How to be more efficient?

[Belleza156]

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In undergrad I rarely studied until right before the exam, sometimes went to class but not even 75% of the time. And did just fine, with plenty of time to do everything else.

In med school, I always feel like I have no time, I'm running behind ALWAYS. Its seems like everyone finishes the material before me AND then has time to review it in the same amount of time it takes me to go at it just once. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people, especially the super talented and the Adderal users. Do other people feel like this? Am I just hanging with with all the gunners who want surgery? Or am I really the slowest one? And if so......how do I fix it?

How do you become more efficient in medical school? How do you efficiently allocate every min of the day so you have time to sleep (at least 4 hours, hopefully 6), go to class (at least 75% of the time), study after class, eat, and still have time to do something NOT related to medicine?

Our school gives us an exam every other week and sometimes every week. So for me it's pretty much ALWAYS test week. Anyone have any recommendations? What do you do when you started med school to make the most of your time?

 

[Therecanbeonlyo]

In undergrad I rarely studied until right before the exam, sometimes went to class but not even 75% of the time. And did just fine, with plenty of time to do everything else.

In med school, I always feel like I have no time, I'm running behind ALWAYS. Its seems like everyone finishes the material before me AND then has time to review it in the same amount of time it takes me to go at it just once. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people, especially the super talented and the Adderal users. Do other people feel like this? Am I just hanging with with all the gunners who want surgery? Or am I really the slowest one? And if so......how do I fix it?

How do you become more efficient in medical school? How do you efficiently allocate every min of the day so you have time to sleep (at least 4 hours, hopefully 6), go to class (at least 75% of the time), study after class, eat, and still have time to do something NOT related to medicine?

Our school gives us an exam every other week and sometimes every week. So for me it's pretty much ALWAYS test week. Anyone have any recommendations? What do you do when you started med school to make the most of your time?

1. You are always behind...and you will never feel as prepared as you can be because there is so much you can learn you could always know it better

2. You should be sleeping at least 6 hours if not 7-8 every night. You will retain information better, etc.

3. You have to figure out when you learn the most quickly -- for example, I study much more efficiently in the morning than in the evening, probably becuase i'm more tired. Others can't study at all until after like 5 pm, but can study until like 3 am without problem.

4. You will get more efficient as school goes on

5. I tutor a lot of students (both my year and below, i'm a 4th year doing ortho), and what they seem to do is "lose the forrest for the trees" so to speak. What i mean by this is you have to have a step wise manner in which you go through the material. For example, if you're going through pharm, you don't want to start by learning the very specific intracellular mechanism of a drug, you want to start with something like "this is an antihypertensive medication...it's used best for these types of patients"...then as you go through it again you add in the details. You'd be suprised how many questions you can get right just by knowing the basics/big picture of the material and inferring the details. Also, students run into the problem in that they go through reading the textbook (nothing wrong with that) but they highlight and underline when they are going through the material the first time. If you look at the books of most of these guys the entire thing is highlighter...because it all seemed important the first time through.

What I did when I studied the material was make what I called "study sheets", basically hand written notes in two columns front/back on paper where I brought out the important points from the notes/books/whatever else I went through. Then in the last 1-2 days before the test I would just review those.

If you have any other questions PM me

Also, where do you go to school and what year are you?

 

[hurdlepup]

Something I did to get efficient, b/c I was tired of not having time to do things I like to do: eat & sleep & exercise(ok, the last one only somewhat...)

I made an action plan (schedule...) in excel of what I would be doing study-wise for my hours leading up to the test.

Then, while studying, i set a repeating timer to pace myself. After awhile, I got the hang of how fast I need to read to stop getting bogged down, plus it made studying a game of trying to beat the timer. While I read, I would write stuff down that I thought was important. It just kicked my brain into high gear and made me process stuff faster.

The thought is that you can make a schedule of how efficient you will be--but if you schedule 20 pages of notes to get through in 60 minutes--you had better actually be reading & taking notes at an AVERAGE (this is key) rate of 3 minutes/page or you might as well throw your schedule away...

My method is something like this guy's/gal's:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=10421965&postcount=11


I try to get through the material fast so that I can spend more time on review questions and get used to diagnosing based on the clinical info and then applying the knowledge at whatever Bloom's taxonomy level they are asking. (Which is never very high level, honestly...)