Gunner Training?

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bonsaipalmtree said:
I tried searching this thread, but no luck. Is there a concise guide anywhere on how to use Firecracker?

I migrated a few weeks ago and am not sure how to use the "study" vs "review" vs "revisit" tools. I'm trying to cut my daily review questions to under 150/day and am not sure which of those categories is the stuff I *really* need to review.

Help...?!
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As I understand it, when you first "flag" (bank) a topic, the questions for that topic go under "study". Once you have done the questions and rated them, they are spaced throughout your calendar. Each day, you do your review questions under "review", and if you don't do them all or if you miss a day, they pile up under "revisit".

You'll want to do them all I think, but maybe others can give advice about whether to do the scheduled review before clearing out the backlog under "revisit," or whether to do the backlog first.
 
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RESOLVED


Hey everyone.

Just wanted to warn people that at this time, I have sent numerous e-mails to their staff, with no response after they took 149.99 dollars for a 6 month payment last week. My account is now inactive and as other people who use GT will understand, having your account inactive when you are trying to review is quite painful.

I will keep this updated to see if they end up ever adding months or refunding me, but until then, be careful with their service and a complete inability to reach anyone, even if their product is good. It is annoying to have to be stressed over this when we have enough other things going on with school right now.

EDIT: Was promptly resolved thanks to, ventulus18, cheers.
 
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I would like to get all your opinions on this:

Is GT supposed to be a substitute for FA or are most of you going through FA in your dedicated step 1 time? I think GT is more comprehensive than FA and I am trying to limit the number of resources I have (GT, Pathoma, Goljan for now) but I still am cautious about completely dropping FA when it is the book so many have used for step 1 for years.
 
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DJtiesto said:
I would like to get all your opinions on this:

Is GT supposed to be a substitute for FA or are most of you going through FA in your dedicated step 1 time? I think GT is more comprehensive than FA and I am trying to limit the number of resources I have (GT, Pathoma, Goljan for now) but I still am cautious about completely dropping FA when it is the book so many have used for step 1 for years.
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Can't speak for everyone but my plan is to use FA only during dedicated step 1 studying.
 
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DJtiesto said:
Is GT supposed to be a substitute for FA or are most of you going through FA in your dedicated step 1 time? I think GT is more comprehensive than FA and I am trying to limit the number of resources I have (GT, Pathoma, Goljan for now) but I still am cautious about completely dropping FA when it is the book so many have used for step 1 for years.
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I think of FA as an offline summary of the high-yield stuff in GT. It's unlikely that you'll find any info in FA that's not in GT, but the way in which it's presented (lots charts for pharm, diagrams for biochem) can be helpful. Many of the mnemonics are also different, which increases the chance I'll actually remember something.
 
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non trad said:
...It's unlikely that you'll find any info in FA that's not in GT...
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I came back to this thread to ask that very question: is there anyone doing FA and GT concurrently who can actually say 100% for certain that there isn't much in FA that isn't in GT? Ideally I'm looking for someone like Phloston who has both done GT and annotated a lot into FA to answer this question.

I'm happy with GT as a flashcard resource and as an outline to guide my step1 learning, but I'm hoping it can completely replace FA. Which is why I want to make sure I'm not missing anything in FA. And since I'm too busy/lazy to compare a section of GT to a section of FA myself if one of you guys might have already done, it...
 
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Suncrusher said:
I came back to this thread to ask that very question: is there anyone doing FA and GT concurrently who can actually say 100% for certain that there isn't much in FA that isn't in GT? Ideally I'm looking for someone like Phloston who has both done GT and annotated a lot into FA to answer this question.

I'm happy with GT as a flashcard resource and as an outline to guide my step1 learning, but I'm hoping it can completely replace FA. Which is why I want to make sure I'm not missing anything in FA. And since I'm too busy/lazy to compare a section of GT to a section of FA myself if one of you guys might have already done, it...
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I used GT last year up through my June 2012 exam and used FA alongside. GT doesn't 100% replace FA (at least it didn't back when I used it), but it was pretty darn close. Probably 90%+ of FA was in GT. I liked that GT also included some of the better tidbits from Goljan RR Path.

Once you do GT and get to a decent level of banking/mastery, going through FA is very quick and easy. I'd recommend going through FA closer to your test date. You could probably skip FA all together if you wanted, depending on your score goals. (It's probably doable to hit anywhere in the 230-250 range with solid GT prep alone, depending on how good your foundation from the first two years is).
 
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ipizzy said:
I used GT last year up through my June 2012 exam and used FA alongside. GT doesn't 100% replace FA (at least it didn't back when I used it), but it was pretty darn close. Probably 90%+ of FA was in GT. I liked that GT also included some of the better tidbits from Goljan RR Path.

Once you do GT and get to a decent level of banking/mastery, going through FA is very quick and easy. I'd recommend going through FA closer to your test date. You could probably skip FA all together if you wanted, depending on your score goals. (It's probably doable to hit anywhere in the 230-250 range with solid GT prep alone, depending on how good your foundation from the first two years is).
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I heavily annotated >60% FA as I went through MS1-2 and when GT came out followed up to 80% of FA along with GT and kind of ditched FA at that point. FA does have a couple of figures and tables I like, but the content is so similar. You do GT and then load up on questions and you'll cover everything you need.
 
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Hey guys, I am new in GT and I want to know more info before I start. How subjects are arranged in in GT ? is it similar to Kaplan books, FA or has unique arrangement? if it is similar to one of them then I can study both simultaneously. Also, how do you guys solve questions in GT? immediately after the topic? or do them as a whole like pharma as a whole, biochem as a whole..etc?
 
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stronghold said:
Hey guys, I am new in GT and I want to know more info before I start. How subjects are arranged in in GT ? is it similar to Kaplan books, FA or has unique arrangement? if it is similar to one of them then I can study both simultaneously. Also, how do you guys solve questions in GT? immediately after the topic? or do them as a whole like pharma as a whole, biochem as a whole..etc?
Click to expand...

??
 
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I'm a first year, 2 months into medical school. Would it be useful for me to start doing Gunner Training now or should I wait until say beginning of second year?
 
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Personally, I'd say start now. I started with about three months left in first year and I wish I'd used it for the basic sciences....both to help with courses and because it would be nice to not have to bank all of first year's topics now.

I'm sure others would disagree though.
 
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hrain said:
Personally, I'd say start now. I started with about three months left in first year and I wish I'd used it for the basic sciences....both to help with courses and because it would be nice to not have to bank all of first year's topics now.

I'm sure others would disagree though.
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I agree with this. I started towards the end of my first year as well, and used it throughout my M1 summer alongside my research, and I gotta say, it was the best decision I ever made. GT really solidified my knowledge of first year to the point that 2nd year (so far) has been a lot more manageable. I feel I have a very solid foundation off of which to build now. When I speak to my classmates, they're stressing because they're worried they've forgotten the stuff from first year.... I'm glad I'm not in that position.
 
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Out of curiosity, how often are you guys adding questions to the "never see again" pile? And what kind of material are you adding/how are you basing it?
 
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Been waiting almost a YEAR now for numpad support. Also want the ability to review all the questions in a specific subsection instead of just a total category. Get your programmer off his ass.

I understand you already have my money but these are small things 👎
 
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jhamaican said:
Been waiting almost a YEAR now for numpad support. Also want the ability to review all the questions in a specific subsection instead of just a total category. Get your programmer off his ass.

I understand you already have my money but these are small things 👎
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You can do questions by subsection in FC...oh wait, I'm sorry, FC migrations have been disabled for almost 2 mo now. 😡

Not to mention FC has no search, no custom rating, unfinished cards, broken feedback links, no progress bar, and no question caps. Essentially worthless. 😡x2

I understand that apparently only one programmer works there and this stuff can take time, but what pisses me off most is that there's new facebook and blog postings constantly trying to recruit people to a broken site. Finish the site. Finish the cards. Fix the bugs. Then...start recruiting. 😡x3
 
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GT is down, and unfortunately this is a common a occurrence that no one is dealing with. Your program is no good if you cannot access it when you have free time to get those review questions done.

I don't care about FireCracker at all. I just want a functional Gunner Training website. So please get your engineers back to work on the platform we actually paid for.
 
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lol we get it... Firecracker is not working and GT has its problems. But websites go down sometimes, guys. In fact a bunch of other big sites also went down yesterday due to some server problems. I've only been on GT for about 4 months or so and have had no problems at all (including yesterday during this supposed "down time" - though I did not use it in or around that 4 minute or whatever span you guys posted and complained).

It's as if you guys happen to catch it in the 2 minute window (not really, obviously...for those not fluent in sarcasm) there's a glitch, that that's reason to call everyone out.

rawrrrrr i hate the color of your banner and the logo your engineers suck😡😡😡
 
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This is not a one time occurrence, and last night was particularly bad with sporadic down-times throughout the day. God forbid we complain about the reliability of a service we pay for.
 
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thawunandonly said:
It's as if you guys happen to catch it in the 2 minute window (not really, obviously...for those not fluent in sarcasm) there's a glitch, that that's reason to call everyone out.
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Mine was down for over 6 hours. I couldn't bank anything yesterday or do any review questions which have now piled on to today. That's a pretty big deal to me, but thanks for assuming your own situation was the same as all of ours.
 
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Notice the time stamps. As I said above the website goes down for 2-10 minute intervals sporadically, and some days like yesterday are worse than others.
 
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neelyboy said:
I'm a first year, 2 months into medical school. Would it be useful for me to start doing Gunner Training now or should I wait until say beginning of second year?
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I started GT at the very beginning of first year, and in hindsight think it was a very good idea. I'm in second year now, and it is a huge boost having mastered all the material. I added a lot of second year cards (path, pharm, micro...) during first year when it was easy enough to do so while covering the relevant physiology. I feel like it's easier to understand the path and pharm and physio at the same time since they build off each other. So I would recommend adding all the cards you cover in classes during first year, and looking through any other cards to see if there are any you can add/understand at the same time with the understanding you have from first year. Most people at my school, and I assume everywhere, talk about how much harder second year is because of how much you have to cover. Second is about the same or easier than first year for me and not too stressful because a lot of the material I have already seen many times from adding extra cards during first year.

So using GT early pays dividends in the long run, but it also helps with the classes you are currently taking.

thawunandonly said:
Out of curiosity, how often are you guys adding questions to the "never see again" pile? And what kind of material are you adding/how are you basing it?
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I wouldn't worry about adding questions to the never see again pile, since you can go back and undo it. If it's a question you think you will remember for a really long time (What are prions?), then rank it as such. Then a few months before Step 1 you can go to the part of your account with the questions you have given a perfect rating to, and remove the perfect rating, putting them back into your schedule if you feel you need the review.
 
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What's your banked/mastery now bbaggins? I think I remember you being almost fully banked before second year even started. Haha that's quite impressive.

I assume you must have a lot of free time this year.
 
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I'm at 98% banked and 92-93% mastery. The cards I'm missing are all path cards that I'm waiting to add when I cover them in classes. I do have a fair amount of free time. But I'm still trying to be consistent with studying. I'd say I do around 20-30 hours a week of studying. I've actually started doing UWorld questions as a way to study along with classes. Different from what most people do but I like it a lot so far.
 
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Do we have any FC only users? What I mean are those who have only used FC and never GT. If there are any of you in the house could you comment on the usability of FC? Buggy? Not buggy? All the answers still A on review questions?

I know the topic of the hour is migration and as a long time GT user I am of course interested in that. Just thought I'd poll the audience.

Thanks in advance
 
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Goober11 said:
Do we have any FC only users? What I mean are those who have only used FC and never GT. If there are any of you in the house could you comment on the usability of FC? Buggy? Not buggy? All the answers still A on review questions?

I know the topic of the hour is migration and as a long time GT user I am of course interested in that. Just thought I'd poll the audience.

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

I use FC only because I just started recently so I was able to do all my banking in FC and not worry about the migration.

Main bug that I've noticed is that certain characters don't show up properly (most arrows, Greek letters, etc) and a number of embedded links in questions still point to the GT page and not the FC page.

Other than those (minor) bugs, the main feature in GT that I haven't seen in FC that would be a huge huge help is the search function.
 
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bbaggins said:
I'm at 98% banked and 92-93% mastery. The cards I'm missing are all path cards that I'm waiting to add when I cover them in classes. I do have a fair amount of free time. But I'm still trying to be consistent with studying. I'd say I do around 20-30 hours a week of studying. I've actually started doing UWorld questions as a way to study along with classes. Different from what most people do but I like it a lot so far.
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Hey bbaggins, how many questions do you have per day? Also, a few questions for anyone to answer:

How do you approach the rating? If you can't list 9 side effects of a drug is that always a 1 or 2 or do you "pad" your grades to avoid ending up with too many questions?

Is anyone else bothered by the content errors? I've been sending 2-4 corrections a day for the past few weeks and if everyone did that I feel like we could really make this site legit. Until then I'm starting to lose steam not feeling like I can trust what I read.
 
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So I thought Firecracker would be up and running a long time so basically all my major HY facts and explanations that I would normally make flash cards of I ended up jotting onto a piece of paper over the past couple months thinking that I will add them onto the related questions when the program was up and running.

As you can imagine over time this has become a huge pile of info and a huge messs! Half of the notes I made I can't understand them anymore and some of the stuff I had written down I can no longer understand what the exact purpose was.

If FC isn't going to be up and running soon could you at least add a feature in GT to take notes directly onto the presented questions in our daily reviews?

This one feature alone would be enough for me to be the happiest user in the world.
 
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This is a question for anyone who has used GT up until/through dedicated study time for Step 1 or anyone who is far enough along in their studies to be thinking through dedicated study time plans (bbaggins? anyone else?)...

I've been starting to vaguely plan out my dedicated study time (I have 6 weeks in March-April, but I think I'm going to try to take it 5 weeks in and get a short break after) and am trying to decide whether I want to use GT during dedicated study or just focus on FA/UW/Pathoma/other sources then? Basically, I'm worried that GT questions will be too much of a time drain during dedicated study time, although I love using it now and definitely plan to continue at least up until March. I started it last March, although I didn't get too much done this summer, so I'm at ~53% banked/35% mastered right now. The plan is to be completely done banking by sometime in mid-to-late January, and to definitely continue with all my questions until dedicated study starts in March.

Do you guys plan on continuing GT questions during dedicated study? Or, for people who have done so or chose not to, what did you think about your choice?

Thanks!
 
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Goober11 said:
Do we have any FC only users? What I mean are those who have only used FC and never GT. If there are any of you in the house could you comment on the usability of FC? Buggy? Not buggy? All the answers still A on review questions?

I know the topic of the hour is migration and as a long time GT user I am of course interested in that. Just thought I'd poll the audience.

Thanks in advance
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There are three things that FC needs ASAP: a search function, a "cram" mode so you can go through all the cards in a specific subject (for dedicated study time or when you have a test coming up), and a way to change the interval of when the cards you got right/wrong will appear. GT has all of these, and despite the shortcomings that GT has when it comes to rigidity of the review that FC fixes, I really hope that FC adds in at least the latter two things. It would really come in handy during the dedicated study time.

I'm not sure when this is going to happen, because I haven't noticed a lot of FC updates recently, so I may just switch back to GT during spring break and bank all the questions just so that I can use those features when the time comes.

Edit: Also, the comments on GT were really helpful to double check the information, adding information that may be pertinent, and by suggesting helpful mnemonics. It'd be nice if those somehow got transfered too. I haven't come across any comments on FC as of yet, which is a real bummer. The flexibility of FC though just makes it so much easier to juggle with class.
 
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I agree with the comments above about the comments section.

Small mnemonics or little hints always come in handy and I've picked up some really great ones via the comments section.
 
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Sanzy said:
There are three things that FC needs ASAP: a search function, a "cram" mode so you can go through all the cards in a specific subject (for dedicated study time or when you have a test coming up), and a way to change the interval of when the cards you got right/wrong will appear. GT has all of these, and despite the shortcomings that GT has when it comes to rigidity of the review that FC fixes, I really hope that FC adds in at least the latter two things. It would really come in handy during the dedicated study time.

I'm not sure when this is going to happen, because I haven't noticed a lot of FC updates recently, so I may just switch back to GT during spring break and bank all the questions just so that I can use those features when the time comes.

Edit: Also, the comments on GT were really helpful to double check the information, adding information that may be pertinent, and by suggesting helpful mnemonics. It'd be nice if those somehow got transfered too. I haven't come across any comments on FC as of yet, which is a real bummer. The flexibility of FC though just makes it so much easier to juggle with class.
Click to expand...

why I will never transfer
 
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Does anybody just get the loading circles unde the questions when they sign on to firecracker? It freezes the whole site and I can't do anything. I'll send them an email, which I doubt they will respond to...so I thought I'd ask here first to see if anyone had experienced this.
 
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RacerX528 said:
Does anybody just get the loading circles unde the questions when they sign on to firecracker? It freezes the whole site and I can't do anything. I'll send them an email, which I doubt they will respond to...so I thought I'd ask here first to see if anyone had experienced this.
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I've had this problem ever since I migrated. They told me it had something to do with having more than x number of questions/concepts banked (in GT I was about 33% done when I migrated if that helps). They also promised a "big fix in the near future," so we'll see what happens. Truth be told, I'm getting pretty frustrated with it. It also doesn't help that I reset my GT account immediately after migrating thinking I wouldn't need it anymore...
 
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3rd year here, former GT user, trying to use firecracker for clerkships.

So, I flag a question and I answer the question once, and then the question disappears and doesn't show up in my schedule. Maybe I don't understand this platform. Basically, is this supposed to be like GT where the system automatically gives you questions to answer in the future based on how you rank your recall? I grade myself a "1" on everything and the system never shows me any questions in my schedule. Is the entire thing busted? Bottom line, I can only view the questions once and then they disappear never to be seen again. Surely I am overlooking a simple fix, but I can't figure out this program.
 
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