Ok. I started the MI semester reading the textbooks and found out very quick that it is impossible. There are just too many: anatomy, embryo, biochem, histo. those are the main ones. Any thoughts? I'm guessing it might be a general trend among students to only read certain books. Or maybe dont read any and only use books for figures, etc while studying only lecture notes.
Impossible may indicate that you are spending too much time trying to read and memorize at the same time. I always pre-read before a lecture, mostly to get the big "picture" and to know what was in the book so that I wouldn't waste time trying to take notes on these things. Most textbooks are nicely organized so that you can either "summary read" or intensively read. Before lecture, I was a summary reader.
Most of my intensive reading was from the syllabus, which I also previewed before the lecture. By making sure that I had solidly reviewed all of the objectives of the upcoming lecture, I could listen with a keen ear for how the important material was covered in lecture. In the evening, I would learn the lecture, using the text to supplement as needed.
In courses like Physiology and Pathology, the diagrams and figures were very important for learning and organizing the material. Again, I didn't read trying to memorize or study the text but used it as a tool to clarify and summarize lecture and syllabus points.
At my school, anything in lecture, handout, syllabus or assigned reading in text was fair game for the exam. After the first rounds of tests, we realized how to ratchet up or cut back on what we covered. You adjust to getting to the place that you need but minimally, I covered the bold headings, the captions under figures and diagrams and the summaries before lecture so that I knew where the lecture was going. I never went to a lecture cold or used review books for study until USMLE Step I time.
I hope that this helps.
