtrack. Like today, I read something in First Aid physiology. I went to my class notes, didn't quite catch the drift from that, consulted BRS physiology for the general scope (not in enough detail on that particular instance) and found my way to Harrison's. Nope, nothing there. I made my way to Cecil's. Nope, nothing there. Finally, my pockets were full of gold after finding what I was looking for in the Washington Manual. Don't get me wrong, I don't read these texts verbatim. I usually just find what I want and go on. If I did this for every topic, I'd need a decade to study just one subject. Yeah, I feel your pain though on the FA annotations. I'm scared I'm going to run out of time just re-reading it all. There's so much information in my FA that I couldn't put a pricetag on it anymore. In fact, yesterday the sticker fell off. I was glad because it was a bargain for that price! Tonight I got sick of staring at that weak acid-base disorders diagram in the path section so I drew my own. It is so tight.

 

[4CDirect]

Pox, you are so OCD! LOL

 

[Long Dong]

What I hate the most is when I write something in FA and come back a week later to look at it I can't seem to read my own hand writing. So I gave up on annottating.

 

[HiddenTruth]

Hidden, I can barely read my First Aid because I'm annotated so much. Yes, I agree that annotating is very time consuming (especially if you're annotating from multiple sources). If I don't really understand what is being said in one book, I'll switch over to another, and another, and another until I'm satisfied. Then I'll forget what my original switch was about and have to backtrack. Like today, I read something in First Aid physiology. I went to my class notes, didn't quite catch the drift from that, consulted BRS physiology for the general scope (not in enough detail on that particular instance) and found my way to Harrison's. Nope, nothing there. I made my way to Cecil's. Nope, nothing there. Finally, my pockets were full of gold after finding what I was looking for in the Washington Manual. Don't get me wrong, I don't read these texts verbatim. I usually just find what I want and go on. If I did this for every topic, I'd need a decade to study just one subject. Yeah, I feel your pain though on the FA annotations. I'm scared I'm going to run out of time just re-reading it all. There's so much information in my FA that I couldn't put a pricetag on it anymore. In fact, yesterday the sticker fell off. I was glad because it was a bargain for that price! Tonight I got sick of staring at that weak acid-base disorders diagram in the path section so I drew my own. It is so tight.

damn, i thought i was the only who was that OCD. Sometimes, I end up looking at uptodate to figure things out if i don't understand. It's funn, how when I am "looking" up stuff, i tend to reach much faster and go so much quicker, but when staring at review books, it's so slow and dreading. Anyways, good luck, study hard, play hard later....way later...like 7-10 years from now (gosh our lives pretty much blow for the next 5-9 years or so).

 

[4CDirect]

My FA is starting to get beat up, but no where near as bad as Pox's I suppose. That worries me! 🙂 My sticker has yet to fall off, although the edges of the pages are getting curly and a little torn.

 

[thesocialbeast]

My personal favorite pet peeve of annotating FA is spending time drawing out a diagram or taking some serious notes only to find that exact information on the next page or another section.

 

[samyjay]

What I hate the most is when I write something in FA and come back a week later to look at it I can't seem to read my own hand writing. So I gave up on annottating.

i second that

 

[carrigallen]

There's so much information in my FA that I couldn't put a pricetag on it anymore.

Yes - sometimes I wonder what I would do if I lost my FA right now, because it has taken me so long to accumulate all that information in one place. Nothing could replace it.

 

[HiddenTruth]

are u guys annotating the big subjects too, like path and phys? There seems so much to annotate? I've annotated my BRS with couple other sources, I don't think it would be efficient for me to annotate all that crap into FA, eh?

 

[Pox in a box]

are u guys annotating the big subjects too, like path and phys? There seems so much to annotate? I've annotated my BRS with couple other sources, I don't think it would be efficient for me to annotate all that crap into FA, eh?

Cover to cover...I've annotated everything (even behavioral science). I honestly think it might take a week and a half of decent speed reading just to read everything in my FA.

My new nemesis is pharmacology. I began going over some things today (pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, autonomics, NSAIDs, etc.) and have come to the conclusion that it's going to be the toughest to review. I pulled out my class notes and annotated. FA is MEAGER! I repeat...FIRST AID PHARMACOLOGY LOOKS LIKE A KID WITH MARASMUS! I'm in trouble. There's a ton of drugs that are either in FA and not in my notes or vice-versa. I'm at a loss on what to do to ease this burden. It looks like I might have to alter my schedule and spend longer on the subject.

 

[streetdoc]

my thought is to annotate your HY with the little bit of info in FA...maybe. i dunno
streetdoc

 

[lola]

FIRST AID PHARMACOLOGY LOOKS LIKE A KID WITH MARASMUS! I'm in trouble. There's a ton of drugs that are either in FA and not in my notes or vice-versa. I'm at a loss on what to do to ease this burden. It looks like I might have to alter my schedule and spend longer on the subject.

i am not too worried about pharm, b/c i recently took the pharm shelf and it was straight out of first aid. sure, you had to know the background physio, but it was no problem if you understood the physio. of course, step 1 could ask a lot of random drugs that aren't in first aid, but if it is anything like the shelf then most of what you need to know is in first aid. i am planning on reading kaplan and taking a look at road maps, and then memorizing first aid.

 

[HiddenTruth]

Cover to cover...I've annotated everything (even behavioral science). I honestly think it might take a week and a half of decent speed reading just to read everything in my FA.

My new nemesis is pharmacology. I began going over some things today (pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, autonomics, NSAIDs, etc.) and have come to the conclusion that it's going to be the toughest to review. I pulled out my class notes and annotated. FA is MEAGER! I repeat...FIRST AID PHARMACOLOGY LOOKS LIKE A KID WITH MARASMUS! I'm in trouble. There's a ton of drugs that are either in FA and not in my notes or vice-versa. I'm at a loss on what to do to ease this burden. It looks like I might have to alter my schedule and spend longer on the subject.

i didn't think it was bad--i think it covered almost every impt drug that we should know (covered nearly every drug we covered in class, obviously with much less detail)--i think most of our class notes, or at least mine heavily emphasize the kinetics of drugs and half lives, and worthless stuff, which i don't think we have to know for the beast---i annotated my FA from kaplan, and though, I added quite a bit--that was partially due to my OCD. Overall, I think it's pretty decent; couple it c annotations from another source, and you should be set. Although, there are some side effects in FA that I've never heard of, and they seem minutia, but if it's in FA, we gotta know it--and that, my friend will be a task. My plan is to eventually be able to write or reitterate in my mind from each section of FA. Ahh, im dreading it already--

 

[HiddenTruth]

my thought is to annotate your HY with the little bit of info in FA...maybe. i dunno
streetdoc

true, good call--i may do that. I'm so familiar with my path books though, it's like i can remember where on the page something is, and therefore, I don't wanna give that up to FA (it's path section doesn't deserve that much respect--although, there is some crap in there, that wasn't in any of the sources i used, so it gets soem credit.

 

[JMD]

are u guys annotating the big subjects too, like path and phys? There seems so much to annotate? I've annotated my BRS with couple other sources, I don't think it would be efficient for me to annotate all that crap into FA, eh?

I'm not annotating Path and Phys... it would basically be like completely copying 2 books over, which at this point in the game is not a good use of my time. Wish I would have done it earlier though (first 2 years of school).


How long are you all spending on pharm. I have yet to start it and have 5 days set aside (enough?). I was just going to use FA, but as has been the case with every other subject so far I'll probably get a supplementary text (Roadmaps) to lay a "foundation."

So far it seems like I have spent all of my time "laying a foundation" and none actually reviewing... probably not a good sign 😱 .