"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
While you aren't necessarily making an outline of your life in medical school, it never hurts to hear others' experiences so that not every little thing is a surprise.
Alright I will bite.
I am finishing up M2 year in a few months.
To go to class or not?
Initially everyone thinks they "should" go to class. I stopped going in November of M1 year because I realized its pointless to have someone read 80-100 powerpoint slides in 50 minutes. Only about 25% of my classmates go to class now, most people have reached the same conclusions. Also I am make my own schedule which I really enjoy.
Studying for tests
Each of your tests will be similar to the volume of material in a biology final in undergrad. But you will be cover that amount of information every 2-4 weeks. This is going to suck beyond belief initially because it will be a shock to your system. Eventually it will be commonplace and not as painful to sit in the library for 10+ hours.
The secret to med school is 99% of the people will not know all the details going into the test. Its kinda like a battlefield, triage and learn the important stuff first. The strong correlation to my test grades is the number of passes I make through the material.
Pass 1: I just read everything but dont try to actively memorize anything. (I figure out the architecture of what I need to learn)
Pass 2: I focus on key concepts, bolded words, do some highlighting or very very light note taking if I feel like doing it (maybe a page of tricky words or stuff I will likely mix up).
Pass 3: I re-read everything but try to put non-bolded less important concepts in my temporary memory (I either do this late night before the test or wake up early before the test).
Sometimes I do an extra pass but I rarely have time for that. This varies depending on the class, sometimes pass 1/2 will be me listening to a video at 2.0X speed of the lecture.
Worrying About Others
Med students are all type A people. It is very easy for them to stress each other out if you review stuff together and one of you knows more. Also its very likely your friends will out score you on many test. Focus on yourself, set your goals, met them, and forget the rest.
In summary: you will be happier person if you only worry about yourself.
Academic Confidence
Some people will start off:
1. Studying inefficiently
2. Not studying enough
Either way, if one of your first tests in M1 year goes bad, dont worry, you just need to fix the problem and you will be fine. A handful of your classmates might be stressed out bc of this, as I said above do our own thing.
Textbook and Review Books
I have yet to open a single textbook since entering med school. Most med schools provide notes with everything you need to know. These generally will either be in powerpoint, outline, or word document form.
In classes with crappy notes I strongly advising using board review books. These are from companies like BRS and lippincotts. For my micro course I combined a review book with my class notes and it helped me alot.
Other than that once you have your system down, med school isnt going to be hard. Its kinda like groundhog day the week before a test...get up, eat, study, sleep repeat. On non-test weeks you will likely have alot of free time.
