Barely Failed first 2 exams and i'm concerned about whether i belong in medical school

Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine
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curiousbunnie2019

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I'm a month into medical school and it's been tough for me to say the least. In my post-bacc, I did well and was used to memorizing a bunch of information that the professors basically told me that I needed to know for examinations. I also did decent on the MCAT, even though I took it twice.

For whatever reason, medical school is not clicking for me. It takes me hours to grasp the material and by the time I semi-understand what's going on, it's time to move onto 2042892 million more lectures. I've had 2 integrated examinations so far, both of which I failed. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm studying 7+ hours a day, doing practice problems, but I'm still not performing well on exams. I know this sounds elementary, but I legit don't know how to study. I'm staying up late and not sleeping much because I feel like I'm always behind. How can I really assess what I don't know? I can't talk to my peers about this because I feel like everyone else gets the material, but I don't. They brag about their 80-90s after examinations, while I can't even pass.

I feel really down about myself and whether or not I can handle medical school. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
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Do you have a turoring center at your school? Or a counselor to meet with to discuss study skills/strategies.

It sounds to me like you’re trying to memorize without truly understanding what you’re studying and unable to apply it. Yes, memorizing so much stuff is a huge part of med school but it doesn’t mean much if you cant apply it.

I struggled a lot too. You’ll find what works eventually.
 
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You are not alone. I failed my first exam too and I've never failed an exam in my life. Some of the best advice I received coming in this year is don't overwork yourself and don't compare yourself to others. Remember that P=MD. Go talk to your academic support center and/or faculty about study habits.

But never forget that you did NOT get accepted by accident. You belong. More helpful reading here
 
Use every support resource you have. Stay positive. Take adequate breaks. Get good sleep. Eat well/healthy.

I had a rough bout recently and it messed up my psyche for a week and half. Talking to my support system was crucial.

The important thing to remember is that you're where you are because you can do this. It will take vigorous trial and error to find your method, but ALWAYS remember the fundamentals of quality sleep, good diet, positivity and utilizing your support system.
 
If you want advice, post up your study method now and perhaps people can critique it and give advice. I struggled a lot initially as well, hopped on the anki train and it has been as smooth of sailing as medical school can be since then.

Also, ignore what your classmates are saying. I like my peers, but I find many of them will do anything to appear like everything is fine and they aren't treading water. It's a med student trait where everyone likes to pretend like this isn't a struggle for them.
 
A classmate of mine failed his first three exams. He is an M2 just like me. Regardless of the people who go on chirping about "oh medical is easy try engineering or PhD school blah blah blah" medical school is hard. You have an immense volume of information to learn.

Try Anki. See what decks your classmates use or even make your own. I went from 80's to 90's once I started with it. Just make very simple cards based off lecture and it will help you memorize stuff like Amino acids, bacteria virulence factors (use the Sketchy Micro with subdecks for that though. Don't reinvent the wheel), and ion transporters in the kidney. That way you can very easily make associations when it comes time to doing practice questions and you KNOW that you know it. That's the key. You can read over a power point 30 times but if you don't challenge yourself to recall that information you never know if its in there.
 
Seek out the academic assistance office if your school has one!

Every school I interviewed at had very nice resources for struggling students; they really do want you to succeed.
 
As others have suggested, I would go seek out the counselor or tutors if available asap to help you go over what holes you may have in the way you're studying. I don't think the time you're putting in is the issue, if you're truly studying 7 hours straight that's more than enough time.

But when people say they're studying 7 hours, that can also mean an hour for lunch, dinner, snacks, TV, ill-advised anatomy study on the internet, etc. You need someone to help breakdown for you what you're doing and where you are missing the point. Where you are failing to make the proper associations and understanding the thrust of what you're studying. It's not enough to memorize everything, but you have to know where everything fits in relation to everything other.

That being said, it is faaar from unusual for people to fail in medical school. Medical school is totally unlike what most people ever had to prepare for before. And those people bragging about 80-90s I bet are a small minority, only those with good grades will vocally brag.
 
jurassicpark said:
... ill-advised anatomy study on the internet...
Click to expand...
786.jpg
 
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Is there a classmate that is 1) not a jerk 2) seems to have things figured out 3) is willing to study with you? My savior was a trusted classmate that could show me the ropes.
 
Hippocrates II said:
If you want advice, post up your study method now and perhaps people can critique it and give advice. I struggled a lot initially as well, hopped on the anki train and it has been as smooth of sailing as medical school can be since then.

Also, ignore what your classmates are saying. I like my peers, but I find many of them will do anything to appear like everything is fine and they aren't treading water. It's a med student trait where everyone likes to pretend like this isn't a struggle for them.
Click to expand...


My study schedule during the weekdays:

8:00-9:00am - Anki
9:00am-5:00pm - Lecture and/or lab or clinic
6:30pm-midnight - Watch lectures 2x speed that I may have been confused about, Anki


Weekend study schedule:

8-9 hours of re-reading the lecture, syllabi, and Anki

I can say that I'm not being consistent with Anki and not getting much from it. I think partly because I'm using pre-made flashcards and I'm not reviewing them everyday like I should.

Any tips on active review would be greatly appreciated. I like flashcards and the idea of incorporating practice problems into my review.
 
curiousbunnie2019 said:
My study schedule during the weekdays:

8:00-9:00am - Anki
9:00am-5:00pm - Lecture and/or lab or clinic
6:30pm-midnight - Watch lectures 2x speed that I may have been confused about, Anki


Weekend study schedule:

8-9 hours of re-reading the lecture, syllabi, and Anki

I can say that I'm not being consistent with Anki and not getting much from it. I think partly because I'm using pre-made flashcards and I'm not reviewing them everyday like I should.

Any tips on active review would be greatly appreciated. I like flashcards and the idea of incorporating practice problems into my review.
Click to expand...
Found the problem.
 
curiousbunnie2019 said:
I'm a month into medical school and it's been tough for me to say the least. In my post-bacc, I did well and was used to memorizing a bunch of information that the professors basically told me that I needed to know for examinations. I also did decent on the MCAT, even though I took it twice.

For whatever reason, medical school is not clicking for me. It takes me hours to grasp the material and by the time I semi-understand what's going on, it's time to move onto 2042892 million more lectures. I've had 2 integrated examinations so far, both of which I failed. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm studying 7+ hours a day, doing practice problems, but I'm still not performing well on exams. I know this sounds elementary, but I legit don't know how to study. I'm staying up late and not sleeping much because I feel like I'm always behind. How can I really assess what I don't know? I can't talk to my peers about this because I feel like everyone else gets the material, but I don't. They brag about their 80-90s after examinations, while I can't even pass.

I feel really down about myself and whether or not I can handle medical school. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Click to expand...
Rule #1 med students lie. All your peers are not getting 90s and a lot of students inflate their grades. They try and act like they have it all figured out. they dont. You are in med school because you belong here. Try getting an upper classman tutor. They know the professors how they test and whats important and what isnt. Theyve done this before you and have excelled-use them as a resource
 
curiousbunnie2019 said:
I'm a month into medical school and it's been tough for me to say the least. In my post-bacc, I did well and was used to memorizing a bunch of information that the professors basically told me that I needed to know for examinations. I also did decent on the MCAT, even though I took it twice.

For whatever reason, medical school is not clicking for me. It takes me hours to grasp the material and by the time I semi-understand what's going on, it's time to move onto 2042892 million more lectures. I've had 2 integrated examinations so far, both of which I failed. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm studying 7+ hours a day, doing practice problems, but I'm still not performing well on exams. I know this sounds elementary, but I legit don't know how to study. I'm staying up late and not sleeping much because I feel like I'm always behind. How can I really assess what I don't know? I can't talk to my peers about this because I feel like everyone else gets the material, but I don't. They brag about their 80-90s after examinations, while I can't even pass.

I feel really down about myself and whether or not I can handle medical school. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Click to expand...
Get yourself to your school's learning or education center STAT.

Also read my guide to Med student success
 
curiousbunnie2019 said:
My study schedule during the weekdays:

8:00-9:00am - Anki
9:00am-5:00pm - Lecture and/or lab or clinic
6:30pm-midnight - Watch lectures 2x speed that I may have been confused about, Anki


Weekend study schedule:

8-9 hours of re-reading the lecture, syllabi, and Anki

I can say that I'm not being consistent with Anki and not getting much from it. I think partly because I'm using pre-made flashcards and I'm not reviewing them everyday like I should.

Any tips on active review would be greatly appreciated. I like flashcards and the idea of incorporating practice problems into my review.
Click to expand...

My 2c, though keep in mind there is no right/wrong way to study and what works for me might not work for you.

You are trying to do too much and you're probably splitting your focus too thin on each individual attempt at studying.

1) Sitting in class for your entire late morning into the early evening is a passive way to study. I understand some people like (or even need) to be in class to learn, but med school is all about efficiency and it is very difficult to be efficient when a large portion of your day is spent passively listening to people talk to you.

2) I find anki to be all or nothing. Just doing a little here and there is not really the purpose of it. You should be doing all cards due each day. Do not do premade cards without first understanding the concepts or else you're just memorizing facts that are difficult to apply come test time.

So, what I would suggest is the following (and again, this is how I would do it, but not necessarily what will work best for you):

1) Cut out a significant portion of the time you're spending in lecture. You really should not be spending your entire day on campus or else you really will study until midnight every night, quickly burn out, and do poorly in class.

2) If you want to use premade decks, you should do the associated learning ahead of the deck (read the BRS chapter for physio, watch pathoma for the path sections, etc.) and then do all of the associated cards in the first 2-3 days of that block.

3) After you've done that, go back to the lectures and learning objectives and make your own cards on learning objectives not sufficiently covered in zanki/premade deck of your choice, or topics you don't understand. Limit this to maybe ~50 cards/hr lecture if you can.

4) Do every card due every day. Do not let it build up, and be honest about knowing a card vs. hitting the again button.

5) At least a few days before a test, begin doing whatever practice questions you can get your hands on. I thought BRS and pretest had good questions, guyton and hall were tough but also decent practice (for physio). If you find yourself not understanding a concept, look it up in the book, on youtube, boards and beyond, etc. Make a quick card or two on it and move on.

I know that sounds like a lot, but I'm done studying by early evening every night, so it's an improvement in the amount of time spent studying over what you're currently doing at the very least. My grades also substantially improved when I started relying on zanki and filled in the gaps with my own cards. Also, I would highly recommend finding someone else in your class to help make cards for specific lecture material as that will further reduce how much time all of this takes.

Hope that helps
 
OP, is lecture mandatory at your school?

SDN has beaten the mandatory lecture topic to death so we don’t need to rehash that, but if they ARE mandatory at your school, advice about what to do instead is useless, and posters can redirect their tips to be more useful.
 
ortnakas said:
OP, is lecture mandatory at your school?

SDN has beaten the mandatory lecture topic to death so we don’t need to rehash that, but if they ARE mandatory at your school, advice about what to do instead is useless, and posters can redirect their tips to be more useful.
Click to expand...
Lectures are not mandatory. The only required sessions are PBL, anatomy and histology lab
 
curiousbunnie2019 said:
I'm a month into medical school and it's been tough for me to say the least. In my post-bacc, I did well and was used to memorizing a bunch of information that the professors basically told me that I needed to know for examinations. I also did decent on the MCAT, even though I took it twice.

For whatever reason, medical school is not clicking for me. It takes me hours to grasp the material and by the time I semi-understand what's going on, it's time to move onto 2042892 million more lectures. I've had 2 integrated examinations so far, both of which I failed. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm studying 7+ hours a day, doing practice problems, but I'm still not performing well on exams. I know this sounds elementary, but I legit don't know how to study. I'm staying up late and not sleeping much because I feel like I'm always behind. How can I really assess what I don't know? I can't talk to my peers about this because I feel like everyone else gets the material, but I don't. They brag about their 80-90s after examinations, while I can't even pass.

I feel really down about myself and whether or not I can handle medical school. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

You're 100% not alone. 70% is passing for my school.

67% first biochem exam
70% second biochem exam

74% first anatomy exam.


After that, got my feet under me academically and had zero problems from then on. What really helped was to stop memorizing minutiae and instead focus on how things work together, and to prioritize having 'me' time every day to pursue hobbies
 
Also, a good idea is to think back to the exams you took. For some people it is a matter of also understanding the type of questions medical school throws at you. How they're worded/phrased and the associations you have to connect with the knowledge you just learned. If the professors hand out lectures on powerpoint, etc, all of that will be fair game.

At least the first two years, a big part of the game is learning how to take tests.
 
stickgirl390 said:
The sooner you start using Anki, the better.
Click to expand...
that doesn't work for everyone so be careful; never did the trick for me.
At OP; you gotta utilize your schools resources. See if there is a learning center/ tutor that can help you learn how to study better. I remember when I first started med school, I used my undergrad method of studying which was to read and re-read info tons of times... it simply didn't cut it in med school and my first mini exam reflected that. The schools education center is a gold mine of information/ helpful resources; your tuition pays for it so might as well use it.
Also another thing... it is your first month, you are still trying to navigate the system so cut yourself some slack. A histology professor told me this day 1 of med school and its held true: Medical training will get harder but you will get better!
 
curiousbunnie2019 said:
My study schedule during the weekdays:

8:00-9:00am - Anki
9:00am-5:00pm - Lecture and/or lab or clinic
6:30pm-midnight - Watch lectures 2x speed that I may have been confused about, Anki


Weekend study schedule:

8-9 hours of re-reading the lecture, syllabi, and Anki

I can say that I'm not being consistent with Anki and not getting much from it. I think partly because I'm using pre-made flashcards and I'm not reviewing them everyday like I should.

Any tips on active review would be greatly appreciated. I like flashcards and the idea of incorporating practice problems into my review.
Click to expand...

Hey there, I'm also in my first month!
Seems like you're mainly lecture focused like me. So far I've found that I'm not going to remember anything from the first pass of lecture no matter what, so I watch it at least 2x speed once to just see the big picture and what slides the prof emphasizes. Then I watch it again 2x and pause every now and then to scribble stuff on slides. At this point I start absorbing things, and after another round of 2x lectures and maybe some reviewing of the powerpoint slides that I scribbled on I feel pretty good. Not attending live lecture seems to facilitate people who learn mainly from the lectures imo. Kind of ironic.

I tried anki premades but I feel like early on in a class it's hard for me to focus on the things that are high yield for in-house exams specifically in the way that the profs present them. I'll probably do more zanki after anatomy block is over though. My study group takes turns making anki cards for biochem and that is also helpful for studying on the go. And then I do practice questions on the last day or two before exams to get used to applying the material.

Definitely try a few things to see what works for you. Good luck and hang in there!
 
AnimeAndAnatomy said:
Hey there, I'm also in my first month!
Seems like you're mainly lecture focused like me. So far I've found that I'm not going to remember anything from the first pass of lecture no matter what, so I watch it at least 2x speed once to just see the big picture and what slides the prof emphasizes. Then I watch it again 2x and pause every now and then to scribble stuff on slides. At this point I start absorbing things, and after another round of 2x lectures and maybe some reviewing of the powerpoint slides that I scribbled on I feel pretty good. Not attending live lecture seems to facilitate people who learn mainly from the lectures imo. Kind of ironic.

I tried anki premades but I feel like early on in a class it's hard for me to focus on the things that are high yield for in-house exams specifically in the way that the profs present them. I'll probably do more zanki after anatomy block is over though. My study group takes turns making anki cards for biochem and that is also helpful for studying on the go. And then I do practice questions on the last day or two before exams to get used to applying the material.

Definitely try a few things to see what works for you. Good luck and hang in there!
Click to expand...
So you watch a lecture at 2x speed 3 times? All in one day?
 
thatchemguy said:
So you watch a lecture at 2x speed 3 times? All in one day?
Click to expand...

Usually not the same lecture on the same day unless it’s particularly confusing. My routine is in the morning do my second pass through yesterday’s lectures. Then first pass through today’s lectures. Maybe third pass of some older lectures in the evening. Interspersed between required school activities, reviewing ppt and some anki.

Closer to exams our schedule eases up enough for me to finish up 3rd passes on everything and review ppt slides.
 
jurassicpark said:
As others have suggested, I would go seek out the counselor or tutors if available asap to help you go over what holes you may have in the way you're studying. I don't think the time you're putting in is the issue, if you're truly studying 7 hours straight that's more than enough time.

But when people say they're studying 7 hours, that can also mean an hour for lunch, dinner, snacks, TV, ill-advised anatomy study on the internet, etc. You need someone to help breakdown for you what you're doing and where you are missing the point. Where you are failing to make the proper associations and understanding the thrust of what you're studying. It's not enough to memorize everything, but you have to know where everything fits in relation to everything other.

That being said, it is faaar from unusual for people to fail in medical school. Medical school is totally unlike what most people ever had to prepare for before. And those people bragging about 80-90s I bet are a small minority, only those with good grades will vocally brag.
Click to expand...
Far from usual, but people do fail out...
 
I will second what has been said by others:

1. Be judicious about which lectures you go to, and study when you're not at lectures.
2. Agree that it's good to go to your student services office and ask about tutoring or other support.
3. Anki is new. But I used flashcardmachine. I found that making the flashcards for memorization heavy courses was part of the process. So I didn't use pre-made decks. I made my own. And then I used an app on my iPod (back when iPod Touch was cool) that I had to get a card right a certain number of times to "pass it off" and then it would come back every so often to remind me of the concept.

Also, some reassurance. My first class was anatomy and it had 3 exams. The average score for those exams were the highest for the entire first 2 years of medical school and the standard deviation was the tightest, and then it seems like the class chilled-out a bit (on average, but there were some students that stayed intense, of course). So things may get better. Keep working hard. Get help if you need to. If you feel like an imposter, know that more people in your class feel that way than are letting on.
 
First year of medical school is about trying to figure this stuff out. Don't get discouraged. For all the classmates I hear bragging they got an 85 or a 90 I somehow keep seeing exam averages that are in the high 70's so i know that can't be entirely true.

And even in second year you're going to get some new classes and be like stumped and need to adapt. Don't be afraid to try new things. I was never a flashcard person in undergrad, now I am. I thought i was being a good student going to lectures, now I skim powerpoints and do boards and beyond. Sometimes I do really bad on a block because it just didn't work the way the others did.

Also just accept you're going to be really good at some classes and really bad at others.
 
Definitely get on the Anki train and limit lecture time to only when it's mandatory.

To add to what some have alluded to above, all through med school you're going to feel like everyone around you is dominating everything and is a genius. A lot of them probably think similarly about you. Get past that - medical school is extremely difficult, and most people are working their tails off too.

MS1 is difficult because of what you said - learning how YOU learn. You've gotta be open to trying new study methods and letting yourself feel uncomfortable with steering away from how you've been studying before med school.

It takes time to reorient how to study (I did a post-bacc too)....an embryology lecture is going to go through every damn detail about every fold and how it moves and what happens next....but in med school, for the exam you gotta know which step messes up and causes what disease, not every detail (as seemed to be the case in post-bacc).

It's alright - you aren't alone. Your grades are just screaming at you that the effort you're putting in isn't efficient...so make it more efficient! You're not dumb, it's not a question of ability.

Best way to do that is to find out wth everyone else is doing - no need to reinvent the wheel. Go to your tutoring center/learning advisors and ASK FOR HELP - there is nothing embarrassing about this...a lot of 'smart' people do this!!

They should be able to hook you up with a MS2 tutor or someone. I wasn't failing but I just had a difficult time with one block of anatomy and said wth, and asked for a tutor...and my tutor was so awesome, told me hundreds of times when we'd study what to absolutely know and NOT know, and kept mentoring me up thru this year's application process and all (i'm an MS4).

Keep at it...you'll be fine.
 
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