Failed my second anatomy test!

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shreypete

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i'm so depressed that i just feel like quitting. I aced my first anatomy test but the second one, I miserably failed and I worked so hard for it (for hours and hours every single day) and it just didn't work. did anyone have such experience before (where they aced the first test and find out that they're "decelerating" from then on?) :cry:
 
i'm so depressed that i just feel like quitting. I aced my first anatomy test but the second one, I miserably failed and I worked so hard for it (for hours and hours every single day) and it just didn't work. did anyone have such experience before (where they aced the first test and find out that they're "decelerating" from then on?) :cry:

Med school is about flexibility. When things go bad, you need to change up your approach. And be ready for more ups and downs -- what works for one subject or even part of a subject, may well not work for other parts. Which is why you usually need a series of tests before you know if your approach works. In all probability your school let you guys ease into the course with a more straightforward test at the onset, or else the subset of material for the first test simply wasn't as expansive as the second. Use the second test as a model for what is to come and find an approach for that one. Logging lots of hours only matters if they are productive hours -- spinning your wheels or locking down information that will never find its way onto a test are not. If you aren't using board review books as supplements, I would suggest you start -- learn an overview of the subject from those, and get the specifics from your lecture and noteset. Spend more time on the areas you find most difficult/least interesting.

And be sure to do multiple passes on the information. What works for some people: Preread for each lecture the day before. Review the lecture material and noteset after the lecture that same day. Go back and review the entire week's worth of lectures the next weekend. And then one more pass of all the material before the exam. Be sure to give greater weight to the lecture material (as opposed to obscure things in the noteset) -- that is the majority of what the prof finds important and should be enough to pass. The more obscure things are what may let you get those few extra points on top.

No reason to panic at this juncture -- many many physicians flubbed a test or two in med school. But you may also want to seek out your school's academic advising office to see if they have any tips -- might as well start refining your study technique early.
 
Med school is about flexibility. When things go bad, you need to change up your approach. And be ready for more ups and downs -- what works for one subject or even part of a subject, may well not work for other parts. Which is why you usually need a series of tests before you know if your approach works. In all probability your school let you guys ease into the course with a more straightforward test at the onset, or else the subset of material for the first test simply wasn't as expansive as the second. Use the second test as a model for what is to come and find an approach for that one. Logging lots of hours only matters if they are productive hours -- spinning your wheels or locking down information that will never find its way onto a test are not. If you aren't using board review books as supplements, I would suggest you start -- learn an overview of the subject from those, and get the specifics from your lecture and noteset. Spend more time on the areas you find most difficult/least interesting.

And be sure to do multiple passes on the information. What works for some people: Preread for each lecture the day before. Review the lecture material and noteset after the lecture that same day. Go back and review the entire week's worth of lectures the next weekend. And then one more pass of all the material before the exam. Be sure to give greater weight to the lecture material (as opposed to obscure things in the noteset) -- that is the majority of what the prof finds important and should be enough to pass. The more obscure things are what may let you get those few extra points on top.

No reason to panic at this juncture -- many many physicians flubbed a test or two in med school. But you may also want to seek out your school's academic advising office to see if they have any tips -- might as well start refining your study technique early.

hey Law2doc
what are these board overview books? Can you give a good one to use? They have anatomy overviews in them?
thanks a lot.
 
hey Law2doc
what are these board overview books? Can you give a good one to use? They have anatomy overviews in them?
thanks a lot.

Board review books -- the BRS, Lange's, High Yield, series type stuff (and many others - just find one that works for you in terms of density and ease of reading). They sell them for every subject. Most aren't adequate for the first year tests, but they give a nice overview framework upon which you can understand your lecture notes -- basically a good starting point for those who don't see the forrest because of all those darn trees.
 
hey law2doc....thanks a lot....btw have you done your law before? (just curious coz even i was in law school for 1 yr and then quite)....and the worst thing is i can't prepare for the lectures in advance (preread) coz we hardly know what to prepare for...the profs. don't stick to one schedule and they never let us know what they're going to cover in the next lecture...i guess that's the price i have to pay for going to a european medical school....
 
Board review books -- the BRS, Lange's, High Yield, series type stuff (and many others - just find one that works for you in terms of density and ease of reading). They sell them for every subject. Most aren't adequate for the first year tests, but they give a nice overview framework upon which you can understand your lecture notes -- basically a good starting point for those who don't see the forrest because of all those darn trees.
It's true that the BRS series generally have enough for boards, but not enough for the subject when you're taking it (although I am pretty fond of the level of detail in BRS - to me, RoadMap and a few others are way over-simplified). BRS Gross Anatomy is a considerable exception to this rule. When Dr. Chung says you're going to learn every muscle, every artery, every lymphatic, every bone, every nerve in the human body - he ain't kidding and I know because he teaches at The University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and I had him.

BRS Gross was our "bible". It's some of the most dry, boring reading you'll ever encounter. However, you will never ever find such a complete listing of everything you could possibly need to know in such a compressed, organized format anyplace else. Run out and buy a copy today.

Two things you need to know - one, Dr. Chung didn't fork out for a good illustrator and the pictures are beyond horrible. I never studied Chung's without a Netter's close by - I would cross-reference paragraphs to Netter plates for later study. Two, while Dr. Chung is an anatomy God, the 5th edition of the book didn't get quite enough proof-reading. There are no technical errors at all (Chung would never tolerate that and he wrote everything himself), but there are a few grammatical errors - especially in the question sections - due to the fact that English is not Chung's first language. For instance, I don't know - but I have been told, that personal pronouns are not sex-specific in Korean. When he tells you that a girl was stabbed (and, boy, does he love stab wounds) in a certain location and it turns out that the artery that was transected was the testicular artery - you complain to him about it and he looks annoyed and says "ah, do not worry about such thing." You can't convince him that it matters. A lot.

All in all, Chung's BRS is a great way to pass anatomy. (BTW, I'm NOT going to use it for boards because gross is low-yield and the book has way more detail than what I have time for).
 
It's true that the BRS series generally have enough for boards, but not enough for the subject when you're taking it (although I am pretty fond of the level of detail in BRS - to me, RoadMap and a few others are way over-simplified).

I wasn't advocating trying to learn your course material from board review stuff. I agree -- there isn't enough detail in those to pass most courses. But for folks who are failing tests, sometimes getting a very basic overview before spending time with the details is key. So I do suggest folks having difficulty get the basic lay of the land from a board review type book in addition to trying to learn the details from the course and lecture notes. For this, over-simplified, short and sweet, is almost better.
 
I am sorry to hear about the struggle you are having. I flunked one test - my first pharm test. Oh my gosh was I upset. A huge portion of the class flunked - we were using this huge Goodman's and Gillman's textbook and the teacher pulled all sorts of fine print trivia out of it. I ended up passing the course with a HP.

Anatomy lab tests were stressful. Some small bit of flesh on a cadaver would be tagged and we had to determine what it was without touching the specimin - our lab had something like 10 cadavers - and you had to know what it looked like in all of them because the teacher might tag the cephalic vein on one cadaver and the basilic vein on another. There was some anatomic variation from person to person, so you had to be familiar with the nuances of each cadaver. Anyway, I can remember feeling somewhat panicky staring at the specimins wanting to move it around a bit to get a better idea of what it might be. We had this one guy who would know everything cold weeks before the test - but the day of the test he would like like he was facing a firing squad - totally panicked. He was a smart capable guy but did not handle test situations well - would always choke during tests.

I remember one time, myself and a few other guys went out to eat after a histology test. We all felt it was pretty tough. We started speculating about what we would do if we flunked out of school - unanimously we decided after years of working at Burger King we would all save up and splurge on a bus trip around the country. Laughing about it helped somewhat. Somehow none of us flunked out, although I took a few months off one summer during clinicals to just chill (we were expected to do clinical rotations year round).

I know that does not help. But I certainly can sympathize. I believe you will get through it.
 
I wasn't advocating trying to learn your course material from board review stuff. I agree -- there isn't enough detail in those to pass most courses. But for folks who are failing tests, sometimes getting a very basic overview before spending time with the details is key. So I do suggest folks having difficulty get the basic lay of the land from a board review type book in addition to trying to learn the details from the course and lecture notes. For this, over-simplified, short and sweet, is almost better.
Oh, Law2Doc, I agree with you. Actually, I own all of the BRS books and I use them to study - and I'm not failing. I've learned that I just can't keep my mind organized through an ungodly thick text like Robbins' Pathophysiology. So, I start with BRS Pathology and learn the overview and basic diseases. Then I have a basic structure to use when I do read Robbins. It's a great way to study.

But I do recommend BRS Gross for GA. It's not an overview - it's a killer amount of detail in a compressed format and it works as a primary text.
 
I am sorry to hear about the struggle you are having. I flunked one test - my first pharm test. Oh my gosh was I upset. A huge portion of the class flunked - we were using this huge Goodman's and Gillman's textbook and the teacher pulled all sorts of fine print trivia out of it. I ended up passing the course with a HP.

Anatomy lab tests were stressful. Some small bit of flesh on a cadaver would be tagged and we had to determine what it was without touching the specimin - our lab had something like 10 cadavers - and you had to know what it looked like in all of them because the teacher might tag the cephalic vein on one cadaver and the basilic vein on another. There was some anatomic variation from person to person, so you had to be familiar with the nuances of each cadaver. Anyway, I can remember feeling somewhat panicky staring at the specimins wanting to move it around a bit to get a better idea of what it might be. We had this one guy who would know everything cold weeks before the test - but the day of the test he would like like he was facing a firing squad - totally panicked. He was a smart capable guy but did not handle test situations well - would always choke during tests.

I remember one time, myself and a few other guys went out to eat after a histology test. We all felt it was pretty tough. We started speculating about what we would do if we flunked out of school - unanimously we decided after years of working at Burger King we would all save up and splurge on a bus trip around the country. Laughing about it helped somewhat. Somehow none of us flunked out, although I took a few months off one summer during clinicals to just chill (we were expected to do clinical rotations year round).

I know that does not help. But I certainly can sympathize. I believe you will get through it.

hey there, thanks for sharing your experience...infact the highest grade on this test was a C....which is really sad...we didn't expect xray and mri questions relating to the upper and lower limbs....and she also included an oral part along with the written part and the slide test...it was just a shock to all of us....
 
Yeah the shoulder sucked for MRIs because it was our first unit and I wasn't proficient with what they look like yet. Not only that, but muscles bore the hell out of me. I didn't do poorly on the first test, but it wasn't exactly great either. You have to learn what's your personal best study technique and how to excel.

To make you feel better... I had the biggest trouble with head and neck that was my second unit (pretty poor grade/danger zone). I came back for the thorax and abdomen and was within the top 13% on the lab practical.
 
hey TMP-SMX, if you don't mind me asking, how did you make a come-back? did you study for lots of hours and change you're study technique? do you think attending anatomy lectures are useful? (coz every time i go into that lecture hall, i don't know a thing he's saying as it's completely new to us and the worst part is that we don't know what the profs. will teach in the subsequent lectures...so pre-reading never really works)....
 
Moores' blue boxes are gold. Read those once you have a bit of understanding. Make notes all on a separate page (take 2-3 hours). Then read that note(s) 2-3 before the test. If you have time add Lange USMLE review for more clinical correlates. Great stuff, especially since our tests ask alot of clinical questions. While I use Drake(aka Gray's) for reading (much easier to read than the more dense Moore, simpler/more pictures), their green clinical boxes suck.

My study method:
Read Drake (all of it, only class I actually read all that I should)
Read class notes
Watch leactures online
Moore Blue book
Practice tests
Skim First Aid (hour at most)
Lange USMLE review (if you have the time)

* I don't read Chung's BRS because our notes are essentially that. Just an outline. Only class notes that are like that, but it's good. Remember with all the outside sources you use, knowing your class notes/objectives is the most important. A mistake I made for the first test, no focusing on our class notes as much.
 
i'm so depressed that i just feel like quitting. I aced my first anatomy test but the second one, I miserably failed and I worked so hard for it (for hours and hours every single day) and it just didn't work. did anyone have such experience before (where they aced the first test and find out that they're "decelerating" from then on?) :cry:

Cheer up, pick up where you left of and study again. Good luck, mate. 👍
 
hey TMP-SMX, if you don't mind me asking, how did you make a come-back? did you study for lots of hours and change you're study technique? do you think attending anatomy lectures are useful? (coz every time i go into that lecture hall, i don't know a thing he's saying as it's completely new to us and the worst part is that we don't know what the profs. will teach in the subsequent lectures...so pre-reading never really works)....

Well at Wayne lectures are streamed so I usually stream them even if I'm on campus. (I watch lectures at 2X speed and sometimes faster if the lecturer speaks slowly). During the time that I'm usually studying. I think that www.netanatomy.com really helped. I'm not sure if your campus subscribes to it but it was helpful for me. For head and neck there wasn't a section on netanatomy for it.

In general, I just studied nearly every day. On one hand, head and neck is just very difficult and the average was very low. On the other, thorax and abdomen is not as difficult and the structures are much larger. I read through everything in Gray's for students, went through Netter in depth, went over all of our notes, spent the time in lab going over all of the structures in our lab manual, and spent plenty of time on cross sections and radiology.

There's no secret to doing well. It's just about going over everything until you are confident and going over all of the information. (Use all of the resources you have and study every day at least a bit).
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

I mean this in an innocuous way, I'm genuinely curious because it scares me.
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

I mean this in an innocuous way, I'm genuinely curious because it scares me.


you think failing A test is incredible? how about failing out of M1 and having to repeat it the following year?

i think some parts of it has to do with adcomms picking the wrong types of people (ie superstar in underwater basket weaving) to up their reputation (ie for us news rankings, etc). other factors, such as party hardying, can also play a role.
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

well, first of all i'm in medical school right outta the 1st yr. of undergrad (where i did law) so it was quite hard to make a come-back. secondly thhe european schools are quite tough on grading....if you get a 23/30, then that's a fail....the passing percentage for the finals is 85 %....so that makes it all the more tough to pass (and also it's a fixed system in the sense that one has to pass all they're tests in order to write the final pre-exam and one has to pass the final pre-exam in order to give the main oral exam...in case one fails a test, they can make up for in during the dissection weeks ---which is at the end of the semester. we have tests almost every week plus seminars which are graded in order to give us credit for the course)........so the system is quite harsh and rigid in many ways.....
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.
Failing tests in med school happens all the time. If you ask a bunch of graduating fourth years if they've ever failed a test in med school, you'll probably hear more "yes" than "no".

Med school exams are tough and they are designed so that students have to work very very hard just to pass. There's not a lot of margin for error. You can very easily find yourself underestimating a topic, not allocating enough time, or not studying in the right way and that can knock you from a solid pass to a failure every time.

A failed test doesn't mean you're not cut out for med school. It means you're doing something wrong. The reason that it needs to be taken so seriously is that it's very hard to make up ground, so you want to rectify it asap.
 
OP- if you're going to stumble on a course, anatomy is probably going to be a good one to pick. Most folks who have trouble with anatomy have trouble with the volume, not the concepts (it's the other way around for courses like Physiology). You're probably not finding the concepts all that hard, but finding it hard to process and memorize all of the information.

A few recommendations specific to anatomy:

1. Review books- Like Law and the others said, it's a great way to get a snapshot of the big picture.
2. Past tests- Look at/study past tests after you've learned the material.
3. Most schools offer formal or informal tutoring. Take advantage.
4. Form or join study groups. You learn tricks others have used to learn material. Teaching others material is also the best way to solidify what you've learned.
5. Use flashcards for anatomy, either by buying Nettter's or making your own (making is my choice; some folks memorize info better if they've written it out) or buying Netter's.
6. Read the readings --> Attend lecture --> Reread/study the material--> Attend study/tutoring sessions--> Make/study non-reading resources (flashcards, flowcharts, etc.)--> Relisten to lectures (if necessary)--> Study past tests/exams. It sounds like a lot of work, but not as much work as repeating a class.

Good luck, shreypete. At the end of the day, know that most students will stumble on one subject at one time or another. Learn your lessons and move on.
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

I mean this in an innocuous way, I'm genuinely curious because it scares me.

The bar for passing is usually much higher (ie 70-80%) than in undergrad (50%). In some ways, I'm glad I went to a challenging UG because there are plenty of people in my class who have never gotten anything but A's in their life and really freak out the first time they get a 75% on a test in medical school.
 
hey notdeadyet,

thanks a lot for the advice...it's quite helpful. in fact i just bought a set on netters flashcareds yesterday and i've started using them eversince. they're quite good actually. i guess next time, i'm gonna concentrate more on the big picture and then work from thereon. thanks once again. hope i'll find out my errors and not repeat it again!!
 
The bar for passing is usually much higher (ie 70-80%) than in undergrad (50%). In some ways, I'm glad I went to a challenging UG because there are plenty of people in my class who have never gotten anything but A's in their life and really freak out the first time they get a 75% on a test in medical school.

Where I come from you don't get an A (or A-) unless your hard, numerical, uncurved average is 90% or better. In my particular situation I was taking 3 labs and 1 - 2 other non-lab courses per semester and never got less than an A.

I seriously hope this is enough preparation for the rigors of med school.
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

I mean this in an innocuous way, I'm genuinely curious because it scares me.

What amazed me was recently reading about a guy from a top 25 United States medical school who is AOA and who flunked Step 2 CS. I am a IMG and I don't think anybody has failed step 2 CS in the 4 years I went to school (step 2 ck I flunked the first time, but CS in my opinion is a gimme). I thought CS was very easy - the cases are classic textbook, easy to figure out, you just have to posses basic social politeness and consideration (wash your hands, make sure the stethoscope is warm before applying it to their bare skin, tell the patient what you are doing and why, etc) , speak English with some clarity and know how to chart a note.

Lots of reasons to struggle with a medical test. Being handed divorce papers the week before (did not happen to me), having 4 children - one of whom is only weeks old - and you are watching them all while studying for pharmacology while the wife is grocery shopping and things like Frisbee's are bouncing off your head (this happened to me ALOT my first semester - in fact one time I lost my temper while all this was going on and it resulted in the one and only time I have ever spanked one of my children - wish I had not done it), drinking (never happened to me but does apparently happen - hard to believe but ya never know), nerd getting with new girlfriend (I was already married and it never happened to me - but some guy getting some for essentially the first time has a hard time thinking of nothing else), depression, trying to work while doing school, being a poor test taker and panicking under the stress of a test, having 6 tests in a week, ....I am sure there are others.
 
2. Past tests- Look at/study past tests after you've learned the material.

This is the only thing I really disagree with. You should look at these while you study material. If you can get your hands on past tests, then you know what type of things the professor thinks is important. There's no point in studying for something that isn't going to be on the exam - medical school is a tidal wave of information, and the name of the game is survival. Every second you spend studying for extraneous stuff is seconds away from study that will get you the grade.

Talk to your second years and the TAs and see what approaches they used and what to avoid.
 
This is the only thing I really disagree with. You should look at these while you study material.
Good point, I should have been more clear. What I'm advising against is folks that come in to a subject cold and just drill-and-kill all the specific questions they see from past test without learning about how the information fits together. This can be devastating when you come across new questions.
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

I mean this in an innocuous way, I'm genuinely curious because it scares me.

I know of one or two schools where no one ever fails a test. But at most schools as many as 5-10% of the class will fail a given test. As mentioned above, at a lot of schools there will be people who even fail courses and have to retake over the summer, and a few folks who fail enough courses that they have to retake the entire year. It has nothing to do with admissions -- the school picks people it believes can make it through med school, but it isn't going to shove people through who don't put up the goods, so the school's committment is not necessarilly that such students will make it in 4 years. But in the US it is rare to fail out, just down. The school feels enough of a committment to it's final product that it doesn't let folks advance until they prove a certain level of ability, even if it takes a little longer.
Be prepared to hit the ground running, because there is a floor you can fall through at many schools.
 
these kinds of posts are scary, how in gods name does someone fail a test in med school? I dont understand how it happens considering the admissions process.

I mean this in an innocuous way, I'm genuinely curious because it scares me.

The grading scheme at some schools allocate a certain percent for honors, and a certain percent for fail. Its relative.
 
Where I come from you don't get an A (or A-) unless your hard, numerical, uncurved average is 90% or better. In my particular situation I was taking 3 labs and 1 - 2 other non-lab courses per semester and never got less than an A.

I seriously hope this is enough preparation for the rigors of med school.

Most people at your med school will have earned their share of A's, but truth of the matter is that half of every med school class will find themselves struggling in the bottom half of the class. The school will have selected plenty of high scoring dynamic students who have the capability of blowing away a given test, so your previous GPA is not going to mean much, it's what you do from here on in that matters. The folks who work hard and study smart are going to do well, but everyone is going to "try" to do this. The skills from undergrad often don't translate though.

I wouldn't focus on the level of preparation you had in undergrad and would turn your full attention to working hard in med school. There are many folks with A/A- undergrad grades who have failed one or more tests in med school. In fact med school ends up harder for lots of people not just because the material is more voluminous, but because it can be humbling -- it's often one of the first times somene who used to get A's has to accept that s/he is all of a sudden doing poorly. Creates a lot of angst and depression. You'll see (hopefully not first hand).
 
Most people at your med school will have earned their share of A's, but truth of the matter is that half of every med school class will find themselves struggling in the bottom half of the class. The school will have selected plenty of high scoring dynamic students who have the capability of blowing away a given test, so your previous GPA is not going to mean much, it's what you do from here on in that matters. The folks who work hard and study smart are going to do well, but everyone is going to "try" to do this. The skills from undergrad often don't translate though.

I wouldn't focus on the level of preparation you had in undergrad and would turn your full attention to working hard in med school. There are many folks with A/A- undergrad grades who have failed one or more tests in med school. In fact med school ends up harder for lots of people not just because the material is more voluminous, but because it can be humbling -- it's often one of the first times somene who used to get A's has to accept that s/he is all of a sudden doing poorly. Creates a lot of angst and depression. You'll see (hopefully not first hand).

Ain't that the truth. It reminds me of something I heard before:

"I've never worked so hard to be so mediocre."
 
Well I'm definitely expecting to be humbled. I am. I even told an interviewer I'd be disappointed if it was easy, and that was the truth.

I was one of those study two days (maybe 6 hours total) before the test and get an A guys. Never really got less than a mid to low B on any one test, but if I did it was usually in courses I didnt care too much about. If I happened to score lower than I wanted on a test I would put in the work to pull my average up. In the interest of efficiency that was really all I studied.

I'm expecting (and planning), though, to have to study every day in med school for any one test. I could do those 3 hours or more every day per test If I needed to without trouble. More yet if theres more than one test to worry about. I guess what I'm worried about is whether or not my best will be enough.

You always assume that the admissions process weeds out anyone that isn't capable and hard working, so its still worrisome to hear about people failing tests.
 
Well I'm definitely expecting to be humbled. I am. I even told an interviewer I'd be disappointed if it was easy, and that was the truth.
Great news! You will NOT be disappointed.

I was one of those study two days (maybe 6 hours total) before the test and get an A guys. Never really got less than a mid to low B on any one test, but if I did it was usually in courses I didnt care too much about. If I happened to score lower than I wanted on a test I would put in the work to pull my average up. In the interest of efficiency that was really all I studied.
Your experience will probably change now.
 
This is the only thing I really disagree with. You should look at these while you study material. If you can get your hands on past tests, then you know what type of things the professor thinks is important. There's no point in studying for something that isn't going to be on the exam - medical school is a tidal wave of information, and the name of the game is survival. Every second you spend studying for extraneous stuff is seconds away from study that will get you the grade.

Talk to your second years and the TAs and see what approaches they used and what to avoid.

I wouldn't skip over anything in the notes.... Eventually, you have to take STEP 1 and anything in basic sciences is fair game...
 
Well I'm definitely expecting to be humbled. I am. I even told an interviewer I'd be disappointed if it was easy, and that was the truth.

I was one of those study two days (maybe 6 hours total) before the test and get an A guys. Never really got less than a mid to low B on any one test, but if I did it was usually in courses I didnt care too much about. If I happened to score lower than I wanted on a test I would put in the work to pull my average up. In the interest of efficiency that was really all I studied.

I'm expecting (and planning), though, to have to study every day in med school for any one test. I could do those 3 hours or more every day per test If I needed to without trouble. More yet if theres more than one test to worry about. I guess what I'm worried about is whether or not my best will be enough.

You always assume that the admissions process weeds out anyone that isn't capable and hard working, so its still worrisome to hear about people failing tests.

Another thing you may or may not know about already is that doing well in medical school isn't based on smarts, it's more about putting a lot of time into the work. The reason so is that the information thrown at you is like a fire hydrant gone SOL, instead of a steady gentle stream like in undergrad. I took pretty much 6 credits one semester in undergrad and it still wasn't as bad as the info being thrown out at us right now. One of the biggest adjustments I had to go through was learning from a conceptual point of view to a broad shotgun "read and learn as much as you can" approach. Students fail tests because of one of the following (but not limited to):
1) Didn't spend enough time on the reading/powerpoints
2) Haven't figured out their approach to mastering a lot of information under a short period of time.
3) Didn't self-test/self-assess their knowledge of the material well enough.
4) Have bad test-taking skills (eg overthinking questions, self-doubting on questions like I do).

I was not too far away from failing the first biochem exam I took (I even made a post on it on SDN! 😀). However, once I figured out what I was doing wrong and started figuring out my strategies, my grades improved dramatically. Again, when I realized that smarts could only get me so far and started to put in the work, I did better. Now if I could work on my damn test-taking skills..
 
There's this indian book that comes in 3 volumes Chaurasia Anatomy, its simple and easy to understand. However, its diagrams are not that good to understand. So i use a combination of Chaurasia and Netters for Anatomy.
 
Another thing you may or may not know about already is that doing well in medical school isn't based on smarts, it's more about putting a lot of time into the work. The reason so is that the information thrown at you is like a fire hydrant gone SOL, instead of a steady gentle stream like in undergrad. I took pretty much 6 credits one semester in undergrad and it still wasn't as bad as the info being thrown out at us right now. One of the biggest adjustments I had to go through was learning from a conceptual point of view to a broad shotgun "read and learn as much as you can" approach. Students fail tests because of one of the following (but not limited to):
1) Didn't spend enough time on the reading/powerpoints
2) Haven't figured out their approach to mastering a lot of information under a short period of time.
3) Didn't self-test/self-assess their knowledge of the material well enough.
4) Have bad test-taking skills (eg overthinking questions, self-doubting on questions like I do).

I was not too far away from failing the first biochem exam I took (I even made a post on it on SDN! 😀). However, once I figured out what I was doing wrong and started figuring out my strategies, my grades improved dramatically. Again, when I realized that smarts could only get me so far and started to put in the work, I did better. Now if I could work on my damn test-taking skills..

Yeah. And of course you don't really know me so this is fair advice. I am definitely aware that the "flow rate", so to speak, in medical school is like a fire hydrant. I'm actually mentally steeling myself for studying 3-4 times as much per class as I did in undergrad. I posted this somewhere else, but I'm going to be single (in all likelihood) going into med school, so being a glass half full person, I'm going to use it to my advantage and put all my effort into really nailing the coursework and step 1.
 
I just want to reiterate how much I love www.netanatomy.com If your school has access to it you should use it. You can learn the whole lower limb in a few hours. Great for practicals. (This is my last unit and I'll be done Friday) Thank you God. Back to netanatomy.
 
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