How do you guys (med school students) take notes from a textbook?

[AcademicTerror]

I'm a high schooler and tend to take notes by typing out an outline of the important concepts in a textbook.
1) Would it be efficient to this in med school?

2) How do you medical students take notes from a textbook?

3) Also (this might sound dumb) but is 5+ aps comparable to one year of med school?

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[stickshift]

1) no

2) didn't use textbooks. Used course syllabus notes - underline/highlight the salient points, annotate

3) far from it

 

[MedChic]

Ha agreed. Textbooks = encyclopedias in med school. There is barely enough time to keep up with material from lectures. Your learning changes as you go through med school. The trickiest thing is time management since there is so much material but at the same time you're now learning for your patients and your career so you have to balance the 2. So you rely on the profs to lay out the important concepts in the syllabus - study that to do well on tests and use textbooks and outside sources for personal reference and honing of your knowledge.

with that said why are there only 24 hrs in a day?

 

[ILikeFood]

I'm a high schooler and tend to take notes by typing out an outline of the important concepts in a textbook.
1) Would it be efficient to this in med school?

2) How do you medical students take notes from a textbook?

3) Also (this might sound dumb) but is 5+ aps comparable to one year of med school?

1. No, but that's okay. You're in hs, might as well take your time.

2. I don't. I use them as a reference. In med school they print out lecture notes for each unit/block and that's what most people study from. The ones who really know their stuff are the ones that also read the textbook from time to time. Another thing you'll find out in college is that getting old tests to practice on is money. Med students love old tests.

3. No. It might seem like it from where you are, but from where I am it isn't. Then again, you should know that learning things the first time is always a bitch. So the stress and anxiety you're feeling as a 16-17 year old taking 5 AP courses may be equivalent to what Im feeling as a first year now. Learn it well the first time. Those bio and chem and physics concepts keep recycling themselves. Hell one of the topics being covered on my next biochem test is the Kreb's cycle. Ever heard of it?

 

[ZagDoc]

I'm a high schooler and tend to take notes by typing out an outline of the important concepts in a textbook.
1) Would it be efficient to this in med school?

2) How do you medical students take notes from a textbook?

3) Also (this might sound dumb) but is 5+ aps comparable to one year of med school?

Your study habits and techniques will change drastically in college with the increase in volume of information, and then evolve in turn when you reach medical school. So I wouldn't worry about comparing what you do now to what you'd be doing in (at least) 5 years, its apples and oranges. That being said:

1) No. The pace of information in medical school is something you truly have to experience to understand. I consider myself a quick reader (and even faster skimmer) and even I gave up on the "assigned reading" after 2 weeks of med school. That being said, you syllabus is your comprehensive "textbook" in medical school. It contains nearly all the information needed to succeed on exams... textbooks hold a reference role in med school, you generally only read them for clarification or background.

2) I didn't take notes from a textbook my first 2 years of med school (except board review books). But I did practice active reading, highlighting key concepts and making notes in the margins. I never went back and reviewed my work, but by doing the work as I read it helped solidify information.

3) 5 AP classes might be be close to a full course load in undergraduate (18 credits if you're on semesters). For comparison, a friend of mine tried to "equivicate" undergrad credits and medical school and estimated med school to be about 28 credits... so 150% the work of a full load in undergrad. But like I said, apples and oranges. College is much more conceptual in the way professors frame teaching. Med school is much, much more memorization heavy.

 

[WellWornLad]

People learn in different ways. In med school you have to figure out what works for you, because you don't have time to learn stuff every which way. Some people do take notes of the syllabus (which is in itself a highly condensed version of textbooks), but it is one of the more time-intensive ways to study.

5 AP courses (as I remember them) was pretty much equivalent to one semester of undergrad, which means it's roughly equivalent to 1-1.5 month of med school. If that's all I had to do this year, I'd be on expedia right now planning my 11-month vacation.

 

[ChiDO]

1) no

2) didn't use textbooks.

3) far from it

This.

 

[KnuxNole]

In high school I didn't even open textbooks...you are way ahead of the game buddy 😀

 

[xanthomondo]

I'm going to go against the grain here.

Maybe my schools' notes are subpar compared to others represented here on SDN, (or I'm an idiot, probably a little of both) but I definitely do not get a big picture/conceptual idea of a topic unless I read the text. When I read the text I don't outline everything, I usually just draw flow charts or pictures of big concepts: I don't try to memorize the details.

The details, though I point-blank memorize from the notes. The stupid memorization usually evaporates quickly after the exams, but my big pictureness (so far, anyway) stays in tact for a while.

 

[AcademicTerror]

Thanks for the gr8 advice. Peace and God Bless. Wish you med students the best of luck w/ your studies.

 

[engineeredout]

with that said why are there only 24 hrs in a day?

24 hours is enough, the problem is that sleep is required. OTC cocaine would be useful if they could just cut through all the red tape on that idea.

 

[bad virus]

I'm a high schooler and tend to take notes by typing out an outline of the important concepts in a textbook.

1) Would it be efficient to this in med school?

Everyone has a personal style, mine changes every week, but the thing that stays constant, is that I am a heavy text book studier. If this is your style, you might just carry it on into med school, but your studying habits will evolve as you continue through your education.

The one thing that didn't change for me, is that I still cannot go to lecture if my life depended on it. I don't get anything out of it at all, my attention span is too short in the morning. Watching the lecture on video and pausing it and paying attention to what and how the instructer says and emphasizes things and taking notes from that is pure gold.

2) How do you medical students take notes from a textbook?

I like to read a section and summarize what I just read and try to make up questions from what I understood. I have never been a good student in the sense of going to class, but I am damn good at identifying what can be asked and how it will be asked. I don't know how I do it, but I think its adaptation from having such a short attention span that I found ways to be effecient. I have always been a good test taker, so even if I know less than others, I seem to do better than them in putting 2 and 2 together to get a big picture and answer a question. I guess big picture is the only way to do it, because there are just too damn many details to memorize for memorizations sake without organizing them into a map.

3) Also (this might sound dumb) but is 5+ aps comparable to one year of med school?

Well, since your in high school and having such a heavy load at your level of education, I would consider it comparable. Sure medical school throws more at you than 15 ap courses can, it still sounds like you could compare it to that from your level of education. As you progress through school, you will learn how to handle more and more information. In conclusion, taking things from a reletivistic point of view, sure you can say relitave to you, its a good comparison.

Good job at taking all these AP courses . . . personally, I barely even graduated high school, let alone took anything compared to a college course at that level. My IQ at that point in time was somewhere between Hog excrement and not choking on your own drool. I think it has gone up to room temperature by now but i can't tell because Med school is similar to programming in Assembly. You gotta work real hard but think like an ape. The concepts are not that difficult at all, its just the amount of it.

In conclusion, Start thinking like an Ape and working your ass off J/k.

Good luck with everything and I hope all your dreams come true.

 

[bad virus]

I'm going to go against the grain here.

Maybe my schools' notes are subpar compared to others represented here on SDN, (or I'm an idiot, probably a little of both) but I definitely do not get a big picture/conceptual idea of a topic unless I read the text. When I read the text I don't outline everything, I usually just draw flow charts or pictures of big concepts: I don't try to memorize the details.

The details, though I point-blank memorize from the notes. The stupid memorization usually evaporates quickly after the exams, but my big pictureness (so far, anyway) stays in tact for a while.

This wo/man speaks the truth, big concept FTW . . . Oh and by the way, s/he is probably a genius, only geniuses refer to themselves as being tarded.

 

[halekulani]

i tried annotating a textbook and writing notes from the textbook onto paper

it IS helpful in that it is so time consuming you're forced to understand what you're reading and i'll admit the retention afterwards without reviewing is pretty good.

however, there simply isn't enough time in a day to do this for every lecture. med school is about finding time efficiency or else you'll only remember med school as doing scribe work 24/7

 

[da8s0859q]

I'm a high schooler and tend to take notes by typing out an outline of the important concepts in a textbook.
1) Would it be efficient to this in med school?

2) How do you medical students take notes from a textbook?

3) Also (this might sound dumb) but is 5+ aps comparable to one year of med school?

1. Doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned. If that's what works best for you, then there you go -- although I will say that you might find yourself studying more than your fellow M1s/M2s.

2. I don't. I live by class notes and, rarely, a review text (BRS, First Aid, that sort of thing if you're familiar with 'em). Wish I didn't purchase the few texts I actually purchased.

3. Not in my opinion. Taking five AP classes is more akin to, say, a reasonably difficult semester as a college student. Medical school is its own special kind of beastie.