Do you attend lecture (a cumulative poll rather than a redundant thread)?

[Guero]

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Do you attend lecture (a cumulative poll rather than a redundant thread)?

This has definitely been beaten into the ground after doing a search. I was just curious to see a quantified sample of answers as I enter MS1 rather than rehashing a debate I'm reading already. Thanks for voting and good luck on exams, shelves, and boards!

 

[notbobtrustme]

You should know that some medical schools do require attendance at lectures so that will skew the poll results.

 

[Guero]

You should know that some medical schools do require attendance at lectures so that will skew the poll results.

Good point. I'm aware but didn't even think about that when posting. Hopefully some will click other and elaborate that their attendance was required. Thanks for pointing that out. 👍

 

[piviti]

We have mandatory classes here. Otherwise, I would skip everything.

 

[Textbookversion]

We have mandatory classes here. Otherwise, I would skip everything.

Oh god how miserable.

 

[DocVapor]

Attendance is mandatory. Usually 8 - noon, with 2-3 labs per week in the afternoon on average. I like it. Would probably still attend if not required.

Edit: I voted "Other" as requested earlier.

 

[Guero]

Attendance is mandatory. Usually 8 - noon, with 2-3 labs per week in the afternoon on average. I like it. Would probably still attend if not required.

Edit: I voted "Other" as requested earlier.

Much appreciated and great info. Thank you.

 

[Cinclus]

I have been streaming on those days where there are no mandatory-attendance activities. My carpooling situation just makes it easier and more affordable for me to stay for everything on those days, even if the mandatory-attendance stuff is only a small part of the day. I will sometimes just drive in myself though, if I'm really tired and the mandatory stuff doesn't occur until the afternoon. I attended pretty much all lectures the first semester; I'm in the second semester of MS1 now, and I'm finding I really like watching the lectures on my own time and at my own pace. Also, not waking up before 7 AM is awesome. I much prefer rising at the crack of noon, if possible.

 

[Geekchick921]

Our block lectures aren't mandatory, but labs and workshops that are usually scattered throughout the week are. I attend lecture any way. I get distracted at home when I try to do class capture... it takes me like 3 times as long as it should to get through anything. Even if I'm screwing around on Facebook I still follow and retain stuff better if I'm physically present.

 

[Planes2Doc]

Our block lectures aren't mandatory, but labs and workshops that are usually scattered throughout the week are. I attend lecture any way. I get distracted at home when I try to do class capture... it takes me like 3 times as long as it should to get through anything. Even if I'm screwing around on Facebook I still follow and retain stuff better if I'm physically present.

Ugh... I hate those labs and workshops! I have a pretty long commute, and hate coming out to campus for only twenty minutes, and then making the much longer trek all the way home!

If I didn't skip lectures, I would be doing far worse.

 

[Dave89]

Voted yes, because going to lectures often gives me valuable insights into what the professors will stress on tests. Except for the year-long course in first year that most schools have on the "fluffy" stuff (e.g. nutrition, social awareness, ethics, etc.) - avoid those lectures if you can. Total waste of time.

 

[Bojack Horseman]

Voted yes, because going to lectures often gives me valuable insights into what the professors will stress on tests. Except for the year-long course in first year that most schools have on the "fluffy" stuff (e.g. nutrition, social awareness, ethics, etc.) - avoid those lectures if you can. Total waste of time.

You can get the same benefit from streaming the lecture at home 8)

Does your school not do this?

 

[Dave89]

You can get the same benefit from streaming the lecture at home 8)

Does your school not do this?

Fair point. Unfortunately, my school's system does not enable fast-forwarding of the videos 🙁

If I'm really bombed I'll watch 'em. But sometimes professors stress different things from year to year, so...

 

[link2swim06]

Lectures are a terribly inefficient way to learn. If you have the choice you will probably be able to get better grades by hitting the library for long hours.

 

[OneMoreRound]

Lectures are a terribly inefficient way to learn. If you have the choice you will probably be able to get better grades by hitting the library for long hours.

I agree. I think lectures only exist because they control the lecture questions.

If the lecture questions were national or standardized then most would not have jobs.

 

[Guero]

I agree. I think lectures only exist because they control the lecture questions.

If the lecture questions were national or standardized then most would not have jobs.

Perhaps at some schools, but from what I've learned from my mentors and colleagues, I believe most that lecture only do so as a modicum of their "available" time and spend the rest on research, clinical education/care, or some other facet of the machine that is academia. Note I used "believe." *braces for flame*

 

[link2swim06]

Perhaps at some schools, but from what I've learned from my mentors and colleagues, I believe most that lecture only do so as a modicum of their "available" time and spend the rest on research, clinical education/care, or some other facet of the machine that is academia. Note I used "believe." *braces for flame*

The point isn't the amount of time spent....it's funding.

While the majority of lecturers/researchers get some outside funding (i.e. NIH, other grants), they are still very dependent on the salary the med school pays them. At most med schools that salary is mainly derived from tuition.

 

[kehlsh]

i only go for bonus pts

 

[Guero]

The point isn't the amount of time spent....it's funding.

While the majority of lecturers/researchers get some outside funding (i.e. NIH, other grants), they are still very dependent on the salary the med school pays them. At most med schools that salary is mainly derived from tuition.

Makes total sense, thanks. 🙂

 

[normtheniner]

Lectures are a terribly inefficient way to learn. If you have the choice you will probably be able to get better grades by hitting the library for long hours.

My average when I attended lecture first year (mainly fall semester): ~85

My average second year not going to anything except 1-2 small groups a week: ~95

I'd say when I went to class I'd lose focus and probably miss 25-30% of the lecture.... Instead I get up and go to the library at ~8am every morning and if I miss something I just rewind (plus its playing on 1.5Xspeed)

The people who actually attend class are always facebooking and posting on our class facebook page... It makes me wonder why they even show up to begin with if they're just going to do that, but to each their own I suppose.

I'll admit I'm sick of the long hours in the library, I'm ready for clinical years to start and the days of "do you or don't you attend lecture" will be long gone.

 

[JABWS]

I attended most lectures first semester, then realized how utterly inefficient this is. Now I stream at 1.5-2X and am able to learn the information much more thoroughly.

One disclaimer: I've always been a fairly independent learner. However, I did attend lecture religiously in college, and I actually planned on doing the same in medical school. Honestly, I only stream now to make sure I'm not missing any insight on potential exam questions. Other than that, I could probably do without lectures all together.

 

[link2swim06]

I'll admit I'm sick of the long hours in the library, I'm ready for clinical years to start and the days of "do you or don't you attend lecture" will be long gone.

Clinical years are million times better but now in the middle of M3 year I think 'man it would be nice to get paid something for seeing patients and writing notes'....I am looking forward residency. Each step seems to get better.

 

[Stellar Clouds]

Clinical years are million times better but now in the middle of M3 year I think 'man it would be nice to get paid something for seeing patients and writing notes'....I am looking forward residency. Each step seems to get better.

Just wait until you are a fourth year...it gets even better!

 

[evilbooyaa]

I lasted about a week into MS1 before I said F-it and stopped showing up to anything that wasn't mandatory. Watching videos at 1.5-2x made me pay attention more, and went with my not waking up before 12pm lifestyle.

 

[nychila]

So at schools that don't require attendance, according to the poll, only half the class show up and lots of students are only seen outside of lectures?

 

[Guero]

So at schools that don't require attendance, according to the poll, only half the class show up and lots of students are only seen outside of lectures?

It seems so and is in line with what I've heard from my friends already in school.

For those of you that watch the lectures on 1.5-2x, did it take some time to get used to the speed to efficiently pick up the important points? It seems like I'd have a little more trouble concentrating on a lecture at twice the speed...

 

[Bojack Horseman]

For those of you that watch the lectures on 1.5-2x, did it take some time to get used to the speed to efficiently pick up the important points? It seems like I'd have a little more trouble concentrating on a lecture at twice the speed...

Depends on the lecturer. I usually don't go above 1.4 though.

You can go faster on the second watch though.

 

[Guero]

Depends on the lecturer. I usually don't go above 1.4 though.

You can go faster on the second watch though.

Good points, thanks. I love getting all of this info months before I start.

Thanks again to everyone for sharing your thoughts.

 

[JP2740]

I go to lecture but if I have to skip for whatever reason, there's no way I'm not listening at 2x.

 

[link2swim06]

So at schools that don't require attendance, according to the poll, only half the class show up and lots of students are only seen outside of lectures?

Towards end of M2 year some lectures only ~20 people out of a 90 person class would attend.


There are plenty of people who you ONLY see on test days. I was one of them.

 

[JABWS]

It seems so and is in line with what I've heard from my friends already in school.

For those of you that watch the lectures on 1.5-2x, did it take some time to get used to the speed to efficiently pick up the important points? It seems like I'd have a little more trouble concentrating on a lecture at twice the speed...

It's professor-dependent, but most of the time 1.6-1.7x is completely reasonable. Fast forwarding doesn't have as drastic of an effect as you would think. People actually talk pretty slow and take a lot of time to think in between sentences. Speeding it up just makes it all slightly more continuous and fluent, and it actually forces me to focus more than I would have otherwise. Having streamed for so long now, I can hardly stand to listen to someone lecture at normal speed. I find myself hanging on every word, waiting for them to just get it out already.

I cut out more than an hour for every three that I would have spent in lecture, plus staying at home knocks off another hour worth of commute. The amount of time I spend sitting in lecture is inversely proportional to my success on exams. Rather than wasting the better part of my day listening to someone drone on and invariably having lapses in attention, I sit down, focus, and knock it all out quickly so I can spend more time reading and digesting the material.

 

[Guero]

It's professor-dependent, but most of the time 1.6-1.7x is completely reasonable. Fast forwarding doesn't have as drastic of an effect as you would think. People actually talk pretty slow and take a lot of time to think in between sentences. Speeding it up just makes it all slightly more continuous and fluent, and it actually forces me to focus more than I would have otherwise. Having streamed for so long now, I can hardly stand to listen to someone lecture at normal speed. I find myself hanging on every word, waiting for them to just get it out already.

I cut out more than an hour for every three that I would have spent in lecture, plus staying at home knocks off another hour worth of commute. The amount of time I spend sitting in lecture is inversely proportional to my success on exams. Rather than wasting the better part of my day listening to someone drone on and invariably having lapses in attention, I sit down, focus, and knock it all out quickly so I can spend more time reading and digesting the material.

I'm an innately impatient person, so I know how you feel in droning lectures. Great reply, thanks.

 

[evilbooyaa]

It seems so and is in line with what I've heard from my friends already in school.

For those of you that watch the lectures on 1.5-2x, did it take some time to get used to the speed to efficiently pick up the important points? It seems like I'd have a little more trouble concentrating on a lecture at twice the speed...

The paradoxical thing is that you focus better when you don't have time to zone out.

 

[Izanami]

One of the major perks of non-mandatory lectures is that you don't have to listen to the sound of people snacking during class. Holy mother of Christ, baby carrots, pita chips? Can you **** find a more annoying snack? Sometimes I just want to turn around and punch them in the throat. We have a 5-10 minutes break for every hour of lecture, but NOOOOO, they must snack during lecture!!! And it's not like I have not attempted to avoid them, the lecture-snackers are scattered all over the lecture hall /rant over/

 

[Ironheme]

One of the major perks of non-mandatory lectures is that you don't have to listen to the sound of people snacking during class. Holy mother of Christ, baby carrots, pita chips? Can you **** find a more annoying snack? Sometimes I just want to turn around and punch them in the throat. We have a 5-10 minutes break for every hour of lecture, but NOOOOO, they must snack during lecture!!! And it's not like I have not attempted to avoid them, the lecture-snackers are scattered all over the lecture hall /rant over/

I snack in lecture. It basically keeps me from falling asleep. I try to be mindful of others though, and keep it to non-smelly foods (like a hard boiled egg) that don't make a lot of noise when eaten. Though, there's a chance that the people that are bugging you don't realize it is. If someone said something to me, I definitely would stop.

Then again, they are eating chips and how you don't know it isn't noisy...

Probably the same people that are going nuts on their keyboard clickty clack when the lecturer isn't saying anything and you realize they're frantically replying to their friends on IM....

Though I would take lecture-snackers over the guy that talks under his breath answering every question (sometimes wrongly) and commenting on everything during class.

 

[Guero]

One of the major perks of non-mandatory lectures is that you don't have to listen to the sound of people snacking during class. Holy mother of Christ, baby carrots, pita chips? Can you **** find a more annoying snack? Sometimes I just want to turn around and punch them in the throat. We have a 5-10 minutes break for every hour of lecture, but NOOOOO, they must snack during lecture!!! And it's not like I have not attempted to avoid them, the lecture-snackers are scattered all over the lecture hall /rant over/

Bahahaha! I feel like this all the time! I'm not a fascist that says you can't eat; but I can't stand incessant crunching and the sound of crackling plastic. I'm with ya, man.

 

[Guero]

I snack in lecture. It basically keeps me from falling asleep. I try to be mindful of others though, and keep it to non-smelly foods (like a hard boiled egg) that don't make a lot of noise when eaten. Though, there's a chance that the people that are bugging you don't realize it is. If someone said something to me, I definitely would stop.

Then again, they are eating chips and how you don't know it isn't noisy...

Probably the same people that are going nuts on their keyboard clickty clack when the lecturer isn't saying anything and you realize they're frantically replying to their friends on IM....

Though I would take lecture-snackers over the guy that talks under his breath answering every question (sometimes wrongly) and commenting on everything during class.

Props to the considerate folks! That's me, too. I'd always bring something less intrusive and ensure I opened it before class started. I hate it when I attend grand rounds or a guest lecture and they give us all a bag of chips with our sammich. The attending up front is always trying to talk over 400 some odd bags of chips opening. LoL

 

[Slack3r]

I feel like "not attending lecture" and then streaming at home is basically the same thing. I'd be more interested to see those that don't go to lecture, don't stream, and then try and work entirely off the syllabus/textbooks.

 

[Guero]

I feel like "not attending lecture" and then streaming at home is basically the same thing. I'd be more interested to see those that don't go to lecture, don't stream, and then try and work entirely off the syllabus/textbooks.

Do those people even exist and graduate?

 

[Izanami]

I feel like "not attending lecture" and then streaming at home is basically the same thing. I'd be more interested to see those that don't go to lecture, don't stream, and then try and work entirely off the syllabus/textbooks.

I am actually one of those people. My school doesn't stream lectures, podcasts are posted later in the day. I generally find listening to/watching the recorded lectures a waste of time because 1) If I listen at regular speed, I might as well have gone to the lecture 2) If I listen at 1.5, 2x speed, I find myself spacing out really quickly.

Lucky for me my school provides very detailed syllabi and the professors (most of them) adhere strictly to their provided objectives. When I study I just need the syllabi, the course review books (for example: Lippincotts for Biochem, Constanzo's for Physio etc.) and access to Wikipedia/Google. I do occasionally go to lectures for the topics that I think will be interesting and those few professors who are still using the overhead projectors. I have been doing very well so far .

 

[Guero]

I am actually one of those people. My school doesn't stream lectures, podcasts are posted later in the day. I generally find listening to/watching the recorded lectures a waste of time because 1) If I listen at regular speed, I might as well have gone to the lecture 2) If I listen at 1.5, 2x speed, I find myself spacing out really quickly.

Lucky for me my school provides very detailed syllabi and the professors (most of them) adhere strictly to their provided objectives. When I study I just need the syllabi, the course review books (for example: Lippincotts for Biochem, Constanzo's for Physio etc.) and access to Wikipedia/Google. I do occasionally go to lectures for the topics that I think will be interesting and those few professors who are still using the overhead projectors. I have been doing very well so far .

Congrats! I'm amazed.

 

[Wordead]

I am actually one of those people. My school doesn't stream lectures, podcasts are posted later in the day. I generally find listening to/watching the recorded lectures a waste of time because 1) If I listen at regular speed, I might as well have gone to the lecture 2) If I listen at 1.5, 2x speed, I find myself spacing out really quickly.

Lucky for me my school provides very detailed syllabi and the professors (most of them) adhere strictly to their provided objectives. When I study I just need the syllabi, the course review books (for example: Lippincotts for Biochem, Constanzo's for Physio etc.) and access to Wikipedia/Google. I do occasionally go to lectures for the topics that I think will be interesting and those few professors who are still using the overhead projectors. I have been doing very well so far .

I didn't listen to lectures either. I found it very low yield, and it was hard to adjust to new lecturer's teaching styles and emphasis (not to mention some were just horrible lecturers). Not to mention the spikes in BP when I heard classmates asking stupid questions. Instead I rolled through pathoma/katsung/goljian/etc. Our tests never had any of the less significant points that weren't mentioned in the review books (I still averaged >90% on all tests that weren't behavioral science, 1-2 STDEVs above the mean).

 

[evilbooyaa]

I feel like "not attending lecture" and then streaming at home is basically the same thing. I'd be more interested to see those that don't go to lecture, don't stream, and then try and work entirely off the syllabus/textbooks.

Hard to do that, at least at my school, when the exam questions are based on what the lecturer has taught, even (on one or two occasions) if it is disputed by another source.

I don't know of anyone at my school who didn't at least look through the lectures once and use the powerpoints given to us as a basis for our study.

 

[JABWS]

The paradoxical thing is that you focus better when you don't have time to zone out.

Totally true for me as well. If anything, I think I actually gain something from streaming because of the added focus. Outside of the social aspects, the only benefit to going to class that I can come up with is the ability to ask questions, but if you're class is anything like mine, then you'll quickly learn that this isn't advisable. I watched someone get s*** on the first few weeks in and said nope, that's not for me.

 

[Kaustikos]

It depended for me... Some classes I went/enjoyed going to. But there's some classes where the lectures literally screwed me over. We have a Clinical Medicine course this year and it's taught by multiple faculty/doctors and 70% of time, the teachers don't know what to teach/focus on for our exams. So, it's essentially a waste to attend. You study their powerpoints/listen and study their things only to find it's not on the exams. So, I don't go and instead study step-up/nms.

 

[Textbookversion]

Do those people even exist and graduate?

Umm yes probably 1/2 the class in any given course at my school. The powerpoint slides are very complete. Obviously it depends on the class/lecturer.

 

[link2swim06]

Do those people even exist and graduate?

For pathology I was one of those people. Goljan rapid review was more than enough to answer every question on our test. It wasn't the assigned text (robbins) but it was faster to digest than going through a couple thousand rando path powerpoint slides.



Guero, med school is much more standardized than college. In college, the professors teach their own variations of a subject which tangentially relates to the text.

In med school, they are essentially teaching to the shelf for that subject and ultimately boards. Own minor fluctuations exists between schools which means review books are generally spot on.

 

[Guero]

Thanks again everyone, very informative--so loving how this thread has panned out thus far.

 

[FIREitUP]

I feel like "not attending lecture" and then streaming at home is basically the same thing. I'd be more interested to see those that don't go to lecture, don't stream, and then try and work entirely off the syllabus/textbooks.

that's me. i don't waste my time with incompetent lecturers. i use books that coherently explain the material and teach it to myself (as well as using pathoma). so far, my understanding of pathology is so much better than my peers that the pathologists that run our pathology group sessions have suggested that I go into pathology. if you are a self directed, independent learner who doesn't care about preclinical grades I would highly recommend this method of learning. Though, you have to be a pretty good test taker to get the BS questions right on the exams made by the same people that don't even know the material well enough to teach it.

@wordead: i wish our tests were like that.