not learning anything...

[teedub]

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I figured i'd throw this question out there (feel free to throw it back), but i'm a first year and my school just switched to a new curriculum this year, and i keep hearing from the professors that they "cut their contact hours by 30%", and that they had to "cut out unimportant material" (my first thought is..what's not important?). We now go to school from 9 to 12 every day with afternoon labs/group meetings (sometimes) and online assignments. Since we're limited in the time we have (more so than in the past, i'm told), we keep "not getting" to material that honestly i'd like to be able to learn. For example, we only went over 20 or so chemotherapy drugs in our neoplasia "module" (i KNOW there are way more than that, and i'd hate for them to show up on the board and for me not to know them).

so, my question is, does anybody feel like they aren't learning enough in med school to pass the board?? it's not like it's too easy for me, i just hate to skip over material and then get told "if you want to know it, look it up". let me know what you think....

 

[Law2Doc]

I figured i'd throw this question out there (feel free to throw it back), but i'm a first year and my school just switched to a new curriculum this year, and i keep hearing from the professors that they "cut their contact hours by 30%", and that they had to "cut out unimportant material" (my first thought is..what's not important?). We now go to school from 9 to 12 every day with afternoon labs/group meetings (sometimes) and online assignments. Since we're limited in the time we have (more so than in the past, i'm told), we keep "not getting" to material that honestly i'd like to be able to learn. For example, we only went over 20 or so chemotherapy drugs in our neoplasia "module" (i KNOW there are way more than that, and i'd hate for them to show up on the board and for me not to know them).

so, my question is, does anybody feel like they aren't learning enough in med school to pass the board?? it's not like it's too easy for me, i just hate to skip over material and then get told "if you want to know it, look it up". let me know what you think....

Most schools cover the same material whether they have 3-4 hours of class a day or a full day. The stuff they cut out is stuff they believe is least likely to appear on boards. Schools want to be competitive in terms of boards/matching; Most schools expect you to be spending more time studying if you have less in-class time. What you don't cover, you will pick up in your pre-boards review from First Aid/Q-bank type materials.

 

[dutchman]

I figured i'd throw this question out there (feel free to throw it back), but i'm a first year and my school just switched to a new curriculum this year, and i keep hearing from the professors that they "cut their contact hours by 30%", and that they had to "cut out unimportant material" (my first thought is..what's not important?). We now go to school from 9 to 12 every day with afternoon labs/group meetings (sometimes) and online assignments. Since we're limited in the time we have (more so than in the past, i'm told), we keep "not getting" to material that honestly i'd like to be able to learn. For example, we only went over 20 or so chemotherapy drugs in our neoplasia "module" (i KNOW there are way more than that, and i'd hate for them to show up on the board and for me not to know them).

so, my question is, does anybody feel like they aren't learning enough in med school to pass the board?? it's not like it's too easy for me, i just hate to skip over material and then get told "if you want to know it, look it up". let me know what you think....

Be carefull what you ask for.

 

[hale-bopp]

learning 40 chemotherapy agents instead of 20 is NOT going to help you pass the boards. most people forget them after the first time they learn them anyway. your board review books will tell you what you need to know for the boards, and you will only have a handful of chemotherapy questions, almost certainly not on obscure or rarely used and NOT on newly developed agents.

My school had 2 hours of lecture and 2 hours of lab/small group a day, and our curriculum was clearly NOT focused on providing us information targeted towards the boards (PhD lecturers have their own ideas about what is important), and we had about 148/150 pass step 1 on the first try.

Relax. You're already learning more than you can possibly remember. (Unless you have a photographic memory, in which case, use the free time you don't have to spend studying to look more stuff up.)

 

[Bertelman]

(my first thought is..what's not important?)

Much of what you are fed the first two years is "not important". Don't worry about the boards; you'll be getting enough info. I'm about to graduate, passed Step 1 and Step 2, and couldn't name 20 chemo drugs if you asked me.

Seriously, though, that's what board prep material is for. Some of the highest scoring kids in my class never attended lectures. Medicine, and medical school, is about learning to determine for yourself what is relevant or vital info. Now's a good time to start.

 

[random-dude]

You can't retain it all. Board study is different from medical school studying where you will be asked 1-2 chemo agents not 20. It would be nice to know all of them but that is why we do residencies and fellowships. I'm not sure if you can ever really know everything about one field though.

By the way the only thing that sucks more than studying for medical school tests right now is studying for medical school tests five years from now. Think of how much more the medical community will know in five years.

 

[deleted29780]

very funny, but true.

 

[deleted29780]

By the way the only thing that sucks more than studying for medical school tests right now is studying for medical school tests five years from now. Think of how much more the medical community will know in five years.

make that a year, heard of Gunnon( physiology textbook) or woteva its called. the size of that book increases every year

 

[teedub]

see, we do "board study" now. i mean, for a "four hour block" (we only do one subject at a time...we're systems based i don't remember if i said that), we only have one 100 question test at the end and that's really the only graded test we have (and our neoplasia final really didn't have any questions about chemo drugs...and chemo drugs were really only mentioned in one lecture). all the second years tell us it's way easier than it was last year, and i guess i'm not just worried about the boards, but about not knowing anything when i get to my third year at all. how do your schools do it?? did you have to memorize the entire aerobic respiration/Lipid Metabolic/cholesterol synthesis pathways or did your schools just pick out three enzymes and say "know these" like mine did?? and, you're totally right about the five years from now thing, but the only thing harder than them studying while they're IN SCHOOL is going to be us trying to catch up to the five years of information we missed while we were IN school (nothing like studying for four years to be behind).

 

[wildcat32]

I think we may be at the same school, and I have the same fears as you. I feel that the boards are obviously much more important than class rank, gpa, etc as it is the true equalizer. The fact that we are the first students to go through this curriculum makes me feel very scared that they don't really know what is going to happen, and are more concerned with trying to look good to other schools and not if the students are really going to be able to do well later.

 

[45408]

did you have to memorize the entire aerobic respiration/Lipid Metabolic/cholesterol synthesis pathways or did your schools just pick out three enzymes and say "know these" like mine did??

Oh, we had to memorize the WHOLE thing. 😡

 

[dynx]

(my first thought is..what's not important?)...

so, my question is, does anybody feel like they aren't learning enough in med school to pass the board?? it's

here's my first thought (as someone who has >250 on both step 1 and 2) upon hearing YOUR first thought. If you cannot figure out what is not important than you WILL DO POORLY on the boards. The biggest mistake is not focusing to narrowly, it is trying to learn it all and getting beat down by the volume. Lesson number 1 in medical school...set your priorities. You may feel like you are ahead of the curve at this point, you'll get killed, thats not my opinion, thats a fact. I have nothing to gain by lying to you, I'm way past the point where you will be my competition. I've seen it before I hope you figure it out.

 

[Gut Shot]

The biggest mistake is not focusing to narrowly, it is trying to learn it all and getting beat down by the volume.

I'll second that. The prescribed board review course at my med school had us skimming about 75,000 pages of material. I'm glad I torched that plan and did my own thing (which didn't involve glancing over 11,243,000 low yield details).

 

[MystikBliss]

You need to have more faith in your professors. Trust me, they go through a lot trying to decide what to teach you. I'm sure cutting out the 'unimportant' stuff means that they stopped teaching all the stuff that students couldn't remember two months later.

Stop being so anxious about the boards! That time will come and I know you're not used to this (saying sarcastically)...but you're gonna have to study long and hard regardless of what you've been tought because when that time comes, you're gonna have to really reach to recall even the simplest things.

So soak it all up now and don't worry about not learning the important stuff. It's all important and so much more goes on behind the scenes than we could ever know.

 

[teedub]

here's my first thought (as someone who has >250 on both step 1 and 2) upon hearing YOUR first thought. If you cannot figure out what is not important than you WILL DO POORLY on the boards. The biggest mistake is not focusing to narrowly, it is trying to learn it all and getting beat down by the volume. Lesson number 1 in medical school...set your priorities. You may feel like you are ahead of the curve at this point, you'll get killed, thats not my opinion, thats a fact. I have nothing to gain by lying to you, I'm way past the point where you will be my competition. I've seen it before I hope you figure it out.

agreed on some level...but there are three points, here:

1.) i'm not ahead of the curve, i just know we missed stuff that's important... it's not just the boards, though. i have quite a bit of clinical experience, and, after taking the classes that should've taught us more about the material, i don't know any more about that area of medicine than i did before i got to med school (which wasn't very much). so, i'm worried about students from other schools (and other classes in our own school) knowing more than me when we all start our rotations...

2.) you have NO idea what we've skipped over. we spent two weeks on ethics in our neoplasia block and one LECTURE of ONE DAY on chemo drugs (i don't know this, but i doubt that's proportional to the board question ratio). We didn't talk about chem scheduling (day 1 of 5, etc), dosing, pharmacology, or anything of that sort. half of our class still doesn't know the definition of remission (mentioned...kinda...not really), the risk of relapse, 5 year survival rate, tumor lysis syndrome (something that's fairly common, at least in pediatric oncology)?? nothing about that. nothing about the difference between the different types of leukemias (auer rods in AML, etc). nothing about bundle branch blocks on ECG's....basic stuff like that. this is all stuff a second year med student should know, and, although i'm in my first year, this is the only neoplasia we're going to get for the next two years...so everything that we'll know about cancer (or any of the other blocks we've had...which is only, like, three) when we start our third year, we apparently know now (minus self-study).

SO, my question is, does anybody else feel like this?? like there's a ton of stuff that you know is important and that you're going to have to know, but nobody teaches you in the school you're in??

 

[dynx]

agreed on some level...but there are three points, here:

1.) i'm not ahead of the curve, i just know we missed stuff that's important... it's not just the boards, though. i have quite a bit of clinical experience, and, after taking the classes that should've taught us more about the material, i don't know any more about that area of medicine than i did before i got to med school (which wasn't very much). so, i'm worried about students from other schools (and other classes in our own school) knowing more than me when we all start our rotations...

2.) you have NO idea what we've skipped over. we spent two weeks on ethics in our neoplasia block and one LECTURE of ONE DAY on chemo drugs (i don't know this, but i doubt that's proportional to the board question ratio). We didn't talk about chem scheduling (day 1 of 5, etc), dosing, pharmacology, or anything of that sort. half of our class still doesn't know the definition of remission (mentioned...kinda...not really), the risk of relapse, 5 year survival rate, tumor lysis syndrome (something that's fairly common, at least in pediatric oncology)?? nothing about that. nothing about the difference between the different types of leukemias (auer rods in AML, etc). nothing about bundle branch blocks on ECG's....basic stuff like that. this is all stuff a second year med student should know, and, although i'm in my first year, this is the only neoplasia we're going to get for the next two years...so everything that we'll know about cancer (or any of the other blocks we've had...which is only, like, three) when we start our third year, we apparently know now (minus self-study).

SO, my question is, does anybody else feel like this?? like there's a ton of stuff that you know is important and that you're going to have to know, but nobody teaches you in the school you're in??

Fair enough. I think everyone feels the same, there is a ton of stuff that you skip over and that you just won't know when you get to the floor next year. What you need to do, for yourself, is set priorities. focus on the basic sciences now because that is what is on step 1 even if that means excluding some important stuff. There sill be time to learn that during 3rd year.

 

[dutchman]

agreed on some level...but there are three points, here:

1.) i'm not ahead of the curve, i just know we missed stuff that's important... it's not just the boards, though. i have quite a bit of clinical experience, and, after taking the classes that should've taught us more about the material, i don't know any more about that area of medicine than i did before i got to med school (which wasn't very much). so, i'm worried about students from other schools (and other classes in our own school) knowing more than me when we all start our rotations...

2.) you have NO idea what we've skipped over. we spent two weeks on ethics in our neoplasia block and one LECTURE of ONE DAY on chemo drugs (i don't know this, but i doubt that's proportional to the board question ratio). We didn't talk about chem scheduling (day 1 of 5, etc), dosing, pharmacology, or anything of that sort. half of our class still doesn't know the definition of remission (mentioned...kinda...not really), the risk of relapse, 5 year survival rate, tumor lysis syndrome (something that's fairly common, at least in pediatric oncology)?? nothing about that. nothing about the difference between the different types of leukemias (auer rods in AML, etc). nothing about bundle branch blocks on ECG's....basic stuff like that. this is all stuff a second year med student should know, and, although i'm in my first year, this is the only neoplasia we're going to get for the next two years...so everything that we'll know about cancer (or any of the other blocks we've had...which is only, like, three) when we start our third year, we apparently know now (minus self-study).

SO, my question is, does anybody else feel like this?? like there's a ton of stuff that you know is important and that you're going to have to know, but nobody teaches you in the school you're in??

Everybody else is complaining about too much volume, but you seem to be worried about the opposite. If you don't have enough to study then do some extra self-study. If you need to learn about 100 more chemo drugs then go to the library and knock yourself out.