Gunner Training?

[hope2bpaindoc]

---

Members do not see this ad.

A

 

[Work]

\\\

 

[fleshwound]

It's terrible that we're kept in the dark and not being told:
1. what's going on
2. what's being done to fix this.
3. when to expect this to be fixed.

But seeing that we aren't exactly shareholders and we have no say in what goes on, there's no reason for them to take any of our constructive criticisms. I've never paid this much for a lemon before.

 

[crazyozone]

I don't care if GT and firecracker are up and running tomorrow and have no problems in the future. I will never recommend GT again. In fact, I know two people on the bubble because of what I told them and I will convince them not to use it. Reliability and customer service, what most people used to love about them, have gone out the window. They try to throw free months at the problem instead of just fixing it...

 

[Suncrusher]

they will come in here with a lame apology and promises that they've heard our complaints and will fix things and it wont happen again...and then it will happen again. it always does. I have several hundred questions piled up now because of all the outages

 

[doctoritis]

Yes, exactly. It's cute that you guys are so optimistic and positive about it - but it's gotten old. People are only understanding the first few times you put out your apologies, it quickly becomes meaningless when results don't materialize. I've kept my mouth shut for a long time - but it has gotten substantially worse lately. And the fact that it is directly impacting my study tactic for an exam is definitely fueling the fire here.

If it's not reliable today, why should I have the trust that it is going to be reliable later in my dedicated study time? I should probably make my own note cards that will always be there for me. You guys have to prove that it's worth our time.

 

[An0MalY]

http://status.firecracker.me/

their FB page they have people responding.

I will continue supporting FC/GT mainly because spaced repetition is how i learn best..and what i did first 2yrs. The time consuming part is making the cards, and the reason i joined GT. Its a brilliant idea, no one else has done it or competes with them. Just frustrating since i had to go back to GT since my FC is on stuck mode, and its down. I just made a new FC account and am reviewing the things i needed to do this weekend.

 

[ilMaestro]

Has anybody been using the "old" gt? The one that can be found at old.gunnertraining.com.
If so, are there still multiple choice q's interspersed with the daily q's?

 

[Suncrusher]

back up

 

[Alvarez13]

back up

If you change it to "back down", you'll probably time it just right and we'll think you have super powers.

 

[ED50]

We hear you guys and gals 100%. Not many excuses for this. We're an internet based company and our database model needs to be best in class. Getting everybody over to the firecracker side is going to be key. The technical foundation that GT is sitting on (codebase, server setup, etc.) is not ideal and is causing downtime more often than not, a host of bugs, and poor performance even when up(e.g. loading time / speed). This is why we have built and are moving to Firecracker. Other things- Are we working on a mirror site to improve uptime? Yes. Are we getting more back-end programmers? Yes. Can we approach customer service in a more consistent and timely matter, get out communications, and proactively reach out to our users? Yes.

Every single one of your suggestions I've written down on the big whiteboard in our meeting room. We're focusing on the "must haves" first and then will start to add in lots of the "nice to haves." Question limits, days off, and on-demand quizes are must haves- see attached screenshot preview. ( I'll push for NUMPAD support jhamaican! ) For this morning anyway, it looks like GT is back up and running thanks to an overnighter by Nick. Firecracker is almost out of beta. I'll keep you posted as things happen -bpw

Thanks for the update ventulus, Appreciate the hard work!

 

[Goober11]

We hear you guys and gals 100%... -bpw

Thanks for the honest reply. I hope everything works out for each of us.

 

[doctoritis]

Thanks Ventulus. Let's face it - I apologize for over reacting if I did, just want to be heard out - we get angry because we care - we really like your product and want to be able to use it and benefit from it as we think it is intended for.

 

[fleshwound]

we get angry because we care - we really like your product and want to be able to use it and benefit from it .

in other words, it's better than crack and we were collectively going thru withdrawal

 

[premedmind]

Is it worth it to switch over to Firecracker at this point in time?

 

[bassvp]

on the same token (for those of us who haven't started), is it worth it to start using GT at this time?

 

[premedmind]

1) I'd cut GT when you start your dedicated study period. Read FA once through at the start, do UW, read FA once more at the end

2) If you have 1-200/day, you're honestly not at the point where GT is crazy time consuming. What made me stop using was when I averaged ~4-500/day for about a week and a half (coupled with it being our supposedly hardest block of med school). I was able to work fastest doing cards in timed blocks of 50, shooting for the fast time I could. I would average ~180-200 cards/hour, with blocks of cards going faster if my mastery was higher obviously. The 4-500 a day period was a high % of unmastered cards. I also used the hotkey program someone mentioned earlier in the thread so I just had to press space to see the answer and a number to rate and move on.

3) Depends how important I think that information is, but don't waste much time thinking about it - it'll come up again and you'll be able to decide again then. Choose a number and move on, or you'll waste your life away debating it

Thanks for the advice. Regarding the first answer you provided, I'm definitely not far enough along in GT to stop using it come dedicated study in January - I just wouldn't have covered enough in it. Only at 23% completed now but was planning on finishing all of first year material by January in the next 2 mos. I'm wondering if it would be wise to use GT alongside FA come dedicated study, or is that just not possible/a terribly inefficient use of time?

 

[loveoforganic2]

I highly recommend airing on the side of caution when scheduling out your banking. I overbanked (too much unmastered content, I was at like, 75% banked, 38% mastery) and couldn't unbank (being in GT), and it burned me.

I do think using GT and FA at the same time is inefficient. If you're using a qbank, annotate relevant stuff into FA while you use GT, but that's it

 

[premedmind]

I agree that it would be inefficient too. This just leaves me kind of in a rut because I'm nowhere near done with GT and planned to start using FA come January. Im like 23% banked with 18% mastery so I'm not really rushing the banking (I repeat the cards over at the end if I rated them a 1, 2 or 3 and rate them higher once I recall it better after a 2nd try). I really do like GT and feel like I learn better with the repetitive quizzing. Kind of don't want to give it up...but I also feel like I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I don't go hard with FA....

By your last sentence there, are you suggesting that I go full time with GT during dedicated study and only annotate FA when I use the Q-banks?

I'm just trying to get an idea of what people are doing. I know there are people out there with this same dilemma right now.

 

[piviti]

I agree that it would be inefficient too. This just leaves me kind of in a rut because I'm nowhere near done with GT and planned to start using FA come January. Im like 23% banked with 18% mastery so I'm not really rushing the banking (I repeat the cards over at the end if I rated them a 1, 2 or 3 and rate them higher once I recall it better after a 2nd try). I really do like GT and feel like I learn better with the repetitive quizzing. Kind of don't want to give it up...but I also feel like I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I don't go hard with FA....

By your last sentence there, are you suggesting that I go full time with GT during dedicated study and only annotate FA when I use the Q-banks?

I'm just trying to get an idea of what people are doing. I know there are people out there with this same dilemma right now.

There's a lot of overlap between GT and FA. I don't think you should worry about being inefficient. I've been trying to go through FA while doing GT, and looking at FA has been pretty easy so far.

Some of the other users earlier in this thread said they started GT early in 2nd year, and managed to cover a lot of ground before starting q-banking/annotating FA in Jan.

 

[premedmind]

There's a lot of overlap between GT and FA. I don't think you should worry about being inefficient. I've been trying to go through FA while doing GT, and looking at FA has been pretty easy so far.

Some of the other users earlier in this thread said they started GT early in 2nd year, and managed to cover a lot of ground before starting q-banking/annotating FA in Jan.

Sounds good. As to the bolded part, are people annotating FA as they use GT? I haven't been doing that, but am wondering if I should start...or use other resources to do so. What are people typically annotating FA with?

 

[piviti]

Sounds good. As to the bolded part, are people annotating FA as they use GT? I haven't been doing that, but am wondering if I should start...or use other resources to do so. What are people typically annotating FA with?

I think people annotate FA with the explanations from qbanks like UWorld. I don't see the point of annotating FA with GT.

 

[loveoforganic2]

I agree that it would be inefficient too. This just leaves me kind of in a rut because I'm nowhere near done with GT and planned to start using FA come January. Im like 23% banked with 18% mastery so I'm not really rushing the banking (I repeat the cards over at the end if I rated them a 1, 2 or 3 and rate them higher once I recall it better after a 2nd try). I really do like GT and feel like I learn better with the repetitive quizzing. Kind of don't want to give it up...but I also feel like I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I don't go hard with FA....

By your last sentence there, are you suggesting that I go full time with GT during dedicated study and only annotate FA when I use the Q-banks?

I'm just trying to get an idea of what people are doing. I know there are people out there with this same dilemma right now.

Well, this is contingent on what you choose to do with qbanks. I dropped the 100% GT goal, so I'm going to try to knock out kaplan (untimed tutor, subject based with classes starting in fall of MS2), rx (timed tutor, random, starting in spring), and world (dedicated study time). I plan to soon restart GT for biochem, embryo, anatomy, and micro (or make anki cards out of FA, haven't decided yet) and pick up some pharm over spring semester, dropping all of GT before starting world, and making one pass of FA before and after finishing world

 

[piviti]

Well, this is contingent on what you choose to do with qbanks. I dropped the 100% GT goal, so I'm going to try to knock out kaplan (untimed tutor, subject based with classes starting in fall of MS2), rx (timed tutor, random, starting in spring), and world (dedicated study time). I plan to soon restart GT for biochem, embryo, anatomy, and micro (or make anki cards out of FA, haven't decided yet) and pick up some pharm over spring semester, dropping all of GT before starting world, and making one pass of FA before and after finishing world

How'd you bank 75% so fast? Also, have you tried marking some of the flashcards as perfect recall to decrease the load?

 

[loveoforganic2]

I reached 75% working from spring of first year (banking new material as it came up, but no old material) to summer following first year (banking everything I hadn't banked from first year + a little miscellanous path, pharm, and all of immuno ahead of time that I understood/had taught myself) to about a third of the way into first semester of second year (banking new material as it came up). Micro in particular busted my ass with having difficulty getting the mastery up (learned and banked all of virology and antibiotics in ~1 week).

If I could have realized I wouldn't be able to keep up with it, I would have adjusted ahead of time, but it was too little too late. I pushed too long trying to keep up with it all, and had to just sacrifice it to be able to catch up in classes (granted, I mean catching up to my comfort level in classes, which is honors-range; I may have been able to choke it out with a close pass, but that wasn't something I wanted to hedge on).

My main point in sharing is to warn others not to be overzealous with banking - if you're feeling overwhelmed, you might need to lighten up on the banking for a bit and try to get your mastery up. Bbaggins is an absolute freak of nature if his/her progress reports are true, and I would highly advise not trying to follow his/her lead unless you are just breezing through everything.

 

[loveoforganic2]

on the same token (for those of us who haven't started), is it worth it to start using GT at this time?

If you're a fresh M1, I'd hold off til at least spring. There's no need to rush into it. Just bide your time for a bit and see what develops.

 

[bassvp]

If you're a fresh M1, I'd hold off til at least spring. There's no need to rush into it. Just bide your time for a bit and see what develops.

Yeah, I just thought it might be helpful for biochem/genetics to help review concepts for the cumulative final (then add in anatomy over winter break).

 

[loveoforganic2]

Biochem is great in GT, but it's a small # of cards (maybe 100?) - you could get away with just using a month free trial for biochem to try it out without forking the money up. I see you're a pharmacist though. My recommendations were in a "be smart with money mindset." You may very possibly be in the "can easily throw around 300 bucks" boat. If that's the case, have at it. Worst that happens is you choose not to use it and you're out the money.

 

[bassvp]

Biochem is great in GT, but it's a small # of cards (maybe 100?) - you could get away with just using a month free trial for biochem to try it out without forking the money up. I see you're a pharmacist though. My recommendations were in a "be smart with money mindset." You may very possibly be in the "can easily throw around 300 bucks" boat. If that's the case, have at it. Worst that happens is you choose not to use it and you're out the money.

Love the idea. I've got a month of biochem/genetics left and it may be a great time to test out the system on a one month trial. Thanks for the input.

 

[Shadowmoses]

I reached 75% working from spring of first year (banking new material as it came up, but no old material) to summer following first year (banking everything I hadn't banked from first year + a little miscellanous path, pharm, and all of immuno ahead of time that I understood/had taught myself) to about a third of the way into first semester of second year (banking new material as it came up). Micro in particular busted my ass with having difficulty getting the mastery up (learned and banked all of virology and antibiotics in ~1 week).

If I could have realized I wouldn't be able to keep up with it, I would have adjusted ahead of time, but it was too little too late. I pushed too long trying to keep up with it all, and had to just sacrifice it to be able to catch up in classes (granted, I mean catching up to my comfort level in classes, which is honors-range; I may have been able to choke it out with a close pass, but that wasn't something I wanted to hedge on).

My main point in sharing is to warn others not to be overzealous with banking - if you're feeling overwhelmed, you might need to lighten up on the banking for a bit and try to get your mastery up. Bbaggins is an absolute freak of nature if his/her progress reports are true, and I would highly advise not trying to follow his/her lead unless you are just breezing through everything.

👍

This is why I try to keep my overall banked percentage and mastery percentage in a range where there is at most a 10% difference between them. The way GT has its info laid out on the cards, there is always something I'm memorizing that I haven't learned yet from anywhere, and the questions from that stuff always get marked a 2 or something since I never covered it in my own studies. Its kind of annoying, but eventually I get around to looking that stuff up to try to boost my mastery.

 

[WarriorMD]

Love/Hate relationship continues:

I love GT because it has helped drive home a lot of stuff that would have required a lot of effort before hand. I probably spent more hours learning it on GT versus if I had just sat down and beat it into my head, but I don't have the discipline to study that hard. GT has forced me to learn some things I probably wouldn't have put the effort into otherwise.

THE HATE: ohhhh so much hate, I think every 7th-8th question I sit here swearing at GT and thinking about how much I hate it and I tell myself to logoff and never look back. So many stupid facts, such weird wording that makes things so much more difficult and the MOST annoying part READING #*%&'en long ass MC Q's after an 8 hour study day with 200+ GT q's to go.

Honestly, do you think my brain has the capacity to focus and optimally operate at the end of the day to do 200+ M/C q's which require extensive reading?

I'm getting more and more frustrated by the day. I "banked" on the fact that I could add things I need to review into Firecracker and it's been MONTHS now and I forgot what I wanted to review and the notes I made that I wanted to turn into flashcards no longer make sense to me.

In essence a huge part of my studying and prep has gone to waste all because of this. It would have honestly been better to make no promises and create no hype and then just deliver when you are ready. I would have thought ok these guys aren't gonna do anything for us so I'll have to take care of things myself and make my own flash cards. BUT NO, you made promises which I "banked" on, but little did I know that it would bite me in the behind because stupid little me didn't prep for the exam properly because Firecracker was going to be my saviour, but quite obviously it turned out to be nothing close to it.

I still don't badmouth the program to others, but not a single person I know is using it anymore or recommending it. I still see the potential for this program and I don't see why it's so difficult to implement small things to make this program so much better.



NO MORE MC Q's PLEASE!!! THEY ARE HORRIBLY WRITTEN AND WASTE A LOT OF OUR TIME AND DAILY MENTAL CAPACITY.

 

[Work]

/\/

 

[nopo18]

Point taken- the issue with the multiple choice questions is real and will be fixed when Firecracker comes out of beta

Must have solutions-
1. make the questions better quality
2. make them stand-alone OR integrated depending on your preference on any given day
3. ability to schedule off days

Hopefully we can get that hate to go away soon 🙂

Number 1 priority should be an option to DISABLE MCQ if desired. I think this would help immensely. This would be my most desired feature I can think of.

 

[DopaDO]

Ok so two things

1) Will I ever be forced to switch to FC? I really want to just keep going with GT and don't want to relearn a new system especially with my exam only a few months away.

2) Is there any disadvantage to simply hitting perfect recall on the MC questions? Wouldn't that essentially eliminate them from review?

 

[loveoforganic2]

Point taken- the issue with the multiple choice questions is real and will be fixed when Firecracker comes out of beta

Must have solutions-
1. make the questions better quality
2. make them stand-alone OR integrated depending on your preference on any given day
3. ability to schedule off days

Hopefully we can get that hate to go away soon 🙂

2) Is there any disadvantage to simply hitting perfect recall on the MC questions? Wouldn't that essentially eliminate them from review?

This is a big thing - I have a feeling that when the GT quizzes were made, MCQ's are occasionally the sole coverage for a topic. Please make sure that if you give the option to take away the MCQ's that the tested information is made up in normal quiz questions. This is why I didn't just PR the MCQ's when they came up

 

[WarriorMD]

Thanks for taking the time to listen and respond. I'm a huge believer in the product and that's why I become so frustrated when it's not working because I know the potential of the program.

A suggestion for MCQ's:
1) For minutia or simple recall facts MCQ's aren't really necessary, especially the ones that go on and then ask a one sentence answer that's not relevant to the info before
2) Standalone MCQ option = amazing

3) MCQ's that test common TRICKS or things you can mixup rather than simple factual recall. A simple one line Q is optimal for recall, but some of the MCQ's in the current daily review Q's have helped me pinpoint a couple things that I sometimes mixup or don't pay proper attention to. Some topics are more conceptual so maybe a brief conceptual based Q, but lot's of full out MCQ's for factual recall is draining.


Side note: got an 89% in Qbank biochem thanks to GT, it was my main study source after lectures. I'll be doing Micro Qbank Q's next week probably and will report an update as well. Although a lot of what I went through in GT didn't even show up at all since most of it was HY concepts which I had a decent grasp of anyway, I feel that GT helped instill confidence and I was able to trust my answers and also answer much quicker. There were still a decent amount of Q's that I answers solely based on knowing what I picked up from GT daily quizzes and those couple Q's could be all the difference on the exam.

 

[doctoritis]

.

 

[withrye]

** ADVICE NEEDED **

First thing to realize is that you have roughly 875 cards left to do, which can be something like 4800 questions that you've never seen before (assuming comprehensive mode). Realize that with 6000+ questions in the bank, even if all questions are rated at a 5, and appear once every 90 days, that's an average of 67 perfectly mastered questions each day. The most important thing to realize here is that 150+ questions per day is not out of the ordinary as a baseline if you're actively banking at a low level while keeping up with mastered material.

If we assume you want to be done by mid-April or early May, you have to bank roughly 5-6 new cards per day. This will add, probably at a minimum, 30 questions each day. Think of doing at least two review quizzes of banked material a day (40ish questions). It's all the more important that you're banking as much pre-formed knowledge as you can, so you don't waste time on hundreds of 2- or 3-rated questions. When I bank a new cards, I rate a question a 2 if I can't even remember it from having just banked it, a 3 if I remember it because I just banked it (short term memory), or a 4 if it's information I knew even before I banked the card. That way you see the really tough stuff soon, the new stuff in about three days, and the pre-formed stuff in a little while (forcing you to really test whether you actually knew it).

Lastly, keep track of your progress. I have a google doc where I keep track of how many cards I've done compared to the total cards in the bank, as well as whether or not I've met my daily goal to keep on track. It's as simple as subtracting your target end date by a cell that has today's date (to calculate the number of remaining days). Then you divide the number of days left with the number of cards left unbanked. This number should remain below your specific target number per day (for you, roughly 5.5). This number will slowly creep up as the days go by where you don't bank at least 6 new cards, and it will slowly drop as you get ahead. Good luck.

 

[loveoforganic2]

I'm pretty sure the number of questions in the bank is over 8000, if my extrapolations from the percent I'd banked is anywhere near accurate

 

[fleshwound]

** ADVICE NEEDED **

When I have the time, I sometimes redo the questions that I ranked a 1 or 2 on from my daily review. I also do my daily review on GT one section at a time so if cardio mastery is the lowest, then I'll hone in on redoing questions, just for extra repetition.

 

[withrye]

I'm pretty sure the number of questions in the bank is over 8000, if my extrapolations from the percent I'd banked is anywhere near accurate

I'm going based off the promotional material, saying they have 6018 Step 1 questions. You can't easily extrapolate your % cards done into a total question count because cards can have anywhere between 1-30 related questions. By the looks of it though, you may have done most of the question-intensive cards already.

 

[loveoforganic2]

I'm going based off the promotional material, saying they have 6018 Step 1 questions. You can't easily extrapolate your % cards done into a total question count because cards can have anywhere between 1-30 related questions. By the looks of it though, you may have done most of the question-intensive cards already.

I did the extrapolation several times on the way up to 75% banked and every estimate was above 8000 (always between 8 and 10k). It's possible I selectively did all the longer cards, but it seems improbable to me. Someone w/100% banked could easily solve the mystery though

 

[withrye]

I did the extrapolation several times on the way up to 75% banked and every estimate was above 8000 (always between 8 and 10k). It's possible I selectively did all the longer cards, but it seems improbable to me. Someone w/100% banked could easily solve the mystery though

You're absolutely right, my own extrapolation is around 8.5k with about 65% banked. I would be ecstatic if I only had ~500 questions left in the bank, but that's obviously not the case. I suppose it's all those cursed MCQs that were added and a (justified) lack of update to the promotional material for GT.

 

[WarriorMD]

** ADVICE NEEDED **

Well, I am at 20% banked as well LOL. I also have Pathoma (starting december) and 2 rounds of Uworld planned. So we're in a similar position.

The funny thing I was planning to be around 60-70% banked by new years, but I think I'll end up with 40% banked only. My problem is that I bank with FA open because I feel like it helps familiarize me with FA. I also rate things a 2 and 3 quite often and the first time around always a 1. I'm pretty strict with my grading, but I'm just wayyy too slow and I find that when I bank too much I just get bogged down with too many 1's and 2's leading to way too many daily q's.

One thing I noticed is there's a lot of things that I can retain for a month or two then forgot, then I repeat the cycle... I feel like trying to master them now over and over by rating them low may be a waste so I rank them a 5 and I plan to just cram them at the end.

When I have the time, I sometimes redo the questions that I ranked a 1 or 2 on from my daily review. I also do my daily review on GT one section at a time so if cardio mastery is the lowest, then I'll hone in on redoing questions, just for extra repetition.

I used to do this too, but I started noticing that if I ranked it a 2 and I wanted to review it in say 6 days and then I re-did it and ranked it a 3 - it would no longer show up in the 6 days that was originally set out. Is this all in my head or is that what really happens?

I started just jotting down one liners onto paper quickly of my 1's and 2's and then I just read them quickly whenever I get a chance.

 

[withrye]

One thing I noticed is there's a lot of things that I can retain for a month or two then forgot, then I repeat the cycle... I feel like trying to master them now over and over by rating them low may be a waste so I rank them a 5 and I plan to just cram them at the end.

This is counterproductive to the point of spaced repetition. The idea is to not have to cram any banked information once it's mastered. If you're not remembering material at 2+ months, you should look into just rating those things a 4 (which I believe maxes the spacing at 60 days).

I used to do this too, but I started noticing that if I ranked it a 2 and I wanted to review it in say 6 days and then I re-did it and ranked it a 3 - it would no longer show up in the 6 days that was originally set out. Is this all in my head or is that what really happens?

The spacing for a 3 is naturally longer than one for a 2. If you immediately redo a 2-rated card and now rate it a 3, the spacing will expand. The easy way to check this is to rate something a 2 and check its spacing, then go back to it and rate it a 3 and open the custom spacing to see where the algorithm has placed it. To get around this particular issue, when I redo 2-rated cards, I just rate them a 2 again or manually set the spacing depending on how hard I think the info is to keep.

 

[NavyJulep]

Did anyone actually receive the one month extension? Nothing has posted to my account so far

 

[Goober11]

Starting to notice some multiple choice questions have had their answer choices removed on GT. Basically the same question stem but just no A-E choices.

Step in the right direction FC 👍

 

[Alvarez13]

Wanted to copy this on here, since I know my own spam filter ate mine.

Dear Users,

On behalf of our entire team, I want to express our most sincere apology
for the recent performance issues and downtime (especially for the outage
this past Thursday through Sunday). Many of us are former pre-meds and
medical students and know how valuable your time is. We know that
disruptions to study plans are devastating. Our mission is to help you
achieve your potential by creating a world-class online learning tool, but
we have been falling short of this commitment. We are here to help you
succeed, not hold you back. I cannot apologize enough for the frustration
we have undoubtedly caused you.

The main problem is that Gunner Training is a very old legacy system that
uses less than ideal software. That's why we're building Firecracker,
which is modern and far more reliable. We were so eager to make the switch
from Gunner Training to Firecracker that we debuted Firecracker too soon.
In doing so, we uncovered some bugs in our system (e.g. if a quiz exceeds
100 questions in size, it often won't load when you try and start it). We
are almost done fixing these bugs and will soon be able to deliver an
outstanding user experience. We will be updating you all via email
regarding the status of this transition from Gunner Training to Firecracker.

We are deeply sorry for this situation and will continue to work around the
clock until you have the experience and reliability you deserve. As a
token of our appreciation for your continued support, we have extended your
membership by 1 month.

Again, our deepest apologies,

- Ben
CEO, Firecracker Inc.

To echo others we appreciate the apologies and hope you really are working hard. There just doesn't seem to be much evidence of this from out sides. You guys are approaching 3 mo late from that Aug release date. That's a little much by any standard. I'm irritated that I paid for a year's subscription thinking I could use this system throughout MS3 after having had great success for MS1-2. I'm now about to finish my first semester of MS3 in a few weeks and feel like I've essentially wasted 1/2 my subscription. FC has a good deal of the clerkship info that I need, but there's no way to search it, no customized review, no progress bars, just unfinished content and I'm having to bank stuff I've already done since I can't migrate anything.

If there's still nothing to show for all this work by end of Nov, I think I'm going to have to drop out 🙁.

 

[WarriorMD]

This is counterproductive to the point of spaced repetition. The idea is to not have to cram any banked information once it's mastered. If you're not remembering material at 2+ months, you should look into just rating those things a 4 (which I believe maxes the spacing at 60 days).

The spacing for a 3 is naturally longer than one for a 2. If you immediately redo a 2-rated card and now rate it a 3, the spacing will expand. The easy way to check this is to rate something a 2 and check its spacing, then go back to it and rate it a 3 and open the custom spacing to see where the algorithm has placed it. To get around this particular issue, when I redo 2-rated cards, I just rate them a 2 again or manually set the spacing depending on how hard I think the info is to keep.

There are a couple things I have mastered and forgotten a couple times which I just don't want to bother with right now because they bog me down a bit. Mainly anatomy stuff for example: Celiac Artery and it's branches - I mix up gastroepiploic and gastric everyyyy time, so I am just going to push it back and rate it a 5 until about 2 months out, then I will start doing it properly. It just seems like a bit too long to retain it. There's only a small amount of things I've done this for, I'm hoping it doesn't bite me in the behind.

Thanks for the info on the spacing, it confirms what I had in my head. I've made it a habbit to hit 1-2-3-4-5 whichever the rating is and then hit "C" quickly to peak at the "next scheduled review" interval and then hit enter to move on. It adds only an extra second to each question, but sometimes I pickup on things that were a 2 or 3, but I didn't like the next scheduled date so I can quickly edit it.

 

[iliketurt1es]

Hey guys I'm in the same boat as some of the above posters. I'm an M2 and I have about 20% banked, but I haven't used the program in months because it got to be too much of a pain to do it along with school and having a life outside of school.

I just started getting nervous about Step 1 because I don't trust myself to do well with this test in the allotted 6 weeks we have to study. Thinking about starting up GT again... do you GT veterans have any advice with staying committed to the program and making yourself do your allotted daily questions, day in and day out?

 

[Alvarez13]

Hey guys I'm in the same boat as some of the above posters. I'm an M2 and I have about 20% banked, but I haven't used the program in months because it got to be too much of a pain to do it along with school and having a life outside of school.

I just started getting nervous about Step 1 because I don't trust myself to do well with this test in the allotted 6 weeks we have to study. Thinking about starting up GT again... do you GT veterans have any advice with staying committed to the program and making yourself do your allotted daily questions, day in and day out?

Don't spend more than 30-60 sec on any particular question. Keep a good pace and use a stop watch to try to move yourself along. If you can't get the answer in a few seconds, it needs to be a 1-2 and you'll see it again in a few days.