I've been spending the majority of my time studying and I'm still not making good grades. I feel really.... alone about this since my peers are mostly doing well on these exams (or at least so it seems). It just really sucks when you make your life revolve around school and you're not doing well at it..
please I need some advice to make straight A's. Some of you may suggest to "just pass" and not care, but there is a partial scholarship on the line and I need to maintain my grades to get it (compounding to the stress).
I tend to be verbose, especially after coffee. So here's the summary if you just want to skip over the rest of the post:
- allow yourself to stop stressing out. It seems paradoxical, but you will focus better when you're relaxed; taking a day off might mean a huge boost in productivity for the next 6 days. Just ask God.
- you're not alone. There are entire departments devoted to helping students. Use them.
- get previous midterms and advice from D2's and D3's.
- stop stressing out. Seriously, figure out ways to destress. You will be more productive and a happier human being.
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1: I'm spending all my time studying
2: "everyone else is happy"
3: I'm really, really stressed out
Without knowing more, I'm mostly doing guesswork. But it's guesswork based upon a lot of friends and students that I've spoken to in the past, so hopefully you find something useful here.
I'm going to guess that being stressed out and not allowing yourself any real breaks has taken a toll on you. You feel tired, even exhausted, even when you're just getting out of bed after what you thought was a good rest; you might spend long seconds or minutes gazing into space, then wonder what you were thinking about; you might feel like you can't spend 3 minutes talking to people because you're losing out on 'precious study time'; you might feel a constant stiffness in your shoulders, knees, feet, back; you might feel random urges to cry, laugh, or punch something. I'm no psychiatrist, but these are the stress symptoms I get, and that my students have reported.
All of this stress compounds into a lack of efficiency, motivation, and ultimately, a performance downgrade. When your car is low on fuel, needs an oil change, and needs a tire replaced, do you push your foot on the accelerator harder and go "Stupid car! Why are you so stupid! You should be able to do these things, you're a freaking car and you did well on your DAT! Why can't you just keep driving?! SUCK IT UP, CAR!"? Probably not; you probably go and get the maintenance done, and wow: the car runs a lot better.
Yet people (myself included) work with this kind of self-flogging mentality on their own minds and bodies, every day, under the guise of "self discipline" or my favorite, "reality check: biochem/dental school/the MCAT/driving up a mountain isn't meant to be easy". Bonus points if you had strict (more bonus points if they were Asian) parents, since that mentality has likely been beaten (literally or figuratively) into you.
Take a good hard look at how you're actually studying. There's a temptation, prevalent in undergrad and absolutely RAMPANT in dental school, to compare yourself to the next guy, and say "Wow he's spending 8 hours in the library... I'd better stay 9 hours!" Remember that
the goal is material retention. No matter what people say about d-school being hard, or time-eating, or whatever, you need to ignore it, and focus on what you are actually doing for yourself.
If (as a rough, exaggerated example) you examine your studying, and you find you're spending too much time with the lectures, going to lecture for 2 hours then listening to the lecture for 3 hours and then looking over your notes for 3 more hours, but you end up retaining little and understanding less, then you should have the flexibility to say "This is not working for me. I need to try something else".
Another temptation of school is to flog yourself into going to lectures because "you should go to every lecture". This is true, you should - but if you retain the material better from books and looking over the slide yourself, then
you should do that. Make sure, at every point in your study time, that you are being productive in the retention sense, and not productive in the "make yourself feel better" sense.
Retention: drawing out glycolysis pathways until you can get it right from memory. Time: 30m
"Feel better": mapping out meticulous notes to a rambling, slow 2 hour lecture that only covers the first half of glycolysis. Time:2.5h
As a final note: you mentioned 'feeling alone'. Rest assured that many of your peers are struggling as well; as I'm sure you know, it is common and accepted to put a smile on your face and act calm in the face of danger. It's the "haha, I barely studied for this test omg i'm not rdy!" mask - people like acting like they're cruising by, not really studying, don't care much about the grade, etc etc etc. There wouldn't be an entire department designed for Academic Retention (at least at NYU) if there wasn't a demand for it. Businesses don't like throwing away money.
I would say instead of (in addition to?) reaching out to your fellow SDNers for help, wander over to whatever curriculum advisors you have, retention office, study help, D2's and D3's (D4's are usually dinosaurs who don't remember the exams
😉), and look for actual, in-person help for your unique situation.
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