Helpful purchases before med school

[raiderette]

I am only a pre med but my crock pot has saved senior year. Should I try to learn Anki as a senior?

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[asdf123g]

why onenote?....

 

[ResidencyHopeful123]

Any thoughts on Surface Pro 4 vs. a Macbook (12 inch)? I wanted something rather light that serves all note-taking purposes.

The surface pro seems to fill that nice niche where I can type but draw too, while using it as a tablet to consume media when necessary. However, some people seem to swear by the traditional laptop keyboard offered by the Macbook.

 

[njtrimed]

I am only a pre med but my crock pot has saved senior year. Should I try to learn Anki as a senior?

I'd learn Anki now. I'm glad I took the time to learn it before med school; there was a learning curve for me and I wouldn't want to be learning it with the volume of information in med school.

 

[hellanutella]

Any thoughts on Surface Pro 4 vs. a Macbook (12 inch)? I wanted something rather light that serves all note-taking purposes.

The surface pro seems to fill that nice niche where I can type but draw too, while using it as a tablet to consume media when necessary. However, some people seem to swear by the traditional laptop keyboard offered by the Macbook.

Got the new "12 MacBook, currently tablet/iPadless, and don't really have any regrets – though your computer choice may be curriculum/study-habit dependent. I simply wanted a fully-fledged computer that was lightweight and capable of handling my day-to-day activities (at any given time I will usually have Netflix open, a lecture stream, Facebook, and 5+ random wikipedia pages). I was also lazy and didn't want to re-learn how to use Windows.

I don't go to lecture, so having a tablet-esque notetaking interface wasn't that important for me. However, when I did attend lectures for anatomy, OneNote proved sufficient and I would draw out all the diagrams, pathways, charts, etc. on paper or whiteboard later to reinforce information. Don't really know many people who did much drawing on their Surface while in class, but I saw some of my classmates occasionally using the touchscreen to draw in arrows/make minor notes. Personally, I found annotating on tablets to be kind of inefficient, but that may be because I have difficulty reading my own handwriting.

That said, my one major complaint is that I can't balance my MacBook on any gym equipment to watch lectures while I work out, which some of my Surface/Yoga/iPad-toting classmates do.

why onenote?....

I'd say >75% of my class uses OneNote. Why? I don't really know. Probably because 1) it's free, 2) it's pretty good for neatly cataloging hundreds of powerpoint presentations, 3) its in-text search function is fairly good when you need to go digging back for info, 4) it backs up your notes almost automatically, and 5) it's stupidly easy to use.

Don't know what your current study habits are like, but I never took digital notes in undergrad (paper notes 4ever). However, the sheer volume of info presented in med school rendered my old notetaking habits useless. I saw everyone else in the lecture hall chugging away on OneNote, downloaded it, and off I went.

 

[Slave to the Game]

#1 best selling pressure cooker on sale for <$80.