Once i am done with my mcat, my plan is to start studying for the M1 classes. I'll find out the classes that seem to challenge most M1 students and try to learn what I can before I start in my free time - no pressure. Is this a good idea or don't waste my time? Who has done this?
Hi @
malaika
I feel really bad every time I roll my eyes when someone says something like this but don't take it personally, it's not because of you. It's because I've thought of this, my friends have thought of this, then we realized how bad of an idea this was and then now I keep seeing how other people start thinking about pre-studying and that just makes me :eyeroll:
...I feel this is where 90% of the harshness on SDN comes from.
Anyways,
here's why it's absolutely a HORRIBLE IDEA.
1. It's not efficient. In medical school, you will be under time constraints, have lectures to go through, and professors to help you through all of it. Why would you try studying now when it you will simply be learning the same stuff but way faster once you are in medical school?
2. The material is not really THAT hard. I've asked around and from what I've seen, the material requires little conceptual thought and if you did reasonably well on the MCAT, you will not struggle to understand the stuff at least. The trouble is the volume, not the material.
3. The material is boring...Yes, it is. I know that sounds blasphemous coming from a future physician but here's the thing. Which one will make you more marketable as a person? Learning a programming language/foreign language/new skill or spending your last free days memorizing the Kreb's Cycle so once you go to medical school, you can do it again?
If I tried self-studying, this is what would happen:
I'd waste a little under a week's work on a $300 book, read a few pages, get stuck on page 7, stop reading it, come back to it a month later after the page is covered it food stains/water stains, and is permanently folded to that page and the whole time, I'd be stressing myself out for nothing...
