Goljan Tables and Margin Notes

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Czeckers

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I'm not sure if i will have enough time reread goljan multiple times over the next 4 weeks like many people in here plan on doing. I guess (A)im not that fast of a reader (B) The sheer volume of information won't pack into my brain and (C) and I still need to make time to go over FA, and some other shorter materials.

I was thinking that a good alternative might be to get through goljans tables and margin notes like 5 or more times in that same time frame would be a better idea than rereading all of goljan once or twice more. Seems like theoretically all the highest yield info should be in the margin notes and the tables anyway.

Anyone heard about anyone having success with this approach to goljan?

If you have been in my boat and have a word of wisdom or two for me, please chime in.

DO you think it would be better to do margin notes and tables 5 or 6 times, or read goljan 2 more times (maybe not even)?
 
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Czeckers said:
I'm not sure if i will have enough time reread goljan multiple times over the next 4 weeks like many people in here plan on doing. I guess (A)im not that fast of a reader (B) The sheer volume of information won't pack into my brain and (C) and I still need to make time to go over FA, and some other shorter materials.

I was thinking that a good alternative might be to get through goljans tables and margin notes like 5 or more times in that same time frame would be a better idea than rereading all of goljan once or twice more. Seems like theoretically all the highest yield info should be in the margin notes and the tables anyway.

Anyone heard about anyone having success with this approach to goljan?

If you have been in my boat and have a word of wisdom or two for me, please chime in.

DO you think it would be better to do margin notes and tables 5 or 6 times, or read goljan 2 more times (maybe not even)?
Click to expand...

I'm having the same problem. My plan for path as of now: BRS Path, Goljan Audio, Blue margin notes from RR (annotated in FA) and Robbins Questions. If I have time, I'll try WebPath.

I don't get how people get through RR so many times. I don't have the SDN memory 😳
 
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with path if you are short on time you can just read about the conditions listed in FA in rapid review
 
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DrVanNostran said:
I don't get how people get through RR so many times. I don't have the SDN memory 😳
Click to expand...

I think most people read through it along with classes once. Then once again for board review. I am doing that, but I will have read it three times. Once with classes, reread the first 1/2 over spring break, will reread the 2nd half again before finals... then read it once more in June before Step 1. I don't think you can get through reading it more than once in a 4 week prep period, there is just so much other stuff to do, ie. FA, UWORLD, etc.

Keep in mind, it does take a while to get through. Don't expect to be able to chug through it like BRS Physio. Hopefully, the effort is worth it.:xf:
 
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kryptik said:
with path if you are short on time you can just read about the conditions listed in FA in rapid review
Click to expand...

I don't think that section should be treated as comprehensive at all, it's just a bunch of random associations. I think going through the RR margin notes is a much better way to do it. You can get through the margin notes alot faster if you keep your hands ready and flipping because there's only a few sentences on each page.
 
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If you have goljan audio........listen to the appropriate chapter/lecture.....then go over the section that he just talked about. It may be easier to go thru............and may speed up ur studying.
 
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Once my dedicate studying (finally) starts, I plan on doing one hardcore pass through Goljan along with the BRS's for phys and gross (chapter summaries only) and FA. After that, I plan to do another pass with FA and only RR margin notes. I might include the tables, but it's doubtful. I'll be doing practice questions the whole way. The plan is that I'll have a good 10 days, at least, to do nothing but practice questions.

Depending on how I do on the questions, I might read through the margin notes multiple times. Judging by how quickly I've been reading them in the recent past, I'm counting on it taking about 9-10 hours of solid work to plow through the whole thing. If I really kick my own ass (and don't burn out), I can do that in a day. It might be worth the loss of a day's worth of questions. We'll see.
 
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I would just not read Goljan if you dont have the time to properly read Goljan... all its gonna do is confuse you and the details will be jumbled in your mind. You ll probably end up falling for a lot of the trick questions that play off of people just knowing buzz words..

I think its probably better to just stick to FA and know it well..rather than have too many sources and not enough time..
 
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Another solution could be to listen to goljan audio and know first aid cold.........

The tapes really helped me on the exam. some questions came straight from the points goljan mentioned.
 
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Alternatively, you could just do the blue margin notes in Goljan along with the text from BRS Path, which is much shorter.
 
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Ableton said:
Alternatively, you could just do the blue margin notes in Goljan along with the text from BRS Path, which is much shorter.
Click to expand...

do you (or others) think that BRS path + goljan audio + margin notes is a good substitute for RR?
 
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jmayer said:
do you (or others) think that BRS path + goljan audio + margin notes is a good substitute for RR?
Click to expand...

Thats what I will be using. I think it is more than enough. Don't forget the explanations from Uworld. I think we will be find with that combo. :xf:
 
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I think your best option is:

BRS Path+RR Margin Notes+Goljan Audio (but follow him in the RR textbook as he goes... don't be doing something else... he jumps around a little but it is definitely doable--youll get more out of it).
 
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FutureDoc4 said:
I think your best option is:

BRS Path+RR Margin Notes+Goljan Audio (but follow him in the RR textbook as he goes... don't be doing something else... he jumps around a little but it is definitely doable--youll get more out of it).
Click to expand...

thanks that sounds like a good plan! it extracts the main info from RR while keeping you sane by using BRS 👍
 
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If you have 4 weeks, reading goljan carefully and listening to his audio is a must. I can't stress it enough. FA does not have everything you need for the test. If I had to pick between reading Goljan Path or reading FA path, I would say Goljan path hands down. The image correlations with the text is amazingly high yield and comprehensive.

Reading Margin Notes is useless unless you know the background story. I haven't tried BRS Path but people tend to swear by Goljan so I'm not sure if $40 is what should hold you back from ultra-high yield to "good."

I found this strategy to be super helpful. I finished all of Goljan and his audio is 2 weeks. You can do it in 4. Read Goljan first. Listen to his audio for the corresponding chapter and ANNOTATE. THEN read FA for the corresponding chapter and you'll be amazed at how little FA actually says. This will take you at least 8 hours any given day but trust me you will learn so much. Make sure as you read you're looking at tables and pictures as you go through it.

Do not skimp out on Goljan. IMHO reading margin notes 100 times does no equal reading Goljan fully once.
 
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vicinihil said:
If you have 4 weeks, reading goljan carefully and listening to his audio is a must. I can't stress it enough. FA does not have everything you need for the test. If I had to pick between reading Goljan Path or reading FA path, I would say Goljan path hands down. The image correlations with the text is amazingly high yield and comprehensive.

Reading Margin Notes is useless unless you know the background story. I haven't tried BRS Path but people tend to swear by Goljan so I'm not sure if $40 is what should hold you back from ultra-high yield to "good."

I found this strategy to be super helpful. I finished all of Goljan and his audio is 2 weeks. You can do it in 4. Read Goljan first. Listen to his audio for the corresponding chapter and ANNOTATE. THEN read FA for the corresponding chapter and you'll be amazed at how little FA actually says. This will take you at least 8 hours any given day but trust me you will learn so much. Make sure as you read you're looking at tables and pictures as you go through it.

Do not skimp out on Goljan. IMHO reading margin notes 100 times does no equal reading Goljan fully once.
Click to expand...

Do you suggest listening to the audio again, if you have already listened to each lecture 2-3x over the school year along with classes. Also I have annotated certain points into the book over the year as well. But to be honest, I haven't listened to cardiovascular path, or general path and a host of other topics since the beganing ofthe school year... But I have reread those topics over spring break. Argh, so much to do, so little time. I know those lectures are kick ass, especially for a slow reader like me.
 
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Yes I would definitely do a re-listen because certain things are definitely forgotten. If you feel like you've adequately annotated your book with his audio then it's probably not as necessary for those that just listened passively, while driving, or running, etc. If you have the actual transcript that may be faster than listening to his audio but I used it as sort of a welcomed break from reading his book.
 
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vicinihil said:
Yes I would definitely do a re-listen because certain things are definitely forgotten. If you feel like you've adequately annotated your book with his audio then it's probably not as necessary for those that just listened passively, while driving, or running, etc. If you have the actual transcript that may be faster than listening to his audio but I used it as sort of a welcomed break from reading his book.
Click to expand...



When you say you did the book+audio in 2 weeks, was that during "dedicated study time"? How did that fit in with the rest of your study schedule?
 
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vicinihil said:
If you have 4 weeks, reading goljan carefully and listening to his audio is a must. I can't stress it enough. FA does not have everything you need for the test. If I had to pick between reading Goljan Path or reading FA path, I would say Goljan path hands down. The image correlations with the text is amazingly high yield and comprehensive.

Reading Margin Notes is useless unless you know the background story. I haven't tried BRS Path but people tend to swear by Goljan so I'm not sure if $40 is what should hold you back from ultra-high yield to "good."

I found this strategy to be super helpful. I finished all of Goljan and his audio is 2 weeks. You can do it in 4. Read Goljan first. Listen to his audio for the corresponding chapter and ANNOTATE. THEN read FA for the corresponding chapter and you'll be amazed at how little FA actually says. This will take you at least 8 hours any given day but trust me you will learn so much. Make sure as you read you're looking at tables and pictures as you go through it.

Do not skimp out on Goljan. IMHO reading margin notes 100 times does no equal reading Goljan fully once.
Click to expand...

I'm most likely going to use RR for the major organ systems but use BRS for the intro path material (inflammation, cell death, neoplasia, etc) and heme-onc. Goljan seems like overkill for those 2 sections: it is easily like 200 pages. Plus the audio and margin notes should help me learn those sections without all the details.

does that sound reasonable?
 
Last edited:
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vicinihil said:
If you have 4 weeks, reading goljan carefully and listening to his audio is a must. I can't stress it enough. FA does not have everything you need for the test. If I had to pick between reading Goljan Path or reading FA path, I would say Goljan path hands down. The image correlations with the text is amazingly high yield and comprehensive.

Reading Margin Notes is useless unless you know the background story. I haven't tried BRS Path but people tend to swear by Goljan so I'm not sure if $40 is what should hold you back from ultra-high yield to "good."

I found this strategy to be super helpful. I finished all of Goljan and his audio is 2 weeks. You can do it in 4. Read Goljan first. Listen to his audio for the corresponding chapter and ANNOTATE. THEN read FA for the corresponding chapter and you'll be amazed at how little FA actually says. This will take you at least 8 hours any given day but trust me you will learn so much. Make sure as you read you're looking at tables and pictures as you go through it.

Do not skimp out on Goljan. IMHO reading margin notes 100 times does no equal reading Goljan fully once.
Click to expand...

I generally agree, but anyone who's been through 2nd year should be familiar with the background story as you put it.

An example of why I think its probably a helpful task (though I know UWorld is not the same thing as the real step): I had a question a week back in Uworld about differentiating between pancreatic disease from small bowel disease. The answer was d-xylulose test (which confirms small bowel disease). I had never really paid any attention to this, nor did i remember learning about it in school. Sure enough, there it was in the blue margin notes of RR. I mean that seems like a pretty obscure fact that can easily be over looked when chugging through RR. Anyway, I appreciate your input.
 
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vicinihil said:
If you have 4 weeks, reading goljan carefully and listening to his audio is a must. I can't stress it enough. FA does not have everything you need for the test. If I had to pick between reading Goljan Path or reading FA path, I would say Goljan path hands down. The image correlations with the text is amazingly high yield and comprehensive.

Reading Margin Notes is useless unless you know the background story. I haven't tried BRS Path but people tend to swear by Goljan so I'm not sure if $40 is what should hold you back from ultra-high yield to "good."

I found this strategy to be super helpful. I finished all of Goljan and his audio is 2 weeks. You can do it in 4. Read Goljan first. Listen to his audio for the corresponding chapter and ANNOTATE. THEN read FA for the corresponding chapter and you'll be amazed at how little FA actually says. This will take you at least 8 hours any given day but trust me you will learn so much. Make sure as you read you're looking at tables and pictures as you go through it.

Do not skimp out on Goljan. IMHO reading margin notes 100 times does no equal reading Goljan fully once.
Click to expand...
Hey thanks for all your advice.
I'm sure everyone reading this forum appreciates the feedback coming from EVERYONE who has posted their exam experience. 🙂

I wanted to ask you about Goljan audio..
Did you listen at normal speed or at a faster speed?
Did you stop and pause to take notes or did you listen to it all the way through and take notes afterwards?
Right now I am listening at a slightly faster speed while looking at the pictures. I'm trying to minimize the note-taking except for when he mentions biochem or micro stuff.
 
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I listened to it at "2x" on the Ipod and 1.5x on Quicktime. They are equivalent because even at "2x" on the ipod, a 1hour lecture is 40 minutes long.

I wrote as he talked. If I can't find where he is, I'll pause and look for it. However, in order to minimize doing that, make sure you READ THE CHAPTER FIRST. That way you have a good idea of where things are and can get to it quickly. This will save you a lot of time when you do the audio and make it flow a lot better too.
 
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is there really that much info in his audio to annotate into the book? it seems like he spends more time explaining mechanisms and all the actual facts are already in the book, albeit in different spots sometimes.
 
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jmayer said:
I'm most likely going to use RR for the major organ systems but use BRS for the intro path material (inflammation, cell death, neoplasia, etc) and heme-onc. Goljan seems like overkill for those 2 sections: it is easily like 200 pages. Plus the audio and margin notes should help me learn those sections without all the details.

does that sound reasonable?
Click to expand...

I ve been reading BRS path and Goljan.. and I ve read each multiple times. I have to say that BRS path is a good option also, maybe just one notch below goljan, but is especially good for those short on time. I did find things in BRS that were not mentioned in Goljan (vis versa as well)..

Never listened to his audios.. but if I have enough time I m starting to think it might be a very good idea to do so bc remembering everything in Goljan is 5x harder than reading everything in Goljan.
 
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turkeyjerky said:
is there really that much info in his audio to annotate into the book? it seems like he spends more time explaining mechanisms and all the actual facts are already in the book, albeit in different spots sometimes.
Click to expand...

Everything he says about the topic is in the book, just sometimes in different spots. I remember while going through the lectures and the book over the school year I would annotate stuff that wasn't in that chapter only to find out later on that it was in another chapter... pretty much word for word. lol. The only thing you really need to annotate from the audio into RR are the boards question scenarios and wacky pneumonics.
 
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vicinihil said:
Yes I would definitely do a re-listen because certain things are definitely forgotten. If you feel like you've adequately annotated your book with his audio then it's probably not as necessary for those that just listened passively, while driving, or running, etc. If you have the actual transcript that may be faster than listening to his audio but I used it as sort of a welcomed break from reading his book.
Click to expand...

Just took the NBME CBSE, and man, Goljan is gold. Audio plus reading RR to solidify is money. I'm definitely going to look into listening to the earlier lectures for sure, since it has been a while. I need to look up the thread, "double your goljan experience" to learn how to increase the speed.
 
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vicinihil said:
I listened to it at "2x" on the Ipod and 1.5x on Quicktime. They are equivalent because even at "2x" on the ipod, a 1hour lecture is 40 minutes long.

I wrote as he talked. If I can't find where he is, I'll pause and look for it. However, in order to minimize doing that, make sure you READ THE CHAPTER FIRST. That way you have a good idea of where things are and can get to it quickly. This will save you a lot of time when you do the audio and make it flow a lot better too.
Click to expand...

Dumb question, how do you increase the play speed on your ipod? Do you have to convert the file to play faster b/c I can't find the answer online for the life of me.

Did you also annotate from Goljan into FA or left them separate?
 
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NUc12 said:
Dumb question, how do you increase the play speed on your ipod? Do you have to convert the file to play faster b/c I can't find the answer online for the life of me.

Did you also annotate from Goljan into FA or left them separate?
Click to expand...
you will have to recode it at the faster speed before loading it to your ipod, or you can download "Goljan on crack" which is already encoded at a higher speed
 
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So the way to do it on an ipod is this....


You have to convert the Goljan audio files to Podcasts (you can do this in iTunes...I forgot how)

Once you do that, you can move them on to your ipod and have the option to play them at 2x. HOWEVER the caveat is that you need to have the latest iPod system update (the one that costs you 3.99 I think). I got it just to listen to goljan at 2x. Without the update, you won't be able to do it unless you already have the update or have the iphone which gets the update for free...I think
 
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Czeckers said:
I generally agree, but anyone who's been through 2nd year should be familiar with the background story as you put it.

An example of why I think its probably a helpful task (though I know UWorld is not the same thing as the real step): I had a question a week back in Uworld about differentiating between pancreatic disease from small bowel disease. The answer was d-xylulose test (which confirms small bowel disease). I had never really paid any attention to this, nor did i remember learning about it in school. Sure enough, there it was in the blue margin notes of RR. I mean that seems like a pretty obscure fact that can easily be over looked when chugging through RR. Anyway, I appreciate your input.
Click to expand...


When I read Goljan, I usually have a pen or highlighter in my hand to highlight key things (because of the format of the book not including bolded terms and such). I like to glance at the margin notes as I go to see what facts out of the "paragraph" I just read were extracted and put over there. Usually it's the very same thing(s) I just highlighted, but occasionally it's something I completely glossed over (e.g. the D-Xylose test) and am glad I stopped for a second to check.
 
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vicinihil said:
I think to have someone explain something to you is also helpful. It's less boring than you reading it yourself and it definitely helps to solidify what you know and point out what you missed
Click to expand...


Absolutely. I just took a 48q GI block on QBank this morning (after doing RR+FA last night and listening to Goljan Audio) and there were at least 3 or 4 questions about stuff that I only really remembered because Goljan emphasized them in the lecture (one of them was the sigmoid colon being the most common location of a bowel volvulus, although I probably could've figured that out just based on anatomy).
 
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Only have 2 days left, would you guys recommend that I go through the entire brs path or read only the margin notes/charts of goljan (read maybe 1/2 during the year and only referenced as needed during the study period)?
 
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Some good advice in this tread but I wanted to give a different point of view from someone who only had 30 days of dedicated time.

My original plan was to read Goljan, listen to Goljan, read FA, and do at least 80Q a day. Needless to say I found this impossible. Are some people able to do this? Apparently some are. But for me I would have never read FA in enough depth had I read Goljan fully.

What I ended up doing instead was reading something like the first 7 chapters since I felt weak in some of the general Path concepts. I only listened to a few of audios although I wish I had listened to more, and when I was reading FA I would refer to Goljan for sections of FA I knew that I didn't actually understand.

Is this ideal? No, but for many of us we will have to do something more like this.

I did read Goljan twice during the year and listened to most audio twice.
 
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