That's a good point. Is this pdf a good representationg of pretty much what people do when they annotate FA with UWorld?
Well, they aren't like my notes. I think that's more of a study guide. I think it's great he did it for himself, if he thinks that will help him. Each person will have a different need, so you really gotta customize it to yourself. This leads me to another point, which I wish people had told me at the start of my studies: if you think something will work for you, do it. I remember in the beginning of my studies for step 1, I was asking all sorts of stupid questions like "which order should I do the subjects in? Is it ok if I do microbio first before biochem or the other way around?" And my mentor (someone who had already took the exam) was like "you MUST do microbio first, THEN the other subject, etc." NOW, after actually having gone through the studying myself, I'm like psshtt, it wouldn't have made any difference.
When you actually read FA, you'll see why you need to make notes. Sometimes it's when you don't know what something means, so you jot it down after looking it up. Or you write a juicy tidbit that you think you'll forget when you do Uworld. Or sometimes I would just rearrange long lists into an order that I found easier to memorize for myself. Let me give you an example: in FA, there is a page on the congenital adrenal hyperplasia disoders...I found the diagram a bit confusing, so I made a super simplified table that just said:
17 alpha = aldosterone
sex
21 alpha = aldosterone
sex
11 beta = aldosterone
sex
(11-deoxy-something
)
Then I put another note on the side saying: cortisol
for all
(I'm not sure if that table above is correct since I am doing it from memory.)
But my point is: I liked the info looking like that, not the way they presented it on FA, since it was easier for me to memorize my own chart organized like that.
Really, I was just like you and was also wondering what the heck will I write in my FA, but as soon as you start doing it, it will come naturally to you.
Anyways, I would really not invest time on someone else's notes. Time is limited. You might as well then just put all of Harrison's in FA and read all of that. I mean, same concept.
Saladin's on the money with that - what's HY or an important "note to self" for one can be different for another... what if there were points that one person knew and felt the need to not write down, but I didn't know?
Still pretty cool to help out, and what you could do is add onto that list with things you find important or missing - 🙂
Agreed. Good post. I do appreciate the good intention and maybe some super gunners will benefit. As for me, I like to minimize what I have to read, hehe. I can barely deal with my own notes, let alone someone else's!
