My favorite parts of these threads is the people who say use "blah blah blah to *supplement* class lectures not replace it" and then they list their routine and it involves learning everything from sources that aren't lectures and then doing the lectures right before the test to see what they need to just memorize for that exam. It really distorts the true message that I think these posters are trying to teach every time this thread comes up despite good intentions.
OP, do not ignore class lectures. There are important aspects of your curriculum that you need to know for your future as a physician (not tested but your life is only determined 95% by Step 1 these days
) and there are things that are an important alternative perspective on certain topics you will see in other resources. These will help you and not hurt your test taking ability.The difference is that only you can decide if you are putting in a good faith effort to learn these things or not. If you are taking this stuff seriously, but still not doing well on exams, then there are really only two things going on: you have some test taking issue that needs addressed or your exams are ****. That is ONLY if you really are learning the material. Otherwise, you should be doing better than a C even if you only used Zanki to study and never looked at anything else before the exam. This could be a sign that you aren't learning the material as well as you think you are. You cannot ignore that possibility.
OP, the first thing you need to do is examine why you are doing poorly on the school exams. You also need some context. You need to gain perspective on how your class grade distribution falls. When you receive advice from others you always have to keep in mind that some schools have much different curriculum and testing styles. Particularly in the MD forum, a lot of these posters ignore material because they have NBME written exams. Of course their advice is going to differ because they don't have ****ty exams so they can't imagine why someone could do poorly on the written even if they ignored lectures. I have also noticed that a lot of schools have really high test averages and high scores on their exams compared to mine. Your school may differ.
Are you below average compared to your peers or is a high C actually above the mean like at my school? Are the smart students in your class getting solid A's or is the ceiling on exams usually 88-91ish like at my school? Are you reviewing your exams and finding that you are solely missing questions that don't even read like English and are about the caption of a blurry image in a random slide after the PhD droned about a different topic for 40 minutes of the lecture? There needs to be a really, really good reason for you to be doing poorly for you to decide not to care about lectures at all. This is a dangerous situation. You have to understand that if you aren't doing an honest, and thorough self-evaluation you will put yourself in jeopardy of doing ****ty in school AND on boards. Don't be that guy.
The point is that no one can tell you if you don't need to worry or not because they don't know your curriculum. You should either provide some more details or consider examining how you study, not just what and how long you study.
Good luck!
Edit: I do want to clarify and emphasize that I said don't "ignore" lecture. Every medical student in America should be studying stuff beyond their lectures because taking lectures as gospel is going to screw you. You don't have to emphasize them if the situation makes sense, but certainly don't ignore them.