Help me with my studying?

[IntoTheNight]

Not sure if I’m behind or doing too much, but here is my situation.

I think I’m studying poorly. I am running low on time/mental capacity with using Anki. I average over 1100 cards a day. I started using it for our second block and have now hit over 4000 cards with around 17 days using it.

I’m using Sketchy/Boards to learn things, but really just using Zanki to memorize. My school has a spreadsheet that correlates roughly our lectures with Zanki decks.

I’m behind, but I also don’t really know how? I haven’t seen anyone average 1100 review+new cards a day like me (not in a bragadocisous way, I might have a poor reference point though.) I haven’t even touched our school specific Anki or lecture PowerPoints.

How is it that I am behind but also putting in that many cards? Do people only unsuspend school specific ZAnki cards? For what it’s worth, I remember hearing one of our M3’s say they try to only learn 200 new cards a day, and I’m a little above that.

Am I focusing too much on boards exams? Who should I reach out to, if anyone at all?

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[deleted1168269]

It’s possible that Anki just doesn’t work for you or it only works to some extent. You’re burning yourself out using a study method that isn’t fully working so it feels like you’re studying like crazy but you’re not really learning or retaining anything.

If you’re at risk of failing classes, then your first priority should be school lecture powerpoints since that’s where the exams come from. Use Sketchy and Pathoma to supplement with school PowerPoints.

 

[Hollow Knight]

First of all, your school should have some kind of academic support person; talk to them.

Do you have in-house exams? NBME exams? a mix of both? Cause that'll affect my suggestions. SunnyDeep45 makes a great point; however, at my school, our PowerPoints don't prepare you super well for our midterms and finals because they're NBME finals. So the way you're tested kinda changes the answer.

Having more than 1,000 cards a day is weird. It shouldn't be that high this early on. If you're just unsuspending all the cards for a subject (biochem for example) at once, that might be your problem. Nobody does all of AnKing anymore like people used to do when step 1 was scored, except maybe the people who are gunning for MOHS surgery and want to influence their future step 2 score. I look at my professor's stuff and match up the AnKing cards with what they cover, which is how I crush the NBME midterms and finals. If my school purely had in-house exams, though, I'd probably focus way harder on school-specific decks or maybe not even use AnKing.

Also, you don't have to use anki to do well in medical school. It works very well for the vast majority of people but if you hate it, keep trying other things until you start passing exams.

 

[Goro]

Not sure if I’m behind or doing too much, but here is my situation.

I think I’m studying poorly. I am running low on time/mental capacity with using Anki. I average over 1100 cards a day. I started using it for our second block and have now hit over 4000 cards with around 17 days using it.

I’m using Sketchy/Boards to learn things, but really just using Zanki to memorize. My school has a spreadsheet that correlates roughly our lectures with Zanki decks.

I’m behind, but I also don’t really know how? I haven’t seen anyone average 1100 review+new cards a day like me (not in a bragadocisous way, I might have a poor reference point though.) I haven’t even touched our school specific Anki or lecture PowerPoints.

How is it that I am behind but also putting in that many cards? Do people only unsuspend school specific ZAnki cards? For what it’s worth, I remember hearing one of our M3’s say they try to only learn 200 new cards a day, and I’m a little above that.

Am I focusing too much on boards exams? Who should I reach out to, if anyone at all?

If Anki isn't helping you, dump it. Some people love, but it can hurt others.

Read this:

• Goro's Guide to Success in Medical School (2019 edition)

 

[MateoGM416]

I used anki for 90% of my studying first year and never once felt not behind. That's normal. Cramming the lecture material that isn't covered by zanki the days before the test should be enough to pass comfortably