Studying 8+ hours in medical school

[huskerdye]

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Hey guys, I am going to be starting first year here in a couple weeks and am both nervous and excited. I guess my biggest worry is studying over eight hours a day. I just don't feel like I can do that.. Especially with class and lab all morning. Throughout undergrad I was only putting in maybe 2 hours a day (if that), because it was all I really needed. However, I know quite a few students at the med school I'll be attending who just got done with their first year. They all say they were putting anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, including classes.

I guess my worry is that I will not be able to transition into studying that much. Is it something that you just adapt to? Or something that you do simply because you have no choice?

Maybe a stupid question, but maybe somebody can offer words of support here. 🙂

Thanks!

 

[THH]

Eh, I feel like people exaggerate the work load significantly. First year really wasn't too bad at all once you find a groove and a study method that works for you.

 

[username456789]

Most people deal with this as they are waiting to begin medical school. It is something you adapt to, and partially because "you have to."

That said, everyone eventually finds a "sweet spot." Some people are more efficient than others, but even controlling for various efficiency levels, you will still be putting in much more time/effort than in undergrad. For some, that may mean studying 8-12 hours a day (on top of lecture even). For others, probably less. It's a combination of what you hope to get out of the material, what you hope to get out of the course grade-wise, and what you hope to get out of medical school. If you're shooting for the middle of the pack, your typical amount of hours spent studying may vary quite a bit from those at the very top of the class. Then again, there are some people who can Honor all their classes seemingly with ease. There are so many variations and permutations of expectations and abilities that you simply can't generalize very well, except to say "there's more stuff to know than in undergrad."

Once you realize the volume/pace of medical school is very different than undergrad, you adapt. Sounds difficult, but in a few months you'll look back with amusement at how incredulous you are now. It's amazing what you realize you're capable of.

 

[Frazier]

Hey guys, I am going to be starting first year here in a couple weeks and am both nervous and excited. I guess my biggest worry is studying over eight hours a day. I just don't feel like I can do that.. Especially with class and lab all morning. Throughout undergrad I was only putting in maybe 2 hours a day (if that), because it was all I really needed. However, I know quite a few students at the med school I'll be attending who just got done with their first year. They all say they were putting anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, including classes.

I guess my worry is that I will not be able to transition into studying that much. Is it something that you just adapt to? Or something that you do simply because you have no choice?

Maybe a stupid question, but maybe somebody can offer words of support here. 🙂

Thanks!

People that study 8+ hours/day do so by choice.

If you fear this scenario, simply do not do it.

While there are the occasional students that report saying that they "need to study 10 hrs/day" (or whatever) just to pass, they are outliers.

Get focused and get efficient with your time...most people that "study 8+ hours per day" likely spend half of that time actually browsing facebook.

 

[D P356]

Agree with THH. You'll find people exaggerate and say things like "I study 12 hours a day, everyday." You'll identify people in your class who are absolutely full of crap, stay away from them and don't buy into their hype. At the very most, mingle with them only socially...and don't date one of them.
You'll find what works for you. Just don't fall behind and you'll find it manageable. You will adapt when you get swamped. Everyone gets swamped.

I kept up with my classes daily, and made sure I read the notes for class on the same day as lecture. Weekends I would re-read the lecture notes from the week. I kept reading the notes, closer to the test I would read the notes again. Repetition was key for me.

It is your job to study in medical school; treat it like a job. That is what you're there to do. You're smart enough to get into school. Study hard and you'll be well prepared. Best of luck to you.

 

[yehhhboiii]

some people do need more time to get through the material. it's not a badge of courage to say you studied for a long time

i find that the people who pretend they didn't study at all while actually studying for 12 hours a day are the ones to watch out for

 

[Ilovewater]

It depends on your goals. Are you aiming to honor every single class or are you happy with just passing? If you want to honor everything, then you will definitely have to work harder...but I highly doubt you'll still need to study 8-12 hours/day every day. I may have studied 12 hours/day for the 2-3 days leading up to an exam but definitely not during non-exam weeks.

Don't worry about how much other people study. Do what you need to do to meet your goals and keep yourself happy! What kept me sane during the first 2 years was not attending classes and not talking to my classmates about studying. I didn't want to know that someone was waking up at 5 AM every day to study....

 

[Ismet]

You don't need to study 8 hours every day in addition to classes. You need to find what works best for YOU and not what has worked best for the med students you talked to or what your classmates say works for them. And you don't need to have it all figured out from the start.

You'll make the transition because you have to. Like someone said above, med school is your job. I don't know what your med school offers in terms of mentorship and support, but I got a lot of really helpful advice from upperclassmen and my advisors when I was in a bit of a slump halfway through ms1. Don't be afraid to ask for help or seek assistance if you find yourself struggling to adjust!

 

[notbobtrustme]

I found that 2-3 hours of independent study outside of lectures was enough to keep on top of the material. For tests, I would study between 6 and 9 hours on the days leading up to the exam.

 

[e30ftw]

my studying ranged from none-at-all for the first week after exams to ~6 hours daily for the week before exams.

considering I didn't go to class MS1 was a pretty cake year

 

[Ost3oclast]

Hey guys, I am going to be starting first year here in a couple weeks and am both nervous and excited. I guess my biggest worry is studying over eight hours a day. I just don't feel like I can do that.. Especially with class and lab all morning. Throughout undergrad I was only putting in maybe 2 hours a day (if that), because it was all I really needed. However, I know quite a few students at the med school I'll be attending who just got done with their first year. They all say they were putting anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, including classes.

I guess my worry is that I will not be able to transition into studying that much. Is it something that you just adapt to? Or something that you do simply because you have no choice?

Maybe a stupid question, but maybe somebody can offer words of support here. 🙂

Thanks!

Hey there. Figured I would give some input as I just started a couple weeks ago and have gotten into the swing of things. I go to class and lab from 8-12 ( im a lecture kind of guy otherwise it would be 9-12 hehe) at that point I come home, go to the gym, relax until about 3 PM. Then I study until about 9 with occasional breaks for dinner and such.

If you count class and lab (which I dont) then yeah its 8-10 hours. But true studying? For me its about 5. I'm sure this will change from time to time. Although its only been a couple weeks I'm already seeing how important it is to take care of yourself. I'm also seeing the people that study 24/7 and it looks no fun.

 

[hmockingbird]

This was actually my biggest struggle/adaptation. In college I was an English major which was a time commitment but in more of a binge style than having to spend a lot of time on it every day. In a typical class we'd read a book every 1-2 weeks and write a paper maybe once a month. So I could finish the book in a weekend or at least pretty ahead of schedule, and that would be all I had to do for those two weeks except maybe jot down some discussion points before class; kind-of the same with papers - a lot of work in a short period of time but then I didn't have to do that for awhile. So it was hard for me to adjust to a very regular schedule where I had to do a lot of work each day. Of course I also took science classes, but one or two per semester is a lot different than majoring in it.

I don't think I do 8 hours a day even when I do count class, probably more like 6. (And I still tend to "binge" a lot too, like really get on a roll and get a lot accomplished in one day and then allow myself to take more time off the next.) Once it gets closer to the test I'll put a lot more time in reviewing. But still having that schedule was an adjustment to me because honestly I was really used to being able to procrastinate a lot more and just have more free time in general. It makes me feel kind-of silly to admit, but hopefully that encourages you. Yes, you will probably have to put in more time than you did in undergrad (however, it might not be as much as your classmates - don't get bogged down by that either way whether it's guilt that you don't "live" at school or that you're not doing well enough to "not study"; if what you are doing works for you, stick with it) but you will find that you still have free time, you'll be able to adjust, and hopefully you might like the material so it won't feel like "work" all the time.

ETA: And yes, that includes a lot of FB time for me haha. As long as I don't get too caught up in the FB side of things, being able to take a five minute Facebook break after completing a chapter or something helps me keep my focus.

 

[Thespunger]

First of all, you don't need to study 8+ hours a day if you want to pass, that is only if you want to be a baller and score 90 - 95% + on all your exams, which in my opinion you should. Because why? Because just doing the minimum in life is lame, being average is lame, and you should not be lame.

Also, you should have voiced your insecurities and concerns about working over 8 hours in a day during your interview, that way you would never be in this predicament. Seriously though, concerns over studying 8 hours a day? 👎thumbdown Studying is easy bro, you sit on your a$s read some ****, eat food and listen to music or whatever. Try the alternative, working a 8 hour shift at Taco Bell, then going to mop the floors for another 8 hours at the local med school library while you get to watch all those poor med student sitting down, eating, listening to music, being intellectually stimulated and studying interesting crap.

 

[Anastomoses]

i find that the people who pretend they didn't study at all while actually studying for 12 hours a day are the ones to watch out for

Haha. I know some of those.

 

[JM26]

I was one of the people who probably studied more than most. One thing that is important to remember is that it really doesn't matter how many hours you put in studying - it matters how much material you are able to absorb/master.

One rule that I made for myself that really helped was that I did not allow myself to get on facebook AT ALL for the entire week leading up to a test. Another thing that helped was a website called self control where you can block certain websites (facebook, people, espn, etc) for a given amount of time so you aren't even tempted.

 

[SoulinNeed]

I'm hoping to study 3-4 hours a day outside of class when I start M1 in a few weeks. I know it'll be more in the few days before an exam. Besides that, though, I'm going to try to keep it to this number. I want to make sure that I have a few hours a day to enjoy.

 

[90 diopter]

My grades were pretty mediocre my first semester of M1 year and then shot up significantly when I stopped going to class. Studied old and current transcripts from about 8 AM to 2 PM daily, usually took a nap after that, and then had the whole evening to myself.

Before that, I was sitting in class for about 4 hours every morning half asleep and bored out of my mind, and then still had to put in about 5-6 hours of studying after that to really learn the material. Getting that extra 4 hours a day that I was wasting in the classroom was huge.

Everyone's a little different, and you will hopefully find an efficient system that works for you.

 

[Jitter Bug]

My grades were pretty mediocre my first semester of M1 year and then shot up significantly when I stopped going to class. Studied old and current transcripts from about 8 AM to 2 PM daily, usually took a nap after that, and then had the whole evening to myself.

Before that, I was sitting in class for about 4 hours every morning half asleep and bored out of my mind, and then still had to put in about 5-6 hours of studying after that to really learn the material. Getting that extra 4 hours a day that I was wasting in the classroom was huge.

Everyone's a little different, and you will hopefully find an efficient system that works for you.

AGREE! it's not the hours, its finding out how you best absorb the material. Some use colored pens, some use flashcards, some have to read their notes out loud to themselves, some only learn by repeating back in group study sessions. There was a guy in my class who couldn't sit still and spent the lectures pacing back and forth in the dark AV area behind the lecture hall. Had great grades too.

 

[SoulinNeed]

I don't understand how people keep saying "don't go to class". Do they just mean lectures? I'm looking at what my schedule is going to be, and the vast majority of the day is lab, not lecture. Aren't those mandatory, usually? Though, that might just be for anatomy, which I have for the first 8 weeks or so.

 

[90 diopter]

Yup - just referring to lectures. I had no choice but to go to anatomy lab, but fortunately that was over after year 1. I don't think any other classes had required labs. There was a course where they taught us how to use a stethoscope and how to hit someone in the knee with a hammer, but fortunately that was only a couple of hours every few weeks.

 

[evilbooyaa]

^ Most likely mainly for anatomy, as lab is a huge portion of that class. You'll see once you get away from the daily labs that there is a lot more lecture involved everyday.

 

[Ismet]

I don't understand how people keep saying "don't go to class". Do they just mean lectures? I'm looking at what my schedule is going to be, and the vast majority of the day is lab, not lecture. Aren't those mandatory, usually? Though, that might just be for anatomy, which I have for the first 8 weeks or so.

Depends on your school I'm sure, but you might not have to go to lab either. We had 6 people per cadaver, and we just dissected following Grant's Dissector with occasional help from faculty who were floating around, so often groups would work in shifts and take days off of lab. Or some people didn't want to cut at all and just went into the lab after hours to see what had been dissected that day. Microbio lab was mandatory, but anatomy wasn't for us.

 

[CassieBagley]

nothing

 

[username456789]

Depends on your goals. I studied 10-12 hours nearly every day for the first 2 years of med school. It set me up with a good foundation and confidence going in to 3rd year. What motivated me was getting into a competitive residency. If you're just looking to pass classes you can get by with 3-4 hours every day and the weekends off.

Bingo.

I wouldn't be a Derm resident right now if I was one of those people who thought studying so much was 'uncool' and unnecessary. For some people that works, but studying a ton is what worked for me.

 

[mimelim]

Depends on your goals. I studied 10-12 hours nearly every day for the first 2 years of med school. It set me up with a good foundation and confidence going in to 3rd year. What motivated me was getting into a competitive residency. If you're just looking to pass classes you can get by with 3-4 hours every day and the weekends off.

On the other hand, I don't think I ever studied more than an hour a day except before exams in which case 2-3 hours was normal. I honored a couple pre-clinical classes and passed the rest. I don't think confidence in 3rd year is correlated with how much you study your first two years. Certainly it did not have a negative effect on me and I can think of a dozen or so examples off the top of my head of the "I live in the library" medical students who could barely function on the wards. With adequate prep, Step 1 requires a minimal foundation from your first two years. I ended up matching Vascular Surgery at my first choice. *shrug* To each their own.

I have always lived by the Mark Twain quote, "Don't let your schooling interfere with your education." Most of M1/M2 is a colossal waste of time for most people's short and long term goals. It is simply inefficiently and at most schools ineffectively taught. To be blunt, running several large Minecraft servers and managing employees made me a better resident and ultimately a better physician than studying for M1/M2.

 

[Akali]

It also depends on how fast you can learn/memorize material. Some people have to study a lot more than other people do to get to the same level of understanding.