People who can study power points absurdly well

[SSerenity]

I knew this guy in my undergrad who would hardly study all semester, and then days before the exam he would just go through the power points without taking any notes. He told me he just memorizes all the slides. If he can predict the next slide, and do it faster & faster each time, then he knows he is in good shape. This guy would ALWAYS get perfect scores on all of our exams, it was crazy.

Now I don't advocate this kind of cramming or anything. But I'm really curious as to HOW some people do this (how do you memorize say 8 x 60 slides?). I believe it is a learnable skill, just like anything. If you are one of these people, let me know! I really enjoy learning how other people learn things.

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[masaraksh]

Meth

 

[DrAnxiety]

I knew this guy in my undergrad who would hardly study all semester, and then days before the exam he would just go through the power points without taking any notes. He told me he just memorizes all the slides. If he can predict the next slide, and do it faster & faster each time, then he knows he is in good shape. This guy would ALWAYS get perfect scores on all of our exams, it was crazy.

Now I don't advocate this kind of cramming or anything. But I'm really curious as to HOW some people do this (how do you memorize say 8 x 60 slides??). I believe it is a learnable skill, just like anything. If you are one of these people, let me know!

I can't speak for him but I have always had a strong photographic memory, and I studied through most of my entire undergrad using that exact strategy because it worked for me too.

But I also won't pretend like there weren't a few times it bit me in the butt and didn't get me the A I wanted. Everyone learns things in different ways, and I don't think one way is necessarily better than another.

 

[NYCdude]

8 sets of 60 slides is supposed to be daunting? You could easily crank that out in 2 or 3 days.

 

[SSerenity]

8 sets of 60 slides is supposed to be daunting? You could easily crank that out in 2 or 3 days.

I don't think you quite understood what I was asking. Thanks for the support tho.

 

[Moose A Moose]

It's not learned. Some have better plasticity when it comes to rote memorization.

 

[SSerenity]

I can't speak for him but I have always had a strong photographic memory, and I studied through most of my entire undergrad using that exact strategy because it worked for me too.

But I also won't pretend like there weren't a few times it bit me in the butt and didn't get me the A I wanted. Everyone learns things in different ways, and I don't think one way is necessarily better than another.

I've always believed that our working memory is our bottle-neck to cognition. When I need to study a set of slides, I try to break it down into some kind of logical series of topics (say 10 major headings), and then make mnemonics for my headings and recall points from each. This is how I 'break' my bottle-neck that is working memory, through mnemonics. This is how I can keep several chapters in my working memory at any given moment.

What I've suspected, is that some people are really good at finding a way to keep a ton of slides in their working memory (some how), and thats how they break the working-memory limit and achieve higher cognition.
Thats my theory anywho!

 

[SSerenity]

It's not learned. Some have better plasticity when it comes to rote memorization.

Thats an awfully boring answer. Anyone can learn to learn better

 

[Moose A Moose]

Thats an awfully boring answer. Anyone can learn to learn better

What do you want, some mystical advice? That's the answer. Some people are better at things than others.

You can learn to be more efficient, but you won't learn how to have a higher aptitude in memorization.

Sorry, Charlie

 

[SSerenity]

What do you want, some mystical advice? That's the answer. Some people are better at things than others.

You can learn to be more efficient, but you won't learn how to have a higher aptitude in memorization.

Sorry, Charlie

Some people have a slightly larger working memory than others, thats true. But when it comes to actually memorizing information... yes this is a learnable skill, and context specific. A native Russian speaker will have an easier time memorizing 100 Russian words than an English speaker. Maybe thats what you mean by 'aptitude'. But you are still wrong, because one can still learn Russian. I'd recommend the books "Mind for Numbers" and "Moon Walking with Einstein" for more insight on that. I assure you its nothing "mystical"

Im not sure where this idea of latent aptitude for general memory comes from. But obviously, you can learn to do anything better. Call it aptitude or efficiency, makes no difference in practice.

 

[mxmd]

I could cram that much without much difficulty, but I'd forget it the day after the exam. What's the point of cramming stuff you won't remember it later?

 

[Psai]

Thats an awfully boring answer. Anyone can learn to learn better

Then do it. There's no magic bullet

 

[cronaldo7]

One way I have gotten better at this is by not simply just reading the PowerPoint. When I study it , I will actively recall info about it , look stuff up on wiki, FA, pathoma , etc. to integrate it

I used to rewrite lectures but have ditched that for the above method with very similar grade results and a lot more free time

 

[KinesiologyNerd]

I could cram that much without much difficulty, but I'd forget it the day after the exam. What's the point of cramming stuff you won't remember it later?

You get an A?

 

[Ophthoseidon]

You get an A?

Stole my thunder

 

[FindMeOnTheLinks]

Look at the slide, think about the information on it, replay it in your working memory until you have it perfect. Do this for every slide that seems important/testable. Do this at least four times for every PowerPoint. On your third and fourth pass, write down anything you still don't recognize. This is something you should be doing starting the same day as you watch the lecture i.e. make first pass the same night. The two days before the test, do as many practice problems as you can, and look up any that you got wrong or weren't sure about. Start a crowd-sourced practice test on your class fb page using google docs, you can easily get 100 questions that are specific to what your school taught. Guarantee this is one of the most efficient study method out there.

 

[The_Sunny_Doc]

I wish I knew the secret. Been wondering how people just study from the powerpoints and so so well. Most powerpoints are so disjointed that I have to make an outline before starting in on the details. It's like there's no rhyme or reason to why the slides are put in a certain order. Very frustrating if you're trying to see the big picture. Powerpoints obscure the relationships between the facts.

In undergrad, it was easier 'cause you could read the textbook pages and simply recall where the answers were located on the textbook page. You can't do that with a powerpoint because there's no way to relate the facts spatially.

 

[Favoritefarm]

I'm nore visual but powerpoint just never did it for

 

[MatthewDamon]

.

 

[Psai]

wtf spoilers dude

 

[Rekt]

8x60? That shouldn't even take four hours. Efficiency over quantity is what saved me. Just go through them. Understand everything on the PowerPoints. The magic number for me is four passes of the slides. No silly pneumonics or counting subjects or numbering things. Just get a straight up understanding of what they're talking about. Move the slides around or create your own notes to help you. Organize them better since most professors slides are terrible. Add in your own headings etc. The first two passes are big picture the next two are whatever minutiae you can absorb. Repeat again if necessary if you have yourself enough time before you hit it hard.

 

[wjs010]

8 sets of 60 slides is supposed to be daunting? You could easily crank that out in 2 or 3 days.

Oh yea.. No prob. Easy...

 

[asdf123g]

8x60? That shouldn't even take four hours. Efficiency over quantity is what saved me. Just go through them. Understand everything on the PowerPoints. The magic number for me is four passes of the slides. No silly pneumonics or counting subjects or numbering things. Just get a straight up understanding of what they're talking about. Move the slides around or create your own notes to help you. Organize them better since most professors slides are terrible. Add in your own headings etc. The first two passes are big picture the next two are whatever minutiae you can absorb. Repeat again if necessary if you have yourself enough time before you hit it hard.

You can memorize 8x60 slides in less than 4 hours?

 

[CherryRedDracul]

You can memorize 8x60 slides in less than 4 hours?

*cough*bull*****cough*

I consider myself an excellent crammer, but 480 slides in 4 hours is 2 slides/minute. And that's only one pass. You expect me to believe you can do 4 passes in that given amount of time?!

 

[asdf123g]

*cough*bull*****cough*

I consider myself an excellent crammer, but 480 slides in 4 hours is 2 slides/minute. And that's only one pass. You expect me to believe you can do 4 passes in that given amount of time?!

what would you say is a more reasonable estimate?

 

[CherryRedDracul]

what would you say is a more reasonable estimate?

The fastest I've ever done is cramming 24 lectures of about 25-40 slides each in around 16 hours. That would be a little under a slide per minute, I guess. And it was only one pass.

My brain was fried for the next few days and I haven't done anything that ridiculous since. I didn't get a perfect score or anything on that exam, but I was still almost a standard deviation above the mean. Regardless, I think my pace was still on the extreme side.

 

[Moose A Moose]

The fastest I've ever done is cramming 24 lectures of about 25-40 slides each in around 16 hours. That would be a little under a slide per minute, I guess. And it was only one pass.

My brain was fried for the next few days and I haven't done anything that ridiculous since. I didn't get a perfect score or anything on that exam, but I was still almost a standard deviation above the mean. Regardless, I think my pace was still on the extreme side.

Impressive.

 

[FindMeOnTheLinks]

what would you say is a more reasonable estimate?

The weekend before every test I will get through about 22-26 lectures that are on average ~45 slides on Saturday and again on Sunday if I feel like I need it. Usually takes 10-12 hrs of real studying, not including breaks. Generally this is my fourth pass of the material so i know about 85% of it at that point and am just picking up those last few details and it goes very fast. I wouldn't call it cramming because I study a lot way ahead of time and I already know most of it. I also try to do a lot of problems on top of it.

 

[The_Sunny_Doc]

The weekend before every test I will get through about 22-26 lectures that are on average ~45 slides on Saturday and again on Sunday if I feel like I need it. Usually takes 10-12 hrs of real studying, not including breaks. Generally this is my fourth pass of the material so i know about 85% of it at that point and am just picking up those last few details and it goes very fast. I wouldn't call it cramming because I study a lot way ahead of time and I already know most of it. I also try to do a lot of problems on top of it.

Where do you get practice problems to accompany the lectures? The textbook?

 

[FindMeOnTheLinks]

Where do you get practice problems to accompany the lectures? The textbook?

BRS physio/anatomy/biochem, Lippincott embryo/anatomy, our class has access to exam master q bank (which kinda suck), practice tests written by classmates, sometimes the "study something specific" function in firecracker

Also the Umich written anatomy questions are very helpful

 

[Funke]

8x60? That shouldn't even take four hours. Efficiency over quantity is what saved me. Just go through them. Understand everything on the PowerPoints. The magic number for me is four passes of the slides. No silly pneumonics or counting subjects or numbering things. Just get a straight up understanding of what they're talking about. Move the slides around or create your own notes to help you. Organize them better since most professors slides are terrible. Add in your own headings etc. The first two passes are big picture the next two are whatever minutiae you can absorb. Repeat again if necessary if you have yourself enough time before you hit it hard.

Dear Jesus if you can memorize one medical school slide per 30 seconds for four hours straight, I would appreciate just a fraction of your intellect.

 

[jqueb29]

I'm one of these people and can't really explain "how" to do it. You literally just read it and read it and read it until you know it.

 

[Rekt]

Dear Jesus if you can memorize one medical school slide per 30 seconds for four hours straight, I would appreciate just a fraction of your intellect.

Woops yeah that was slightly a hyperbole. Ours were about 40 to 45 slides last semester with a few 70+ thrown in when the professor decided to be a little over zealous with their hour. My first pass is obviously slow and my last is my fastest. I started out doing poorly by trying to make notes and outlines etc, but I somehow surrounded myself with all the smart kids who were getting the 100s and I polled them and they say they all just read the slides so I tried it at and have been scoring way above average.

 

[Funke]

Woops yeah that was slightly a hyperbole. Ours were about 40 to 45 slides last semester with a few 70+ thrown in when the professor decided to be a little over zealous with their hour. My first pass is obviously slow and my last is my fastest. I started out doing poorly by trying to make notes and outlines etc, but I somehow surrounded myself with all the smart kids who were getting the 100s and I polled them and they say they all just read the slides so I tried it at and have been scoring way above average.

Yeah that's so foreign to how I've done it, but sounds like it's worth a try. I don't start school until August but I'm trying to soak in all the study tips I can.

 

[Sirphillup]

I am not great at memorizing, but this method works for me for some reason. I usually ditch class and stay in the library reading the slides during lecture time. I read through the lecture slides during the allotted class time, then spend the rest of the day doing active recall exercises of the powerpoint. I do this throughout the whole week and make anki cards at night (or use pre-made cards from the previous years and add anything that is missing). By the time i go through my anki cards on the weekend, a lot of the memorization is already done. I am usually well prepared by the time exams come and have to do little to no cramming.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

I think it's more important to find a method that works for you than to learn to be efficient at someone else's method. For me it's listening to the lecture and creating flashcards about the topics where I explain the process, disease or medication rather than other people who just write questions asking a specific fact like FC does. This is why when I use FC i miss a lot of questions but can memorize my class cards fairly quickly.

 

[Stagg737]

Now I don't advocate this kind of cramming or anything. But I'm really curious as to HOW some people do this (how do you memorize say 8 x 60 slides?). I believe it is a learnable skill, just like anything. If you are one of these people, let me know! I really enjoy learning how other people learn things.

It's not that hard if you have a method. I only studied off of slides last year, and hit B's pretty easily studying less than a lot of my classmates (wish I had put more time in last year, but won't dwell on the past). I essentially thought of each slide as a flashcard and would think of the lecture as a story, so when the test came I would try and think of which 'story' the question is coming from and picture the slide it was on. I'd do that once, then the weekend before the test, get with a group and basically read the slides aloud to each other. If there was something someone didn't understand, someone else would teach it to them. Basically only made 2 passes most of the time and everything stuck pretty well.

Honestly, ~500 slides in 3-4 days doesn't seem all that crazy to me. We get around 150-200 new slides a day and get tested every two weeks. So reviewing ~1000 slides in a weekend or learning 500 slides in 2-3 days sounds pretty normal to me...

EDIT: This is also for med school, undergrad was nowhere near that amount of material, and back then I'd probably think it was pretty outrageous as well.

The fastest I've ever done is cramming 24 lectures of about 25-40 slides each in around 16 hours. That would be a little under a slide per minute, I guess. And it was only one pass.

My brain was fried for the next few days and I haven't done anything that ridiculous since. I didn't get a perfect score or anything on that exam, but I was still almost a standard deviation above the mean. Regardless, I think my pace was still on the extreme side.

As much as I hate to admit it, I've done similar once or twice before. I think the worst was that I had around 1,500 slides to learn in a weekend. Realistically it was probably between 800-1,200 worth of actual material, but it was still a miserable weekend, and a spent a good chunk of time the following week reviewing the info after the test so I could make sure I didn't just forget it all. It sucked, and I wouldn't recommend anyone try it ever....