Originally posted by spoodle
Goofyone, your methone seems really good. I have one question though.
For the step 1 "inirial readin," do you take notes as you read? or highlight as you do this?
For me, highlighting has always been the least effective method of learning. You're not challenging yourself by doing it. Now I only highlight obscure facts to make them easier to find.
Making an outline gives you a good overview of what you need to learn, but you're not recalling much when you do it. I make outlines on large topics. The point of doing it is just to be able to keep my place--so I don't get lost in details and forget WHAT I'm learning about! If it's more than a page long, it's way too detailed for my purposes.
Taking notes, on the other hand, is a form of recall (because you have to remember some of the info long enough to transcribe it from one piece of paper to the other). It works, but it's very time consuming--time that you'll find out you just don't have in medical school. It's also very inefficient. Think about it: why write down something that's already been written down once? Wasteful. The truth is that most of the forms of studying that I've ever used have been more of a tool of procrastination than anything. I'd spend hours highlighting text and taking notes, and not comprehending anything. Then, a night or two before the test, all of my work went right out the window as I went through everything AGAIN, picking out the most important facts to memorize. Then I'd ace the test, not because of my highlighting or note-taking, but because of the cramming. Then two days later I'd know nothing again.
I think that my method takes the good aspects of cramming (taking the "meat" of the lecture and memorizing it quickly), and through repetition, you reinforce what you knew and pick up new stuff each time. The point of my method is that I can bypass all of those procrastinating behaviors and get to MEMORIZING quickly.
The heart of my system is to RECALL. Whether that's writing things out in shorthand on a whiteboard, trying to explain things in a study group, or drawing pictures and diagrams (my personal favorite), the point is to get yourself to recall the info. This is how you will recognize what you DO know, and what you DON'T. Then, you focus on memorizing what you DON'T. Very simple.
If it seems hard or uncomfortable that's because you're challenging yourself. That's good! If you're not challenging yourself, you're probably not learning much.
Hope that answers your question.
