Anything to study right before med school

[clemmy32]

Med school is about one month away for me, kinda bored, anything you can suggest I freshen up before school? Or should I just take it easy?!?

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[chilly_md]

I have moved this thread to the Medical Students forum.

There was a similar post recently that might be of some help:

Help me prepare for M1

Hello! I start my MD/PhD program in a few weeks, and am super nervous about doing well in school. I studied biomedical engineering, and memorizing was never my strong suit. Is there anything I should do to prepare for the workload or anything I should familiarize myself with that will help me do...

forums.studentdoctor.net

 

[Dr. Anonymouss]

Med school is about one month away for me, kinda bored, anything you can suggest I freshen up before school? Or should I just take it easy?!?

These posts come up time and time again. Enjoy your freedom while you still have it.

 

[ChymeofPassion]

The only studying I'd recommend is to do some Who Wants to be a Millionaire on an international flight to somewhere fun

 

[_med21_e]

Med school is about one month away for me, kinda bored, anything you can suggest I freshen up before school? Or should I just take it easy?!?

My school posted an assigned reading list and gave us a list of topics to freshen up on before fall starts.

If you must do something, I know lots of people suggest basic anatomy and biochem but even then take it with a grain of salt. Some schools don't even start anatomy until term 2) and depending on the schools, curriculums tend to change year to year. Seriously, just relax, learn a new language, read some books, etc.

Honestly, just learn how to use Anki and that's probably it, realistically speaking.

 

[operaman]

The only studying I'd recommend is to do some Who Wants to be a Millionaire on an international flight to somewhere fun

This is truly the only correct answer.

You’re going to forget things on your first exam that you studied the first day of class. Anything you study now you will forget by the time you need it.

If you are hell bent on preparing somehow, get comfortable with Anki, whatever computer/tablet you’re going to use, note taking software if applicable, etc.

But really, you’re looking at one of your longest breaks before you retire. Don’t waste it studying something you’ll forget or never even need. Trust the countless posts from others who have been there.

 

[deleted1100659]

tinder

learn how to use it well, kept me sane during medical school

 

[ortnakas]

Teach yourself how to meal prep.

 

[DarkBluMage]

Just relax

 

[deleted1100659]

Teach yourself how to meal prep.

ooo this is a good idea. I remember I gained like 15 pounds during med school but lost like >20 pounds during intern year of residency lol

that would be a useful thing to master

 

[Lawpy]

Med school is about one month away for me, kinda bored, anything you can suggest I freshen up before school? Or should I just take it easy?!?

Play video games. Travel. Enjoy the weather. Hike outside. Learn to cook tasty meals.

 

[papillarymuscle]

Pretty soon your days will be filled, and I mean filled, with studying. Actually studying before medical school will make little to no impact. What you CAN do is (BRIEFLY!) review HOW to study:

- Resources (boards and beyond)
- Spaced repetition (anki - good decks people use)
- How to make good class notes (for me I just made class notes straight into anki cards)

Good vids:



Other things is making good habits like making schedules, fitting in exercise, etc.

Realistically, you will have time to focus on all this at the beginning of medical school, but you can have a leg up and start on a good foot if you're familiar with some of this stuff. I was like you. You WILL be kicking yourself if you don't live it up before you start, though. Once you enter medical school, you will never be as free as you are now.

Enjoy!

 

[PhD_to_DO]

Med school is about one month away for me, kinda bored, anything you can suggest I freshen up before school? Or should I just take it easy?!?

Take it easy. In a month, you’ll be dingus and elbow deep in medicine and the further you get into this, there will be fewer and fewer times where you can totally be away from medicine. Enjoy this time off. Spend it with your family. I started medical school last year, two weeks after defending my PhD dissertation and I so regret not having time off before starting school.

 

[arjusmc]

Get into an exercise routine, maybe a sleep routine, as mentioned above, learn how to meal prep, maybe even freeze a bunch of meals. Teach yourself how to use anki(even if it doesn’t end up working for you, it’s better than trying to learn it during school) and most importantly relax.

 

[Detective SnowBucket]

if you think you'll use it in school, learn how to use anki

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

What does learning to use a ki even mean? Isn’t it just flashcard app?

 

[kelminak]

What does learning to use a ki even mean? Isn’t it just flashcard app?

I'm not sure that I'd use the qualifier "just." It has a lot of features that can be used to make it work well for different situations. Depending on your comfort with technology, the core of it could easily be understood in under an hour max.

 

[StatsKing]

echoing a lot of what has been said so far. Everyone will say to relax, which I agree with, however I was in your place and no that's not gonna happen. I wouldn't try studying any material because you're 1) not gonna know what to study. Even biochem is drastically different in med school vs undergrad. and 2) med school material isn't complicated, its mostly just the volume and you'll just forget it all.

I'd do what @Detective SnowBucket said and others, learn useful tools like Anki and get comfortable with it. Learn R or state or something if you plan to do research. Find some interesting research or labs at your school that you might want to get involved in. Get in shape because it can be difficult to do so as a med student. take care of stuff you've been putting off, like dents and doctors appointments, get your oil changed. Can also volunteer too, that's gonna be important if you're aiming for something like AOA.

 

[CanIBeAnonymous]

You'll have plenty of time during med school to study, prestudying is useless.

If you want to study something, study something you're interested in that isn't medically related / work on some other skill such as language learning or what have you.

 

[Redpancreas]

Med school is about one month away for me, kinda bored, anything you can suggest I freshen up before school? Or should I just take it easy?!?

My response to this question overtime:

nearing end of M1: Paragraph long guided explanation of what to do, what to ANKI, etc. Basically me projecting my M1 inadequacies in attempt to pass on experience to others.
nearing end of M2: Added Question recommendations.
nearing end of M3: Forget prestudying, etc., re-learn how to be normal
nearing end of M4: This is getting old...

Anyways...My takeaway, don't pre-study.
I'm not saying there's no benefit. If you're resourceful and connected via friend, I imagine you can get find a copy of the course pack/syllabus from last year and start gunning ahead of time. You may honor that unit (if awards are even given for doing well on the pre-clinical material). That won't translate to your ability to do well on the next unit though when you receive the material at the same time as everyone else did and an argument could be made that it would set you back because you now have to learn how to learn material on the fly when all your classmates already figured out how to do that a month ago.

I also am against the "everything in moderation and look at some material to refresh approach". The amount of material you are about to get thrown at you is enormous. There's just no way to simulate the "feet-to-the-fire" or "drinking from a water hose" effect medical school has. 2-3 of pre-studying at a moderate pace may result in covering a 2-3 day's worth of material. I am not exaggerating. You haven't developed an intuition on what to focus on and may overstudy/understudy aspects.

What to do with your time?
I mean, don't feel obligated to do anything you wouldn't normally do. I personally enjoy working out, spending time in my home town, watching movies, and eating food I like to eat. If you like to travel, go do that. Do whatever you need to do so you're not drained on day 1. In this post-Step 1 medical school world, I suppose some are going to wonder about research, etc and half the threads on medical student SDN seem to be about research and just as I am typing this my resident program has been emailing about a new initiative to involve medical students in research. If you already know how to do research, do it. You might be productive. If you don't know, there's no benefit you're going to get from cracking your head trying to learn something a few hrs. a day.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

At least at the undergrad level, I’ve found that what people get in their first semester or quarter becomes the benchmark by which they measure future success. For this reason, I always advise UGs to take it easy first term and then ramp things up.

Of course in med school, one doesn’t get to pick an easy schedule. But perhaps working very hard first unit would have some benefits that go beyond honoring or a high grade first block

 

[Hzreio]

echoing a lot of what has been said so far. Everyone will say to relax, which I agree with, however I was in your place and no that's not gonna happen. I wouldn't try studying any material because you're 1) not gonna know what to study. Even biochem is drastically different in med school vs undergrad. and 2) med school material isn't complicated, its mostly just the volume and you'll just forget it all.

I'd do what @Detective SnowBucket said and others, learn useful tools like Anki and get comfortable with it. Learn R or state or something if you plan to do research. Find some interesting research or labs at your school that you might want to get involved in. Get in shape because it can be difficult to do so as a med student. take care of stuff you've been putting off, like dents and doctors appointments, get your oil changed. Can also volunteer too, that's gonna be important if you're aiming for something like AOA.

Learning R is pretty useless you have an actual project to analyze

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

There are plenty of things that you can gain by analyzing random datasets in R. MLB data, stock market data. The methods don’t change. you just need a question. Ie trying to predict how many wins a team will get based on batting stays

 

[DarkBluMage]

There are plenty of things that you can gain by analyzing random datasets in R. MLB data, stock market data. The methods don’t change. you just need a question. Ie trying to predict how many wins a team will get based on batting stays

Lmbo that honestly sounds like a waste of time that can be better spent relaxing.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

it’s more helpful if you have an end goal. For example if somebody wanted to start making positive EV baseball bets or wanted to start using technical analysis to guide entry points on investments.

I’m sure this would help more than using R or Oython for the first time once one is assigned to a project.

 

[Gilakend]

The labels on beer cans.