M1 feeling overwhelmed with anki and lost with study strategies

[magician7772222]

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I'm basically spending all day studying but still unable to properly retain or understand anything. This is my second block and my first actual systems block (immunology and hematology). I wasn't liking the in-house lectures very much so this week I've tried switching over to bnb however I feel like I just forget everything I watch/learn no matter which lecture source I'm using. I'm also doing anki on top of this which I basically spend half of my day doing, which ends up totaling a bit over 1500 reviews a day (including review cards, learning cards, and new cards from the days material). I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong or if this is normal. I would really like some help/guidance.

Here are my anki stats for today for reference.
Studied ⁨⁨1,541⁩ cards⁩ ⁨in ⁨2.69⁩ hours⁩ today (⁨6.28⁩s/card)
Again count: 753 (48.86%)
Learn: ⁨964⁩, Review: ⁨240⁩, Relearn: ⁨337⁩, Filtered: ⁨0⁩
No mature cards were studied today.

 

[PugsAndHugs]

I was in your shoes. What i found helpful was to suspend all anki cards, and as I did a section of pathoma or boards and beyond, i would then unsuspend that section of the anki deck, and be responsible for that. Rinse and repeat. It never made sense to do anki cards from material I never actually learned because it would be out of context.

Learn and understand the material first, then use anki to reinforce it.

 

[magician7772222]

I was in your shoes. What i found helpful was to suspend all anki cards, and as I did a section of pathoma or boards and beyond, i would then unsuspend that section of the anki deck, and be responsible for that. Rinse and repeat. It never made sense to do anki cards from material I never actually learned because it would be out of context.

Learn and understand the material first, then use anki to reinforce it.

I'm only unsuspending cards for material that I've covered

 

[mistafab]

There is no requirement to do ANKI as your study method. Also, watching videos is very passive and barely helps retain information. I would ask around and get help from folks who've been in your shoes from your school about ways that worked for doing well. Your school may also have resources that help students study better - if so, the earlier the better to seek assistance.

Please be assured that the start of med school has a lot of "learning how to learn" and many people have been in your shoes and have gone on to do well. I was one of them!

 

[Nontrad_FL_LGBT]

You're going through the cards super fast. If you're not retaining anything, go slower and do fewer. 1500 cards in a day for someone in M1 fall is a lil wild unless you're trying to be a pediatric neurodermatocardiothoracic surgeon at HMS.

 

[chssoccer7]

You have to figure out what is pure memorization and ancillary details (Anki is fine) vs. what you need to understand (Questions are better). I wasted a lot of time my first year last fall blindly grinding Anki trying to trust the process and realizing during exams when I got questions that weren't recall questions that I had no idea what the **** I was talking about. I would end up just guessing so many times on exams because I wasn't quite sure how to work out what some questions were even asking me. I transitioned to doing questions to understand things (Amboss even though I get like 80% of the questions wrong and I absolutely despise the process of generating amboss questions, you can also make chatgpt generate multiple choice step 1 questions about topics but be careful cause it can occasionally be wrong) and doing Anki to remember things I already knew. My grades shot way up this year in 2nd year (like ~10 points on average) and I was able to answer more exam questions by working things out in my head and eliminating obviously wrong answers because I understood the topics even if it wasn't something I really remembered or had ever thought about in the way the question asks. Sometimes answer choices are so wrong but you have no idea and can't eliminate them because you just memorized one factoid from anki about something and not what it actually meant.

Some people like using anki for everything, I found that it just didn't work for me cause that turned into if it wasn't spelled out on anki, I didn't know it. Morph it into what works best for you. The whole process of pre-clinicals is figuring out what works for you even if it isn't what works for everyone else. It's not a "game" per se, but you're never going to know everything, so sometimes you have to game it. For me, that's histology - I don't enjoy looking at histo slides nor do I truly understand it or have any interest in histopath, so instead of spending hours trying to memorize what things look like on slides I memorize the buzzwords for the vignettes. If i can't figure it out from the vignette I guess (unless it's something very recognizable). Spending the time trying to understand big picture topics will help me all over the exam, spending hours memorizing histo slides will help me on 3-4 questions. Spending the time to memorize all of the histo may actually end up costing me points on other topics I just wouldn't have time to get to so I just cut my losses and move on. At some point in the future I might have to actually care about histology and learn it but i'll bite that bullet then if it comes up. I'm not saying this is what you should or shouldn't do, just trying to give an example of how to go about thinking about your time and studying. Prioritization is very important because unless you're a genius with a photographic memory you're not going to have time to learn everything 100% if you value your mental health and want to not study 19 hours a day.

 

[Goro]

I'm basically spending all day studying but still unable to properly retain or understand anything. This is my second block and my first actual systems block (immunology and hematology). I wasn't liking the in-house lectures very much so this week I've tried switching over to bnb however I feel like I just forget everything I watch/learn no matter which lecture source I'm using. I'm also doing anki on top of this which I basically spend half of my day doing, which ends up totaling a bit over 1500 reviews a day (including review cards, learning cards, and new cards from the days material). I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong or if this is normal. I would really like some help/guidance.

Here are my anki stats for today for reference.
Studied ⁨⁨1,541⁩ cards⁩ ⁨in ⁨2.69⁩ hours⁩ today (⁨6.28⁩s/card)
Again count: 753 (48.86%)
Learn: ⁨964⁩, Review: ⁨240⁩, Relearn: ⁨337⁩, Filtered: ⁨0⁩
No mature cards were studied today.

Read this:
Goro's Guide to Success in Medical School (2024 edition)

And I suggest dumping the Anki. It sounds like you're memorizing, but not learning.

 

[Med Ed]

Anki is one tool in the toolbox. But you can't build a house by memorizing what each brick looks like.

Find a study partner and spend some time "teaching" the content to each other. You have to develop at least a basic understanding of something in order to explain it to another person. This also helps with retention.

Agree with @chssoccer7 above that moving over to MCQs would be helpful. A question with five answer choices is actually five questions in one, because you should be able to figure out why the correct answer is correct, and why each of the the four incorrect answers are incorrect.

USMLE has gone very heavy on clinical vignette-style questions for years, so the sooner you get used to them the better off you will be.

 

[AJS59]

If your school has access to a question bank (i.e. UWorld, Amboss, ScholarRx), use that. If not, I'd strongly consider buying.

Also (and I'd use this with a grain of salt) but if properly prompted and fed the right information there are certain versions of ChatGPT that can generate questions. They're not entirely realistic (ChatGPT can't make path or radiology findings) but it can introduce you a bit to clinical vignettes.

Immuno/Heme is generally unfortunately one of those units where a lot of memorization is needed, but pattern recognition will always be helpful!

 

[RMR_1]

I'm basically spending all day studying but still unable to properly retain or understand anything. This is my second block and my first actual systems block (immunology and hematology). I wasn't liking the in-house lectures very much so this week I've tried switching over to bnb however I feel like I just forget everything I watch/learn no matter which lecture source I'm using. I'm also doing anki on top of this which I basically spend half of my day doing, which ends up totaling a bit over 1500 reviews a day (including review cards, learning cards, and new cards from the days material). I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong or if this is normal. I would really like some help/guidance.

Yeah I agree with the others; maybe Anki isn't for you then. Active learning vs. passive learning is incredibly helpful vs. just quizzing yourself w/out understanding the big picture.

Some good active learning methods are:
1) Condensing your own notes
2) Making your own study guide/summary of the lectures/content
3) Teaching it to someone else (if you can't find anyone, teach it to a pet or just pretend to teach it to yourself)!
4) Practice questions like others have suggested

Do you know what type of learner you are (kinesthetic, auditory, visual) etc.? Most people are visual, but there are quizzes online that may help you.

See if your school has any tutoring services available.
Find out if you study best in the morning, afternoon, evening etc. and plan your day around this.
Treat medical school like a job, because it IS your future job.
Schedule study time and stick to it.

Hope that this helped. 🙂