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hey all. i'm just starting my first semester of medical school @ ross university (a caribbean med school). i really want to do well on step 1 in order to minimize the stigma associated w/ foreign medical schools.
with that said, i heard from someone that its better, in the long run (for step 1), to read and study the textbook instead of studying the lecture notes. i know the lecture notes are more of a focus on what's going to be on the exam, but the textbook is more detailed and extensive... so it would be better?? as of now, i'm reading the textbooks and taking notes on my laptop (i can type faster than writing on a notebook).
i posted the guy's study method below if you're insterested in reading it...
can anybody, especially those who took step 1, give any insight/opinion on this study strategy??
thanks!
****
Yes, I read the whole weeks worth of material every sunday. It is HONESTLY easy if you are disciplined. On average you have about 100 pages per wk TOTAL for all your classes. Right before you go to bed Saturday, grab a sticky note and preview your week with respect to page numbers (ie don't look at the material yet.) Write down each subject title and the corresponding pages to be discussed for the week. If in a certain week you are required to read parts of 2 different chapters, seperate these on your list... i'll tell you why in a sec.
For example:
Path: Inflamation pg 45-71
Wound Healing 103-121
Micro: .......
This list is everything you need to do tomorrow. IT WILL LOOK LONG AND INTIMIDATING particularly for the first few weeks. My favorite line a prof at Saba said was "Med school is like eating an elephant. You can do it with no problem if you eat a little chunk every day. Just don't let todays chunk carry over till tomorrow or you'll be hurtin!" By breaking it down into chapters you will see your progress as you cross things off and use it to motivate you. I may just be anal... but I get a certain pleasure as I cross off things on my list with a RED pen (red just seems so violent I guess and makes me feel like i'm kickin butt. ok i'm weird.)
Okay so your list is ready to go....now go to bed you're done. because you asked I usually hit the sack no later than 11pm.
Wake up at 6, but do so everyday so your body and mind are used to functioning at that time. (This is another reason why the week before classes start is so important... to get you in this habit. Med school is all about HABITS.)
Arrange your subjects for study such that your most memory intensive and/or weakest subject is the first thing you study. Give it what I refer to as "fresh brain." As you read and come to the end of a sub-sub-topic within the chapter... STOP. (you know what i mean... most authors divide a chapter into 4 or 5 subtopics and then 2-3 sub-sub-topics with in that.)
At this stop point, don't look at your book and just explain to yourself in your OWN words what it is that you just read. Then quickly look up at what you highlighted to see if you missed any key words. This should take you about 10-15 seconds, ie don't get too detailed, the point of this is to make sure you are not just reading words for the sake of reading them which happens quite often particularly later in the day. As you go on, relate the section you just read to everything else you read before this section. Quickly though! This will train you to pick out what is most important at a faster pace AND will ensure that you are learning in a CUMILATIVE manner. Go for 2 hours OR until you feel your brain has had enough. DO NOT go onto a new subject even if you feel your brain can handle it. give yourself at least a 20min break for ever 120min studied (stanford univ memory consolidation study.) Make sure you EAT a little something every few hours and even suck on some form of sugar throughout to feed your super-duper brain. BUT not too much and nothing that is carb heavy. The extra food will redirect the blood away from where you need it most.... your brain. Make sure you take a nice long 1-2 hour break at lunch time. Why? 1. For your whole life your body has been trained so that it knows when to expect food... don't mess with that, there is nothing more annoying than a rumbling tummy when your tryin to nail down random latin names for this and that. 2. this longer break splits your study day into 2 halves instead of one really long exhausting dat. Also make sure that during your breaks you do something that is both physically and mentally opposite reading!!! ie Get out of the room in which you study and do something that uses NO brain power whatsoever. What I have found as a fun reward at the end of a 2 hour run is watching my favorite TV show on DVD. Why dvd? Because without the commercials most shows like scrubs and seinfeld are about 17-19min long. Perfect!
So you made it through your sunday....
Wake up at 6 mon-fri (sleep in sat), and preview your lecture notes that you will discuss in class for that day. JUST SKIM... DO NOT READ for detail. If anything catches your eye, be it because you didn't see it in your reading or don't understand it, put a little check next to it and make sure you pay close attention in class during that topic. Again, don't spend too much time on each subject, just enough so that the lecture slides look familiar. The common theme here is REPITITION.
When you get home that day from class... take a 45min- 1hr nap. NOT longer or you'll feel groggy. Einstein took mid-day naps and used to say that his best thinking was done early in the mornings and after these naps. After your nap, go through your texts and underline your hilighted areas with a blue pen... do this ONLY with the section you covered that day in class. Then highlight your lecture notes for that day. At this point you have seen this material 4.5 times (.5 for your morning preview.) Repeat this cycle everyday until saturday. Sleep-in a little. On this day take a red pen to your text underlining EVERYTHING YOU DISCUSSED this last week. Don't worry, it sounds like a lot but by this point you will complete the sentences before you read them. When you are done with each subject as a whole, take a blue pen to your highlighted notes for that subject. You have now seen this material 6.5 times and are left in a position in which all you need to do for your exam is "red pen" your notes. After 7.5 times... YOU OWN this info for good! I just re-read guyton and biochem over this last break and it felt like I just had the class. I don't have a super memory by any means, but I can tell you where to find almost every graph,chart,table, and topic in my texts because I've seen it so many darn times!
When others are stressing the week before exams and particularly during finals, you can relax... you put in the hard work already.
This is what I do. Different strokes for different folks. Some may do it in half the time or with half the work. Do what works for you. BUT................... DO NOT BE LULLED into comfort by a good grade you earned at Ross U or any school. I have met many village idiots that manage to squeeze out an A or B but 3 months later couldn't answer basic questions. Your PBL classes will show you who really owns their knowledge versus those that memorized it.
Good luck!
with that said, i heard from someone that its better, in the long run (for step 1), to read and study the textbook instead of studying the lecture notes. i know the lecture notes are more of a focus on what's going to be on the exam, but the textbook is more detailed and extensive... so it would be better?? as of now, i'm reading the textbooks and taking notes on my laptop (i can type faster than writing on a notebook).
i posted the guy's study method below if you're insterested in reading it...
can anybody, especially those who took step 1, give any insight/opinion on this study strategy??
thanks!
****
Yes, I read the whole weeks worth of material every sunday. It is HONESTLY easy if you are disciplined. On average you have about 100 pages per wk TOTAL for all your classes. Right before you go to bed Saturday, grab a sticky note and preview your week with respect to page numbers (ie don't look at the material yet.) Write down each subject title and the corresponding pages to be discussed for the week. If in a certain week you are required to read parts of 2 different chapters, seperate these on your list... i'll tell you why in a sec.
For example:
Path: Inflamation pg 45-71
Wound Healing 103-121
Micro: .......
This list is everything you need to do tomorrow. IT WILL LOOK LONG AND INTIMIDATING particularly for the first few weeks. My favorite line a prof at Saba said was "Med school is like eating an elephant. You can do it with no problem if you eat a little chunk every day. Just don't let todays chunk carry over till tomorrow or you'll be hurtin!" By breaking it down into chapters you will see your progress as you cross things off and use it to motivate you. I may just be anal... but I get a certain pleasure as I cross off things on my list with a RED pen (red just seems so violent I guess and makes me feel like i'm kickin butt. ok i'm weird.)
Okay so your list is ready to go....now go to bed you're done. because you asked I usually hit the sack no later than 11pm.
Wake up at 6, but do so everyday so your body and mind are used to functioning at that time. (This is another reason why the week before classes start is so important... to get you in this habit. Med school is all about HABITS.)
Arrange your subjects for study such that your most memory intensive and/or weakest subject is the first thing you study. Give it what I refer to as "fresh brain." As you read and come to the end of a sub-sub-topic within the chapter... STOP. (you know what i mean... most authors divide a chapter into 4 or 5 subtopics and then 2-3 sub-sub-topics with in that.)
At this stop point, don't look at your book and just explain to yourself in your OWN words what it is that you just read. Then quickly look up at what you highlighted to see if you missed any key words. This should take you about 10-15 seconds, ie don't get too detailed, the point of this is to make sure you are not just reading words for the sake of reading them which happens quite often particularly later in the day. As you go on, relate the section you just read to everything else you read before this section. Quickly though! This will train you to pick out what is most important at a faster pace AND will ensure that you are learning in a CUMILATIVE manner. Go for 2 hours OR until you feel your brain has had enough. DO NOT go onto a new subject even if you feel your brain can handle it. give yourself at least a 20min break for ever 120min studied (stanford univ memory consolidation study.) Make sure you EAT a little something every few hours and even suck on some form of sugar throughout to feed your super-duper brain. BUT not too much and nothing that is carb heavy. The extra food will redirect the blood away from where you need it most.... your brain. Make sure you take a nice long 1-2 hour break at lunch time. Why? 1. For your whole life your body has been trained so that it knows when to expect food... don't mess with that, there is nothing more annoying than a rumbling tummy when your tryin to nail down random latin names for this and that. 2. this longer break splits your study day into 2 halves instead of one really long exhausting dat. Also make sure that during your breaks you do something that is both physically and mentally opposite reading!!! ie Get out of the room in which you study and do something that uses NO brain power whatsoever. What I have found as a fun reward at the end of a 2 hour run is watching my favorite TV show on DVD. Why dvd? Because without the commercials most shows like scrubs and seinfeld are about 17-19min long. Perfect!
So you made it through your sunday....
Wake up at 6 mon-fri (sleep in sat), and preview your lecture notes that you will discuss in class for that day. JUST SKIM... DO NOT READ for detail. If anything catches your eye, be it because you didn't see it in your reading or don't understand it, put a little check next to it and make sure you pay close attention in class during that topic. Again, don't spend too much time on each subject, just enough so that the lecture slides look familiar. The common theme here is REPITITION.
When you get home that day from class... take a 45min- 1hr nap. NOT longer or you'll feel groggy. Einstein took mid-day naps and used to say that his best thinking was done early in the mornings and after these naps. After your nap, go through your texts and underline your hilighted areas with a blue pen... do this ONLY with the section you covered that day in class. Then highlight your lecture notes for that day. At this point you have seen this material 4.5 times (.5 for your morning preview.) Repeat this cycle everyday until saturday. Sleep-in a little. On this day take a red pen to your text underlining EVERYTHING YOU DISCUSSED this last week. Don't worry, it sounds like a lot but by this point you will complete the sentences before you read them. When you are done with each subject as a whole, take a blue pen to your highlighted notes for that subject. You have now seen this material 6.5 times and are left in a position in which all you need to do for your exam is "red pen" your notes. After 7.5 times... YOU OWN this info for good! I just re-read guyton and biochem over this last break and it felt like I just had the class. I don't have a super memory by any means, but I can tell you where to find almost every graph,chart,table, and topic in my texts because I've seen it so many darn times!
When others are stressing the week before exams and particularly during finals, you can relax... you put in the hard work already.
This is what I do. Different strokes for different folks. Some may do it in half the time or with half the work. Do what works for you. BUT................... DO NOT BE LULLED into comfort by a good grade you earned at Ross U or any school. I have met many village idiots that manage to squeeze out an A or B but 3 months later couldn't answer basic questions. Your PBL classes will show you who really owns their knowledge versus those that memorized it.
Good luck!
