How to use Anki as an M1

[coffeelover347]

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Hello. I am an incoming M1 who has never used Anki before and am confused on where to begin. I have read about how good AnKing is for studying in preclinical and beyond but do not know where to start.

1. Which deck or decks on AnKing do you use? Do you only use the AnKing Step 1 deck and then unsuspend the cards for whatever block you are currently in? And then continue to build from there? Or do you use multiple decks throughout the year (just depending on what block you are currently in)?
2. Is Anki good for anatomy? If so which deck do you use?
3. Is Anki only supposed to be used after you watch a lecture or review a third party resource on the topic? So I would not start with Anki as my first pass through material?

Thank you in advance. I want to make sure I understand this before classes start soon!

 

[MateoGM416]

Hello. I am an incoming M1 who has never used Anki before and am confused on where to begin. I have read about how good AnKing is for studying in preclinical and beyond but do not know where to start.

1. Which deck or decks on AnKing do you use? Do you only use the AnKing Step 1 deck and then unsuspend the cards for whatever block you are currently in? And then continue to build from there? Or do you use multiple decks throughout the year (just depending on what block you are currently in)?

Yep use AnKing for most stuff and make or share your own decks for the stuff anking doesn't cover

1. Is Anki good for anatomy? If so which deck do you use?

Google the Michigan anki anatomy deck - it's thousands of cadaver images

1. Is Anki only supposed to be used after you watch a lecture or review a third party resource on the topic? So I would not start with Anki as my first pass through material?

Yeah most people will at least watch the lectures first or skim the slides

 

[coffeelover347]

Yep use AnKing for most stuff and make or share your own decks for the stuff anking doesn't cover



Google the Michigan anki anatomy deck - it's thousands of cadaver images



Yeah most people will at least watch the lectures first or skim the slides

Got it. Thank you!

 

[amoxicillin_resistant]

I actually think the anking deck is a bit too overwhelming for the rising M1. especially if u are new to anki

I would advise to download it regardless, but use your inhouse anki deck for starters.

The reason why I think anking is overkill is bc u are not gonna be taught the same concepts in the same manner- big example is cardiology.

Some schools begin with: anatomy > embryology > pathophysiology > equations > pathology > EKGs/clinical stuff

Mine went a weird way and aligning it with the anking cardiology deck was a futile endevor.

If you really insist on using anking as an M1 - I highly advise getting the “create filtered decks” plugin so u can make filtered decks for concepts salient to what ur going thru and running thru those.

PM me if u wanna know more.

 

[Justify2018]

I actually think the anking deck is a bit too overwhelming for the rising M1. especially if u are new to anki

I would advise to download it regardless, but use your inhouse anki deck for starters.

The reason why I think anking is overkill is bc u are not gonna be taught the same concepts in the same manner- big example is cardiology.

Some schools begin with: anatomy > embryology > pathophysiology > equations > pathology > EKGs/clinical stuff

Mine went a weird way and aligning it with the anking cardiology deck was a futile endevor.

If you really insist on using anking as an M1 - I highly advise getting the “create filtered decks” plugin so u can make filtered decks for concepts salient to what ur going thru and running thru those.

PM me if u wanna know more.

I 100% agree with this. My school teaches normal in first year and then abnormal and how to treat it in second year, so Anking wasn’t helpful and was overwhelming.

I would make my own cards and would do the image occlusion cards mainly, especially for anatomy slides. That worked the best for me.

Toward the end of first year I found the pepper decks that corresponded with sketchy bugs and drugs and they are super clutch. I also like the Mnemosyne deck which is amazingly well organized and basically helps you memorize all of first aid. I would just do the relevant sections that corresponded to my lecture content. Lots of my lectures were first aid heavy so it corresponded better than Anking.

 

[amoxicillin_resistant]

Toward the end of first year I found the pepper decks that corresponded with sketchy bugs and drugs and they are super clutch. I also like the Mnemosyne deck which is amazingly well organized and basically helps you memorize all of first aid. I would just do the relevant sections that corresponded to my lecture content. Lots of my lectures were first aid heavy so it corresponded better than Anking.

yeah I started using anking end of first year.

I tell ppl who are new to anki to get anking early just so you can “peep the horror” from time to time…

but usually end of first year u develop anki habits and can config anki and anking to your own personal taste.

best plugins for anking imho:

create filtered deck plugin (so you can sort by first aid or bootcamp after u study)

Image occlusion creator

Anki heatmap to track progress

anki leaderboard so u can dunk on the europeans

 

[AJS59]

My recommendation for preclinical (at least what helped me survive it thus far) is using the in-house deck and layering my own creations on top of that, this is a good strategy I think if your school does in house exams. Covers the material better, more logically and more in order. Of course, this was all fine and dandy for each unit but I went overboard a bit so my older card reviews fell by the way side :/

That being said, near the end of M1 year and especially over M1 summer (we're weird so we only have 6 more weeks of preclinical left before jumping to rotations...fun), I've started meaningfully working on Anking. General workflow for me is basically watch a boards/sketchy/first aid tag, unsuspend those cards (do that a few times over), then work through the cards and repeat. Having seen how much that was helpful to me w/ respect to our first practice STEP at the end of the year, it's something I'm going to take going forward - atp I've mostly jettisoned the in house deck and materials and am focusing almost entirely 3rd party.

If/when you do transition to Anking (in practice, most med students do) I'd recommend to watch Anking's recommended settings video to set it up. Would also recommend FSRS, a god send for scheduling cards.

Rule of thumb no matter what Anki strategy you choose: Only ever unsuspend/create cards after you've seen a lecture/watched a 3rd party resource. Anki's value is for information retention, not raw learning

 

[xOPathology]

I would recommend finding pre-made decks since I don't think anyone in med school would have enough time to be creating Anki cards. I used Anki mostly in residency, where I had to come back to a topic over and over. I'd say 80% of the stuff I learned in medical school I didn't need in practice and its probably not worth the effort making the cards.

I am now a pathologist and something I did in med school for learning pathology/histology was printing off images of tissue and drawing lines to a label at the edge of the document, so you can stare at the cells without seeing the answer and then look to the side to see if you were right (ghetto flash cards). It helped me ace all the histology exams and made me strongly consider pathology as a field. Now, I have actually created a flashcard app that you can find on the app stores (xO Pathology) geared for learning peripheral blood and cell morphologies. It is image focused, since pathology is more of a visually-oriented field than straight up memorization. It is an app I wish I had when I was in your shoes since my med school actually tested cell morphologies (RBC, WBC, hematopoiesis).

 

[amoxicillin_resistant]

I would recommend finding pre-made decks since I don't think anyone in med school would have enough time to be creating Anki cards. I used Anki mostly in residency, where I had to come back to a topic over and over. I'd say 80% of the stuff I learned in medical school I didn't need in practice and its probably not worth the effort making the cards.

I am now a pathologist and something I did in med school for learning pathology/histology was printing off images of tissue and drawing lines to a label at the edge of the document, so you can stare at the cells without seeing the answer and then look to the side to see if you were right (ghetto flash cards). It helped me ace all the histology exams and made me strongly consider pathology as a field. Now, I have actually created a flashcard app that you can find on the app stores (xO Pathology) geared for learning peripheral blood and cell morphologies. It is image focused, since pathology is more of a visually-oriented field than straight up memorization. It is an app I wish I had when I was in your shoes since my med school actually tested cell morphologies (RBC, WBC, hematopoiesis).

aint nobody payin 8 dollars for a histology card app bruh

 

[xOPathology]

aint nobody payin 8 dollars for a histology card app bruh

Thank you for the feedback, I agree it is not for everyone and its geared for those who really want to succeed or want to enter pathology. I remember paying 10 dollars for a set of flash cards in medical school and so I think this is relatively more reasonable since it also has lecture slides included. I wanted to price it lower, but since this is not subscription (the buyer has it forever) the cloud hosting server costs can be significant depending on usage.