Hey guys i was wondering what you guys did to retain the information from previous courses such as in mS1 for usmle. I feel like i am forgetting past materials and it scares me. would you recommend this method where your learn/review each materials that relates to that system is being covered. for example if cardiovascular is being covered then review materials( anatomy, micro, pharm, physio) that pertain to it. i hope this makes sense. any advice is greatly appreciated.
I have a couple of general opinions that I'll expand on it prose so it might get long winded.
1. Text/lectures 'finished' is very misleading in estimating your progress so avoid setting goals like I'm going to complete 5 lectures today and take notes passively and once you get to 50:00 of the fifth lecture end it right there. It's a mentally weak strategy that prioritizes completion over understanding/retention. With medical school dropping 4-6 lectures on you daily though, it's hard to avoid the aforementioned attitude though so I'll address in my second point.
2. Work through assigned material (reading text/watching lectures) at a pace you're slightly uncomfortable with. If it's text, just read it as if it were prose. If it's a lecture, watching it at normal speed is fine but don't take breaks and don't hit the pause button even if you missed something (at this point you're probably just better off going to lecture). The reason to go faster is because the breadth is always more challenging than the depth in years 1/2 and your mind will actually remember more than you think. You will start fixating on things like formulas that may interest you or you may try to memorize a certain thing. Avoid all this, it wastes lots of time. By doing this, you will get thru your lectures/text easily so you can check that little box off in your head for relief...BUT REMEMBER that's not how you measure your progress.
3. After you get thru the study session, you need to spend more time than you spent going thru the material, drilling the material in your head by TESTING YOURSELF. Get blank sheets of paper or a white board and ask start asking things like what are all the causes of hypercalcemia (if your lecture was on calcium metabolism and had a list somewhere ) and list them out. Try to come up with a reason for each thing you list and if it's really important, try to come up with a way of quickly recalling all the causes so you can list them at a rapid-fire pace. This is what I think of as encoding which probably has a more formal definition in the education world.
4. This is the part everyone neglects including myself which is why I still struggle but you have to review the stuff you encode. It's important to review the encoding right away (like the night you go thru the stuff, the night after, and then after that you can afford to take maybe a 2-3 day period before seeing it again). The reason is otherwise you'll forget the stuff. There's like some neuroscience explanation that talks about anterograde memory lasting 12 hours but the point is after 24 hrs. your notes from the previous day will look like a foreign language. You'll need to review them again before they slip from your short term memory so they're still useful
the next day.
5. Don't rely solely on your encoding. I know a friend who rewrites the coursepack in it's entirety. I'm not sure how that helps but unless that is your encoding strategy, I would not recommend relying on your encoded material as your primary study material. Everyday you need to be reading your text/coursepack because there are infinite details that will be testable and you will always miss them in your encoding. Make sure you go through the primary sources multiple times. A day after seeing it, maybe a week later, and finally the day before your exam.
That's pretty much it and it's a lot. A lot of these points are reminiscent of ANKI/Spatial learning and that's where I picked it up from. My only gripe with ANKI is that it takes long and I feel it focuses more on recall of quick hitters whereas it's probably a good idea to be outlining and drawing things on the board and understanding how things fit into categories, etc. In other words, context is sometimes lost and ANKI is a huge time-sink. That being said, I won't deny that it's probably very effective for many who are able to find creative solutions to work around the limitations I've described.
Sent from my iPhone using
SDN mobile
