notes in different places a BAD idea?/can't retain FA by just reading

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mopitup85

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I have about 11 wks to study right now. I haven't done a first pass of First Aid right now. I tried, but found it difficult especially with the big/basic chapters in the beginning because I don't remember a lot of the details and reading and I wasn't retaining much by reading biochemistry, microbiology, behavioral, immunology, pharm passively. I decided to go straight to answering DIT questions instead and doing pathoma while annotating which is more active and helping me retain things better.

Right now I've been annotating pathoma while watching the videos, I'm writing notes from DIT in a separate notebook and on the question worksheets, and I will be making a UWORLD journal writing pathways and key concepts from the questions. Writing seems to help me remember more than just reading.

I hope to set aside some time to maybe annotate my first aid with some of these things later once I get a clearer idea of what I should put into my FA so it's not over annotated. I could also just review my DIT worksheets, DIT notebook, UWORLD qbank notebook, and pathoma annotations separately and not put them in first aid. I almost just want to review DIT stuff /UWorld/pathoma and not read FA, but I prob shouldn't do that.

Is this wishful thinking? What should annotate into FA and what is doable to review separately if I put it in a notebook.

Maybe I should just annotate first aid with UWORLD and keep pathoma/DIT separate.
 
I don't have a great answer to your question, but I'm also thinking about possibly ditching FA and just using DIT, UW, and pathoma... Haven't decided yet, hoping to finalize my schedule over spring break.
 
Everyone has different learning styles and there is no "one style fits all".
So do whatever worked for you in the past and improvise.
Resources don't matter as much as how you apply the knowledge gained from whatever resource in the real test.
 
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