Frustrated and doubting myself

[ViergeEnnuyeuse]

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I made the mistake and started to compare myself to everyone else in my class and now I've become really frustrated and anxious about school and my abilities. One of my tankmates told me that she wakes up on the weekends at 7am to study. When I was in the library, this one girl in my class taped up her schedule in the cubicle next to me where she was studying. She had scheduled 14 hours of pure studying. Wtf? My routine so far is study 9-5ish over the daily material and then spend a couple of hours at night reviewing what I learned that day. Then on the weekends I go over all of the material for that week. I will not go back over it until I start studying for the test. My studying seems sort of minimal compared to others and I'm worrying that perhaps I'm not studying enough. My block exams aren't until another 3 weeks so I won't find out for sure then and I definitely don't want to find out the hard way. But I'm a strong believer in the principle of deminishing returns so I definitely don't want to overstudy. Bleh I don't know what to do!! I'm losing sleep over this.

 

[TheMightyAngus]

I made the mistake and started to compare myself to everyone else in my class and now I've become really frustrated and anxious about school and my abilities. One of my tankmates told me that she wakes up on the weekends at 7am to study. When I was in the library, this one girl in my class taped up her schedule in the cubicle next to me where she was studying. She had scheduled 14 hours of pure studying. Wtf? My routine so far is study 9-5ish over the daily material and then spend a couple of hours at night reviewing what I learned that day. Then on the weekends I go over all of the material for that week. I will not go back over it until I start studying for the test. My studying seems sort of minimal compared to others and I'm worrying that perhaps I'm not studying enough. My block exams aren't until another 3 weeks so I won't find out for sure then and I definitely don't want to find out the hard way. But I'm a strong believer in the principle of deminishing returns so I definitely don't want to overstudy. Bleh I don't know what to do!! I'm losing sleep over this.

Your classmates sound like tools. Distance yourself from them. Don't worry until you see the results of your first test.

 

[45408]

Don't worry about how other people are studying! Just focus on learning the material in the best way you know. For me, re-writing my notes = worthless. Listening to lectures = mostly worthless. Going to small-group tutor sessions = worthless. Reading the textbook and/or the notes repeatedly? Now you're talking. But lots of my friends re-write their notes or listen to the recorded lectures.

 

[njbmd]

I made the mistake and started to compare myself to everyone else in my class and now I've become really frustrated and anxious about school and my abilities. One of my tankmates told me that she wakes up on the weekends at 7am to study. When I was in the library, this one girl in my class taped up her schedule in the cubicle next to me where she was studying. She had scheduled 14 hours of pure studying. Wtf? My routine so far is study 9-5ish over the daily material and then spend a couple of hours at night reviewing what I learned that day. Then on the weekends I go over all of the material for that week. I will not go back over it until I start studying for the test. My studying seems sort of minimal compared to others and I'm worrying that perhaps I'm not studying enough. My block exams aren't until another 3 weeks so I won't find out for sure then and I definitely don't want to find out the hard way. But I'm a strong believer in the principle of deminishing returns so I definitely don't want to overstudy. Bleh I don't know what to do!! I'm losing sleep over this.

Don't compare yourself to anyone else. If you are mastering the material and getting the job done, then you will be OK. At any rate, you will find out on your first block of exams and make adjustments. That being said, do remember that many people in medical school feel obligated to boast about "how much they study" or "how little they study". In the end, it really doesn't matter because either they get the job done or they don't. Run your own race. Don't expend energy worrying what other do or don't do. Above all, don't lose any more sleep as it's a precious luxury in medical school.

 

[werd]

rather, it's the people who study 14 hours a day that might run into problems. i wouldn't worry unless your (seemingly reasonable) study habits are leading you to poor grades.
one of the things about med school is that it's filled with former pre-meds, who share, spread, and multiply anxiety. you'll almost certainly be fine 🙂

 

[ADeadLois]

I One of my tankmates told me that she wakes up on the weekends at 7am to study.

She's lying.

When I was in the library, this one girl in my class taped up her schedule in the cubicle next to me where she was studying. She had scheduled 14 hours of pure studying.

The schedule is completely for show.

People only tell you or display their study schedules in order to maintain some sort of intellectual superiority, and they are generally full of you-know-what. There is never a reason in a social context to tell someone how much you study other than wanting to feel good about yourself. People lie about this ALL THE TIME. Trust me.

 

[brewmeistervi]

When the gunners get restless, I introduce them to my study aid Avtomat Kalishnikov, and they usually keep their distance.

 

[myrtle]

Sheesh, taping up a study schedule? Look, people will calm down. Everyone is nervous right now and unfortunately people seem to be dealing with that by going around trying to reassure themselves by convincing others that they are studying hard/smart/etc. I won't say don't worry, because you will, but next time someone says something like that, watch how they are really trying to convince themselves. If you started talking about this brand new book you got that's the key to everything or this sparkling study schedule, they'd probably crumble.

 

[45408]

She's lying.

Well, maybe not. I know plenty of people who roll in around 6:30am all week long when exams are near. I often have my wife drop me off at school on her way to work when she works day shift, so I'm at school at 6:15am sometimes.

 

[ADeadLois]

Well, maybe not. I know plenty of people who roll in around 6:30am all week long when exams are near. I often have my wife drop me off at school on her way to work when she works day shift, so I'm at school at 6:15am sometimes.

Of course. But did you go around telling people that you got up at 6:15AM to study?

 

[SomeDoc]

When I was in the library, this one girl in my class taped up her schedule in the cubicle next to me where she was studying.

WTF? You don't need to tape it, just look at it...WTF...

 

[J ROD]

I am in pharm school right now and I study about 2-3hrs for a test and some of my classmates study 6-8 hrs or more. Rewrite notes, etc. Just like the med students...drives me nuts. You study 10hrs. I am going to do 12.

Just do what got you there. You know by now what it takes for yourself to get the material.

I enjoy laughing at them and all their worrying and still beating them on tests or at least be up there with them.

Hopefully, I can come and join you all soon!

 

[SomeDoc]

LOL! sorry... after a few seconds I realize that the whole schedule taping thing was actually pretty funny 🙂

 

[45408]

Of course. But did you go around telling people that you got up at 6:15AM to study?

Every day. Why?

har har. You'll note I didn't say that I STUDY at 6:15am. I'm THERE though.

The last time she dropped me off that early, I fell asleep for at least an hour. 😛 None of my study habits are anything to be proud of or anything. I do what works for me, and nobody's going to be impressed by any of my amazing techniques (there aren't any - highlight and annotate the notes. Read, read, read). The girl in the story is probably just extremely nervous and insecure, and she thinks that if everyone else is impressed with her intense study schedule, she'll feel more confident in herself.

 

[Katya00]

Your study schedule sounds pretty much like mine. Sometimes I feel nervous too, like I'm not doing enough, but I have a husband and things in my life that I want to make time for, so I know I can't spend all my time studying. It's hard sometimes NOT to compare yourself, because you always feel you're not learning enough and maybe you're not smart enough to be there in the first place (at least I know I do!). I try not to compare though, cause everyone learns in their own way, and my ways are different than other peoples.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

In a few weeks, you're going to realize that all those people whob rag about how much they're studying, or how many books they've read, and ask all the questions in class are probably only doing about the average and the "I work so hard!" is all a show.

Of course, you're going to be even MORE depressed when you figure out that the guys and girls who are destroying the test averages are bizarro super genius types: the quiet ones who sleep through class and really don't study all that much.

 

[Blade28]

It's silly. (But everyone does it, in one form or another.) Did you compare study hours with friends/classmates in college? Of course not. So why worry now?

 

[swooptheeagle]

I just got (about to after freaking biochem) through my first round of block exams..and i gotta say, if you compare yourself to everyone else you're gonna hate yourself.

It's not even about whether ppl are gunners are not, some ppl just NEED to study 12 hrs. a day. But some ppl can just go to class, review couple hours, and not look at it until test time. It's so entirely up to you, and my guess is, you should just stick to what got you into medical school. And as everyone else says, you really won't know till the first round of exams.

GOOD luck.

 

[Depakote]

WTF? You don't need to tape it, just look at it...WTF...

Well if she didn't tape it up, she might have forgotten what she was supposed to be doing during that 14 hour block.

 

[LifetimeDoc]

rather, it's the people who study 14 hours a day that might run into problems. i wouldn't worry unless your (seemingly reasonable) study habits are leading you to poor grades.
one of the things about med school is that it's filled with former pre-meds, who share, spread, and multiply anxiety. you'll almost certainly be fine 🙂

I used to be one of those pre-meds who was full of anxiety, especially in post-bacc where I had to get straight A's. Funny thing though, in medical school I'm much more relaxed. We'll see how that pans out on test #1. 😀

 

[MooseKing]

the people who "study for 14 hours a day" probably really only retain a minimal amount of information and dont properly study all that time. there comes a point when studying becomes counter-productive. in my classes i used to compare myself to my friends who studied weeks in advance nonstop and this made me frustrated too because i only studied a few days in advance. when i spoke to them about it they told me that most of the time they couldnt even focus (they could have actually spent that time doing something fun). i ended up learning the material better and spent less time. its not that i was smarter than them, it was that i studied unitl when I WAS comfortable with the material. few hour blocks of concentrated studying seem to work a lot better, for me at least, than wasting the whole day. thats just my view

 

[montessori2md]

caveat: note the "pre-medical" under my avatar....

In my post-bacc world, I'm not studying much....there were some exams in bio for which my total study time was 5 hours (that was abnormal, but whatever). In UG, I worked, studied, etc, but I never counted hours, I just did it till I was done, or till I was just no longer accomplishing anything.

I'm a little terrified of this 9-5 learning gig b/c I'm not sure I'll be able to sit down for that long -I might have to go for a walk with flashcards or something...

That aside, no one should study for 14 hours straight -"cramming" is totally inefficient. Now, if you're planning a 14 hour day so that you can take many breaks to eat, move, take a nap, etc, then that's different.

I've found, in UG classes, there's a point at which you reach "B" (80-90%) range, and getting there, for me, took about as much time as it took me to get from "B" to "A" (eg 90-100%), for any given course. So if I studied 5 hours to get to 80%, I studied another 5 hours to get to 90%, and another 5 to get to near-perfect.

Do you have practice questions from your instructors? How are you doing on those?

Another way to look at it (from the schoolteacher I am...)
1st = 100% input (lecture/reading book/lab)
2nd = assisted output (multiple choice questions)
3rd = unassisted output (short answer/teaching someone else)

You have to do these in sequence, but within one topic (say, the Krebs cycle) you do all 3 at the same time -you may be able to go straight to #3 with the easy concepts/terms you've seen before, but may be stuck at #1 for a month with the concepts which are just unnatural to you, or the wierd crap you just can't seem to remember. But don't waste too much time on input, without moving to problem sets, because you need to do problem sets to retain the information (use it or lose it).

Also, repeating input (reading the same chapter 3 times) can help comprehension, but may not help memory, because your brain will get bored and stop filing the information. You need to change up your "input" in order to make yourself pay attention -unless you just didn't understand it the first time you read it, or you have completely forgotten something. This is why highlighting text/ taking notes works for some people -that small change makes your brain less bored. Rewriting notes is a form of that. Personally, I hate rewriting notes, but whatever works for you...

 

[45408]

That aside, no one should study for 14 hours straight -"cramming" is totally inefficient. Now, if you're planning a 14 hour day so that you can take many breaks to eat, move, take a nap, etc, then that's different.

Well, I agree that you it's pretty ridiculous to plan 14 hours straight of studying with no breaks other than running to the bathroom or opening your lunchbox, but I've successfully crammed for a histo exam the day before the test. Certain subjects are just acquired best with a rapid blitz followed by an even faster brain dump. Physiology and neuroscience do NOT fall in that category for me.

 

[Flopotomist]

A few thoughts..

1. Run your own race, and don't worry about everybody else.

2. Never assume that number of hours studying is necessarily equal to relative rank within a class. For example, I study until nearly midnight almost 7 days a week. The truth is, I am studying that hard because I am a slower learner, and not as efficient as other people, so have to put in that many hours just to keep up (and consistently fall on the left of the bell curve).

If you are able to do as well as you feel you can do by putting in 9-5 with a few hours of review here and there, then that is exactly how much you should be studying.

 

[Sondra]

One of my tankmates told me that she wakes up on the weekends at 7am to study. When I was in the library, this one girl in my class taped up her schedule in the cubicle next to me where she was studying. She had scheduled 14 hours of pure studying. Wtf? .

I would make out a ficticious 20 hour study schedule and tape it up.
Then, you can make everyone else worry!

 

[rickthetwinkie]

I'm of the opinion that when you hit 5 or 6 hours of straight studying (of course, this is in addition to the hours I am essentially required to spend in lecture), it stops being worth it. I am an advocate for sleep. Especially on the night before the exam.