Feel Like You Study Harder Than The Other Guy?

[smugtroll]

I've made 4.0 in ton of hours (80+ hrs by May) of post-bacc & bio degree (to bring up my old ungrad 2.01gpa). Yet I still feel like I have to work soooooo much harder that the next guy/gal for that A....

I didn't get math/sci concepts as easily as I thought and spent far more hours than my fellow students. Some easier concepts were not simple for me...........but in the end I still made a 4.0

Anyone else have the same issue? Is this a confidence issue?

I was reminded of this when I took a grave yard shift at Fedex to pay for tuition. We had this 3 hour safety course and then a multiple choice test at the end. I could barely pass it yet I aced Organic.......wtf gives?

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[IceMan0824]

I've made 4.0 in ton of hours (80+ hrs by May) of post-bacc & bio degree (to bring up my old ungrad 2.01gpa). Yet I still feel like I have to work soooooo much harder that the next guy/gal for that A....

I didn't get math/sci concepts as easily as I thought and spent far more hours than my fellow students. Some easier concepts were not simple for me...........but in the end I still made a 4.0

Anyone else have the same issue? Is this a confidence issue?

I was reminded of this when I took a grave yard shift at Fedex to pay for tuition. We had this 3 hour safety course and then a multiple choice test at the end. I could barely pass it yet I aced Organic.......wtf gives?

A 4.0 is a 4.0. Whether it takes you 20 hours or 5 hours to achieve, it will still be a 4.0. At least you know what you need to do to get that A. There are others out there who still haven't figured out how to attain the grade perfection that you now hold a claim to. Congrats! Go have a beer on me...just send the tab to my house. I'll take care of it. I promise.

 

[Taty]

A 4.0 is a 4.0. Whether it takes you 20 hours or 5 hours to achieve, it will still be a 4.0. At least you know what you need to do to get that A. There are others out there who still haven't figured out how to attain the grade perfection that you now hold a claim to. Congrats! Go have a beer on me...just send the tab to my house. I'll take care of it. I promise.

Agree.

 

[Benna]

I still feel like I have to work soooooo much harder that the next guy/gal for that A....

I don't feel I *have* to work harder. I work hard and get good grades. Other people in my class slack off and fail. Or worse yet, they get a C. Not good enough for anything but not bad enough to retake the class. It's my decision to put all of myself into my learning, and if that means I occasionally feel as though I have no life, so be it.

I didn't get math/sci concepts as easily as I thought and spent far more hours than my fellow students.

That's what happens when things aren't fresh.

Is this a confidence issue?

No, it's a life issue. Some people have to work harder than others at certain things, for a wide variety of reasons.

Honestly, if you're getting the grades I don't see why you're upset about it. You're doing what you need to do. Don't worry about the other guy.

 

[smugtroll]

i guess i'm paranoid about my age...for some reason I always feel like other 22 yr old recent grad just "gets it" and is a "natural"..

I'm not and I don't give a #$%^&*( so long as I eventually learn the material.

 

[Benna]

Very few people are naturals at these subjects. You'll get the occasional math genius, but even she has to read and study in order to learn and remember concepts from sciences. There's a lot of information out there.

I was in my pre-calc class today. I'd answered the last question the professor asked (just basic "punch this into your calculator and tell me what it says" stuff) but no one else was participating. My professor stopped the lecture and said that whoever told us math was fun was a giant liar, but that we still had to do it.

*shrug* And this coming from a PhD with 30 years of research and teaching experience. I don't think anyone ever just magically gets it.

 

[dr1day]

I don't feel I *have* to work harder. I work hard and get good grades. Other people in my class slack off and fail. Or worse yet, they get a C. Not good enough for anything but not bad enough to retake the class. It's my decision to put all of myself into my learning, and if that means I occasionally feel as though I have no life, so be it.


That's what happens when things aren't fresh.


No, it's a life issue. Some people have to work harder than others at certain things, for a wide variety of reasons.

Honestly, if you're getting the grades I don't see why you're upset about it. You're doing what you need to do. Don't worry about the other guy.

I think the OP is referring to people who don't study as much, but still manage to get an A. For instance, I'm in a post-bac program and we're taking microbiology this semester. Yesterday, the professor was asking all these questions and while I recognized the terms, I couldn't explain them. This is because I took micro 13 years ago. 13 years ago, my classmates were in kindergarten, if that. So I definitely have to study harder just because the information is not as fresh in my mind.

 

[DrMidlife]

Two things come to mind on this.

First, there's a HUGE difference in being 40 vs. 20, and it lives somewhere between the length of my attention span and the number of things for which I'm responsible. Being a worrier is part of what makes me good at taking care of responsibilities, and it means I can't concentrate on one thing for more than about 20 minutes. In a study hour, I realistically study 40 minutes. So that's my multiplier for having to study "more" than the other kids. Sound familiar?

Second, you are in the incredibly enviable position of having a working system that simply needs tuning. You get to see what you can cut out of your study routine and still keep your 4.0. You will inevitably find plenty of shortcuts and inefficiencies, and you'll get streamlined. The rest of us are still trying to find a way to that 4.0 in the first place.

 

[Benna]

So I definitely have to study harder just because the information is not as fresh in my mind.

That's what I said, though. It's not fresh, so we need to re-learn it. It's not that the other people in your class aren't trying as hard as you are, you just have farther to go and more to learn. I agree that I spend more time studying than most of the other people in my class.

However... the OP had comments about confidence and ability in there as well, which I think are clearly separate issues. And the whole 4.0 business is irrelevent.

I guess what I'm saying is that yes, we have more things we need to catch up on than the typical pre-med, but that it comes with the territory and there's no point in comparing yourself to the other kids in your class. It's not about oh woe is me, I have to work so much harder. That's not fair. When we think like that we aren't being fair to ourselves, since most of us knew what we were getting into and probably don't deserve to be placed on a pedestle because of it. It's also not fair to the traditional pre-meds, most of whom are trying just as hard as we are and want it just as badly.

Just my $0.02.

 

[spicedmanna]

I've made 4.0 in ton of hours (80+ hrs by May) of post-bacc & bio degree (to bring up my old ungrad 2.01gpa). Yet I still feel like I have to work soooooo much harder that the next guy/gal for that A....

I didn't get math/sci concepts as easily as I thought and spent far more hours than my fellow students. Some easier concepts were not simple for me...........but in the end I still made a 4.0

Anyone else have the same issue? Is this a confidence issue?

I was reminded of this when I took a grave yard shift at Fedex to pay for tuition. We had this 3 hour safety course and then a multiple choice test at the end. I could barely pass it yet I aced Organic.......wtf gives?

Congratulations on your work; maintaining a 4.0 is no easy feat, no matter how you slice it, in my opinion. You owe yourself a big pat on the back for your efforts. You certainly have heart.

Forget about what other people do. This is about you and your own experience. We all have our own individual path, complete with our own challenges (and we all think our personal challenges are the toughest). What one finds easy, someone else will find difficult, etc. We all have different strengths and weakness; our common goal is to become physicians. The key is how we meet our weaknesses and how we use our strengths. The main thing is doing what must be done to achieve your goal in the way that you need to do it. The real question: "how can you experience more ease and flow, as you do your school work and on tests?"

 

[Eschafer]

I agree with this 100%. you have more dedication than the guy who puts in only half the time. That dedication will pay of when the going gets tough for both of you and you know how to cope while he/she doesnt.

That being said, my math prof once told us a story about his experience at MIT. His professor asked the class, when deciding who to accept into a graduate program should he take the student who busted ass and really worked for a B or the student who put in a fraction of the time and got the easy A. His professor said that hed take the A student because the B student already maxed out his potential.
Haha thankfully my prof said that the guy was crazy and no one taught like this anymore but he definately had some of us worried for awhile.

 

[QofQuimica]

i guess i'm paranoid about my age...for some reason I always feel like other 22 yr old recent grad just "gets it" and is a "natural"..

I'm not and I don't give a #$%^&*( so long as I eventually learn the material.

1) Everyone has to bust their butts in medical school.

2) Anyone who claims that they don't bust their butt is either lying or failing. Seriously.

 

[corsair]

2) Anyone who claims that they don't bust their butt is either lying or failing. Seriously.

I disagree. I often feel like I don't study enough (or as much/as hard as others) but I get it. I haven't maintained a 4.0 but 3.92 isn't far off. It's actually a releif for me to be back in the sciences because, while I do have to study and learn the material, I get it. I feel like I don't have to work as hard as I did for that English major a few years back.

Though I get embarassed by doing so well. It's hard to get 100% on an exam when all your friends are getting 65-70%.

 

[smugtroll]

I disagree. I often feel like I don't study enough (or as much/as hard as others) but I get it. I haven't maintained a 4.0 but 3.92 isn't far off. It's actually a releif for me to be back in the sciences because, while I do have to study and learn the material, I get it. I feel like I don't have to work as hard as I did for that English major a few years back.

Though I get embarassed by doing so well. It's hard to get 100% on an exam when all your friends are getting 65-70%.

..."get it" as in just listening to lecture w/o taking notes, reading or working problems, review and then taking the exam to score 100%?

I suppose that I "get it" too but my style of learning is attributed to over exposure of a subject. In other words I eventually "get it".

In my lectures I was able to follow about 70% of the time. The remaining 30% I had to return to the material and pour hours on practice problems in order to fully comprehend. Then I moved to memorize...

Anyhow I appreciate the wide variety of responses. I suppose I'm satisfied with my own method.

 

[QofQuimica]

I disagree. I often feel like I don't study enough (or as much/as hard as others) but I get it. I haven't maintained a 4.0 but 3.92 isn't far off. It's actually a releif for me to be back in the sciences because, while I do have to study and learn the material, I get it. I feel like I don't have to work as hard as I did for that English major a few years back.

Though I get embarassed by doing so well. It's hard to get 100% on an exam when all your friends are getting 65-70%.

There's no way for you to legitimately make this claim. You haven't even applied to med school yet, so you can't say you'll pick everything up without studying much just b/c your UG classes are easy for you! UG ain't med school, friend. If you're still making the same claim in a couple of years once you're in med school, then I'll acknowledge that you are the rare exception that proves my rule. My previous post was referring to MED SCHOOL, and I still hold that everyone busts their butts studying in med school if they want to make it through. People do lie about how much they study, and people do flunk classes because they don't study enough. But everyone who doesn't flunk is studying, and they're studying a lot.

 

[corsair]

You're right, I am referring to UG classes. Though, that's what the OP was referring to as well. I am not in Med School yet, and I do believe that I will have to work much harder to succeed there. As far as the UG classes go, I do work hard, but not as hard or as long as some of my peers, yet I seem to do better than them. Granted, some of the things we're learning I was studying at age 12 just for fun, so it is somewhat of a review. (I was quite the nerd as a child.)

 

[NonTradMed]

I've had this problem since college. I was a top notch student in high school, went to a competitive college and was only in the middle of the pack. It was a humbling transition for me. In the end, I realized that I had to study harder than others in order to to do well. But such is life.

I used to get mad but then I realized that by studying hard, I was reaching my full potential as a person. Others who shared the same intelligence as me but none of the drive may not get as far as med school. The people who were smarter than me but worked less than me are, IMHO, being wasteful with their time. Yes, they may be smarter than me, but we end up in the same place. I can say I am limited by my intelligence, but they have to say they were limited by their work ethic. People who were smart enough to get scholarships to med school and/or could have had their picks of med school instead end up paying the full monty and/or restricted to certain geographic locales b/c they decided to slide by rather than be attentive.

In med school, I actually think this lack of study ethics no longer applies. Almost everyone has to study pretty hard to pass. The sheer volume of the information they hand out is just too much to absorb during a cram session. After all, even Einstein would find it hard to pass anatomy unless he actually read through the notes for the class.

And oh yeah, you can fail a class even after studying hard. Sad but true.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I've made 4.0 in ton of hours (80+ hrs by May) of post-bacc & bio degree (to bring up my old ungrad 2.01gpa). Yet I still feel like I have to work soooooo much harder that the next guy/gal for that A....

I didn't get math/sci concepts as easily as I thought and spent far more hours than my fellow students. Some easier concepts were not simple for me...........but in the end I still made a 4.0

Anyone else have the same issue? Is this a confidence issue?

I was reminded of this when I took a grave yard shift at Fedex to pay for tuition. We had this 3 hour safety course and then a multiple choice test at the end. I could barely pass it yet I aced Organic.......wtf gives?

How do you know how much other people are studying? Studying a lot is sort of a relative concept, so it's hard to figure out what people mean when they say they study all the time. Also, a lot of your regular undergrad students just took this exact same material in high school, so it's all review for them. You're not necessarily needing to study more because you're older.

As for the medical school studying thing, I think you again get the different reports about its difficulty because people are coming from different places. I feel like I don't study a lot because I don't study 13 hours a day, and I regularly take night/days off. So if you ask me, I'll say I don't study a lot, but if you ask my husband, he might disagree. Anyway, just needing to assert that I was neither lying nor failing in my earlier posts about the difficulty of medical school.

The good thing about medical school is that no one really has any true, lasting advantage. Biochem might be easier for the biochem majors; physiology is easier for the physiology majors, etc, but that's just one class. For the most part, I feel like we're all on a pretty equal playing field regardless of background. That's different from taking a bunch of prereqs with kids who just took ap calculus, physics and chemistry the year before.

 

[QofQuimica]

You're right, I am referring to UG classes. Though, that's what the OP was referring to as well. I am not in Med School yet, and I do believe that I will have to work much harder to succeed there. As far as the UG classes go, I do work hard, but not as hard or as long as some of my peers, yet I seem to do better than them. Granted, some of the things we're learning I was studying at age 12 just for fun, so it is somewhat of a review. (I was quite the nerd as a child.)

I understand what you're saying, but I promise you that you'll find med school a lot more challenging.

As for the medical school studying thing, I think you again get the different reports about its difficulty because people are coming from different places. I feel like I don't study a lot because I don't study 13 hours a day, and I regularly take night/days off. So if you ask me, I'll say I don't study a lot, but if you ask my husband, he might disagree. Anyway, just needing to assert that I was neither lying nor failing in my earlier posts about the difficulty of medical school.

I don't think there is anything normal or beneficial about studying for 13 hours per day, especially if you're attending your classes (which I do). That is the kind of thing that is bound to burn people out. I would say that I study about 4-5 hours per day, and maybe 8 hours per day max if I don't have class. But I probably spent half that much time or less in college studying, so of course it feels like a lot to study for four hours per day now.

Ok, so I will rephrase my earlier statement: everyone has to majorly ramp up their studying schedule when they get to med school, although the actual time for each person is variable. I know that I spend way more time studying now than I ever did at any other point in my schooling, including college and grad school. And, I contend, so does everyone else, whatever "way more time" means to them.

P.S. It keeps throwing me for a loop that everyone keeps switching names. What made you decide to be "Doctor Bagel"?

 

[FightOn]

i guess i'm paranoid about my age...for some reason I always feel like other 22 yr old recent grad just "gets it" and is a "natural"..

I'm not and I don't give a #$%^&*( so long as I eventually learn the material.

No two people are alike. You are being too hard on yourself comparing yourself to everyone else in your class. Be proud of your accomplishments. Like everyone else has said numerous times, it doesn't matter how you get there as long as you come up with the same end result.

However, I can understand where you are coming from. My fiance and I attended all the same classes for our science prereqs. He was still completing his undergrad while I was a postbacc (I am 4 years older than him). Although we both did very well in our sciences, always competing with each other to get the top score in our classes, our studying habits could not have been more different. I went to all the lectures, poured through ALL the assigned readings and then even made my own outlines to connect information from both the readings and lectures. I always started studying for an exam 3-4 days prior to test day. My fiance also went to all the lectures, but slept through 90% of them. He prepared for exams by reading through the assigned reading 3-4 HOURS before the exam. Come exam day he would end up scoring the highest grade in the class. He did the exact same thing for the August 06 MCATs. He "whipped" out his review books a week before the exam, completed a couple of practice exams and ends up scoring a 38 on the real deal.

Early on in our relationship, I was always comparing myself to him. I have just learned to accept that we are two different people. He is able to grasp concepts very quickly and is just a good test taker. BUT, that doesn't make him a better student. What works for him doesn't work for me and vice versa. I know that when I finally make it to medical school, my good studying habits will carry me a long way. Some people may be able to get away with doing the minimum now, but they won't be once they are in medical school. My fiance knows that he needs to change his studying habits in order to succeed in medical school.

Congrats on doing so well on your courses. Pat yourself on the back and keep up the good work. Just remember to ease up on yourself.....

 

[zatojoshi]

The natural bit- Yeah I agree with you there. It seems like some people can get it while others (like me) struggle. I'm actually high-functioning autistic, and have to deal with problems that stem from that on top of the learning curve issues ( I went to the worst high school in the state, and didn't learn anything useful after 10th grade ). But, look at it this way- those same "naturals" prbably have difficulty somewhere else, like in relationships or personality (a bad one, or the absence of one).

So cheer up, and congrats. That 4.0 means more to you than it does to them, so feel free to gloat about it a bit.

 

[corsair]

I feel like I don't study a lot because I don't study 13 hours a day, and I regularly take night/days off. So if you ask me, I'll say I don't study a lot, but if you ask my husband, he might disagree.

13 hours is a bit much, but I can relate to this! My boyfriend would disagree with me.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

13 hours is a bit much, but I can relate to this! My boyfriend would disagree with me.

Yeah, I don't know if anybody really studies that much, but I have heard some people say that. People do like to exaggerate. The thing with studying is that it requires so much focus that you can't do it as long as you can do other things. At least I can't.

 

[smugtroll]

Yeah, I don't know if anybody really studies that much, but I have heard some people say that. People do like to exaggerate. The thing with studying is that it requires so much focus that you can't do it as long as you can do other things. At least I can't.

i agree...i am famous for pseudo-studying. I feel like I'm under pressure all the time thinking about the difficulty of my classes. Just the daily ritual of running from class, work, and home tends to make me feel like I've been at the grindstone when in reality I have not studied much at all.

If I did poorly on a test I made an honest effort to determine the amount of time I prepared Most of the time it was because I spent only an hour or two just reading the material before the exam. When I was 18 and failed an exam I would just instantly determine that I studied and failed despite the fact that I my preparation was never adequate. I also became detail oriented.