Studying without taking physical notes?

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Toadesque

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Is there anyone here who has become proficient at doing this? When my brother went through med school he said he learned to do well by simply reading the material and understanding it rather than wasting time on flash cards or outlines. I'm doing OK, but not amazing. I feel like I waste a lot of time on that kind of stuff and I wonder if it's even worth it.

For those who have success with simply reading the powerpoints/books, what methods do you employ to be sure you're actively learning it and not just "thinking" you are when you read through?
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I was never one to take notes, even in undergrad. I just usually listen to a lecture and let it sink in followed by 2-3 views of the PowerPoints over the course of a week. The only things I physically write are little phrases or mnemonics.

I do questions to make sure I'm actually learning the material which takes up a lot less time than writing pages of notes.
 
Sometimes there just isn't time or wrist/hand-energy to take notes. I avoid taking notes ESPECIALLY when I already know something or it is so completely intuitive that I would prefer to rely on my brain to keep a hold of it.

However I will very quickly make notes when I need to, especially long detail-oriented lists (pharm, all the molecules in platelet granules, etc), or when I need to differentiate similar conditions while keeping large amounts of facts straight (genetic disorders, cancers, etc)

The key is to do what works for you, what is most efficient, etc. Don't worry about what others are doing because there will always be the kid taking way too many notes... don't let that intimidate you.
 
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If everything you need to know is already written down for you (which it is at my school), repetition is the only good use of your time. Some swear they learn by writing, not me. Just read, then listen to the lecture, then read again, then again, then again...when you know the major points of a slide before you advance to it, then you know you've studied more than enough.
 
Either I have a very poor memory or my med school is big on minutiae. If I didn't drill random facts into my head with Anki for the weeks leading up to the exam I wouldn't do very well.
 
Flash cards, outlines, etc are a huge waste of time to me. I just read and re-read, and for big concepts/pathways I will try to verbally explain them to my cat after I think I've read over them enough.
 
I don't take notes and do fine. I read the syllabus or an outline then stream lecture, review with an outline made by previous students and watch/read relevant pathoma x1, do ANKI for pharm, sketchy for micro prn, then review with PPs/1st aid/Robbins qs/Rx for a couple days before the test depending on the material (~10hrs/day last 2 days) to get a last pass. However, I like to keep experimenting and getting more efficient and find ways to make it interactive (questions are decent for this)
 
Notes can be good to compile things. It takes to write them but it also takes time to scour through many resources. Spending the least amount of time to cover the information is important.
 
Toadesque said:
Is there anyone here who has become proficient at doing this? When my brother went through med school he said he learned to do well by simply reading the material and understanding it rather than wasting time on flash cards or outlines. I'm doing OK, but not amazing. I feel like I waste a lot of time on that kind of stuff and I wonder if it's even worth it.

For those who have success with simply reading the powerpoints/books, what methods do you employ to be sure you're actively learning it and not just "thinking" you are when you read through?
Click to expand...


I HAVE THE SAME EXACT QUESTION! There are people who keep advocating this read the lecture notes idea but I'd really like to know how...I can read something multiple times and still will not retain it.

I wanna know how the combat the:

Sequence bias (memorize things in the sequence they learn in it)
Actively test themself while re-reading...


Is it just a matter of reading so many times that it's memorized (I feel that would take me 10+ times)?

Someone here brought up the idea of quizzing yourself before advancing to the next slide and this is good for an initial pass but it's very time consuming for me when most of the pages contain 50 + details I don't know.

I'm just so all over the place with study strategies (I switch every unit almost) and I've been doing ok to above average but like, idk....ideally id have liked to have settled on one so I could master it.


Some ways I try to incorporate active elements without going too overboard:

1) numbering each minutiae I couldn't recal on a page and going back to them in a random order (very logistically difficult mind you)
2) writing questions on each page in The margin that I'd have to answer to move on.
3) pharm has to a,ways be flashcards..
...

For those who do ANKI, idk how you do it because in order to do it properly as described by many others, you'd need 180 cards or more per lecture (I know because I tried once and it wasn't a heavy lecture) and then on top of that, anti is not designed for more than 40+ cards a day.
 
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Backtothebasics8 said:
I HAVE THE SAME EXACT QUESTION! There are people who keep advocating this read the lecture notes idea but I'd really like to know how...I can read something multiple times and still will not retain it.

I wanna know how the combat the:

Sequence bias (memorize things in the sequence they learn in it)
Actively test themself while re-reading...


Is it just a matter of reading so many times that it's memorized (I feel that would take me 10+ times)?

Someone here brought up the idea of quizzing yourself before advancing to the next slide and this is good for an initial pass but it's very time consuming for me when most of the pages contain 50 + details I don't know.

I'm just so all over the place with study strategies (I switch every unit almost) and I've been doing ok to above average but like, idk....ideally id have liked to have settled on one so I could master it.


Some ways I try to incorporate active elements without going too overboard:

1) numbering each minutiae I couldn't recal on a page and going back to them in a random order (very logistically difficult mind you)
2) writing questions on each page in The margin that I'd have to answer to move on.
3) pharm has to a,ways be flashcards..
...

For those who do ANKI, idk how you do it because in order to do it properly as described by many others, you'd need 180 cards or more per lecture (I know because I tried once and it wasn't a heavy lecture) and then on top of that, anti is not designed for more than 40+ cards a day.
Click to expand...
Make anki cards only out of the minutia that you forget. I review at least 200-300 cards a day.
 
Backtothebasics8 said:
For those who do ANKI, idk how you do it because in order to do it properly as described by many others, you'd need 180 cards or more per lecture (I know because I tried once and it wasn't a heavy lecture) and then on top of that, anti is not designed for more than 40+ cards a day.
Click to expand...

I make as many Anki cards as I need for the lecture. Sometimes it's 100+. Since this is my only study method, I can make them, review them, and review whatever else is scheduled for me by Anki and still have plenty of time left in the day. For me this makes more sense than spending hours reading, making notes, or doing whatever else people do. Also not sure why you think Anki is designed for fewer than 40 cards per day.

You become more efficient making the cards as time goes by. I make the cards while watching the lecture recording, pausing as needed. I then never look at the ppt or handouts again.
 
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There are numerous studies that show that "active learning" is more effective for most than passive learning. Meaning the guy jotting down notes or doing flash cards or at least highlighting is better off on average than the guy who just sits and reads. Some people are exceptions and each of us learn slightly differently but everyone suggesting that active learning is a "waste of time" apparently has something to learn about learning.
 
I only write down the stuff that I repeatedly don't recognize when I read through the powepoints. When I go through the slides I always close my eyes and try to visualize/replay what I just saw. Then I check if I got it. If I didn't get it right, I would try one more time (maybe twice for a loaded slide) and then move on. If there's something I jut can't remember, I'll write it down on a piece of paper. Then right before bed I'll read the piece of paper and try to digest it for ten minutes before I go to bed. This allows me to go through Powerpoints extremely quickly (15-20 mins for a 40 slide lecture) and I pick up more and more detail each time. This generally gives me time to make 4-5 passes of the entirety of the material, and about 2 days before the test is when it really all comes together and I can generally recall most of the material. By the time I have seen the slides this many times, I can get through a PowerPoint in about 5 minutes because it's all engrained in my head at that point and I don't need to sit there quizzing myself. It's worked pretty well so far. I have my final for my first block tomorrow and have been averaging a 95 with studying an average of 3-4 hours per night (maybe 2-3 hours in the beginning then 4-5 closer to the test). Not trying to brag or even humble brag but want to illustrate an approach that is very efficient but also incorporates "active learning" daily without making hundreds of time consuming flash cards.

And yes I know that it is only 1st block of M1 and things will ramp up very quickly from here. But this has been my strategy and it has worked well so far and I plan to continue until it stops working.
 
I print out my slides (4 to a page- front and back) and then I highlight super important stuff in green, average stuff in pink, and then if it's a "most common cause" sentence, I highlight it in blue and write in on a notecard of my "list of most commons". Then go through them all again a second time. The highlighting helps for me. Color helps you remember things (at least for me). Supplement with pathoma, Robbins, questions, and first aid.

Edit: this is for M2 year. I made notecards for anatomy and wrote out my notes or made a condensed one page outline (2 sided) from the PowerPoint) for M1
 
Note taking and organizing things in your head really helps. It's just really boring and exhausting. If I could just read something 3 times and remember it, I would. But alas, the pen must be put on paper at some point.
 
Obviously everyone learns differently so really you just have to experiment with what works best for you as has been said many times before but I can give my personal experience if it's helpful to anyone.

I started M1 all about active learning. I never have been a big note taker but heard I had to going in so I tried it out. Went to lecture, took notes, went home, annotated slides, made Anki cards and reviewed. It took forever and while I did well, I had very little time for myself or fiancée. I scaled back from there dropped anki, still did great. By mid year and biochem I dropped notetaking altogether. Grades were fine and best yet, tons of free time. So I've stuck with that into second year now and did very well in my first exams still so it works for me.

One thing I do is when I'm reading Robbins or going through slides I usually pause and sort of tell myself a story as to how it all fits together. So it's not entirely passive in my mind and finding all the links in material makes it feel a lot less like brute memorization and tends to stick in my mind more.
 
Duff84 said:
Obviously everyone learns differently so really you just have to experiment with what works best for you as has been said many times before but I can give my personal experience if it's helpful to anyone.

I started M1 all about active learning. I never have been a big note taker but heard I had to going in so I tried it out. Went to lecture, took notes, went home, annotated slides, made Anki cards and reviewed. It took forever and while I did well, I had very little time for myself or fiancée. I scaled back from there dropped anki, still did great. By mid year and biochem I dropped notetaking altogether. Grades were fine and best yet, tons of free time. So I've stuck with that into second year now and did very well in my first exams still so it works for me.

One thing I do is when I'm reading Robbins or going through slides I usually pause and sort of tell myself a story as to how it all fits together. So it's not entirely passive in my mind and finding all the links in material makes it feel a lot less like brute memorization and tends to stick in my mind more.
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how do you go about making subsequent passes of material or reviewing things you forget if you don't have any notes taken at all? that seems to be my biggest question. I waste tons of time writing and rewriting things, but at this point I'm so paranoid that if I try to change it I won't do as well as I have been.
 
DoctorLacrosse said:
...but at this point I'm so paranoid that if I try to change it I won't do as well as I have been.
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If you are doing well I wouldn't change a thing -- odds are you aren't really "wasting tons of time", you are getting value out of what time you are spending. Some things just do take a lot of time. There will be people who absorb things faster or in fewer passes, but they usually have other things they don't do as well, so it evens out.
 
So, we're almost towards the middle of our new unit which includes Anatomy, Histology, Physiology, and some other random science classes.

For the last few units, I made outlines of the lectures and did very well on the exams. But now I feel like there's no way I have time to take notes since the amount of material seems like it quadrupled. Should I just try to do 3 or 4 passes of the material and hope it sticks? This is a little nerve wracking.
 
Whatever works to maximize your results is not wasted time, so long as you're invested in the outcome. I used to take notes in class in a notebook, then later that day transcribe my notes into a meticulous handwritten outline, and then close to the test take notes of my notes of my notes while putting it all together. This is in addition to the reading and highlighting. But I never went back to the powerpoints because it was all in my notes (or my notes of my notes, or my notes of my notes of my notes). If you can get by with less, then god bless you. I sure wish I could have, because it took enormous amounts of time that would have been much more fun to spend doing other things. For me, writing and rewriting and thinking as I wrote was the only way to keep my brain focused on the material for long enough for it to sink in. In hindsight, it also may have been a particularly masochistic period in my life. But I'm very confident that it maximized my results, and I was willing to make the investment.
 
All I've ever done is read and highlight. I then review my highlighted sentences. Basically, just highlight the portion that you would have written down on paper and you save yourself heaps of time. I'm a pro highlighter, and it's the reason I still buy textbooks and refuse to read off a computer screen
 
NYCdude said:
So, we're almost towards the middle of our new unit which includes Anatomy, Histology, Physiology, and some other random science classes.

For the last few units, I made outlines of the lectures and did very well on the exams. But now I feel like there's no way I have time to take notes since the amount of material seems like it quadrupled. Should I just try to do 3 or 4 passes of the material and hope it sticks? This is a little nerve wracking.
Click to expand...
Radical changes to your study habits once you've found something that works consistently for you are unlikely to turn out well. You've figured out how you study best; get better at it.
 
I rarely take notes and it's even more rare for me to put pen to paper. I'm no AOA material, but I'm sitting comfortably in the (50-66%ile) with 88-92 on tests. I actively listen at 1.8-2.1x speed which makes me really have to pay attention to what's being said and I try to actively assess why it's being said. Most material at this point of M1 is just rote-memorization and not conceptual, so it's just a matter of organizing materials into charts or graphics to remember them. I learn best by spacial orientation, I remember where it is on a chart, what comes before it, after it, and approx how long it is. Then I attempt to recall it sporadically and only double check my chart/figure if I'm certain I don't know it. I take only a few notes within the ppt file or on the pdf handout and usually don't need to look back at them because I can just remember them (I take so few there aren't many to remember and if it warranted me taking note of it it's probably pretty important). For conceptual things, I try to reduce everything to the simplest universal rule. Or I just work out the full chain-of-events from a starting point I know well. For biochem I did create a master-copy of all the metabolism we were responsible for on 1 very large canvas in photoshop. Creating the digital master-copy was my version of pen-to-paper notes. It's especially easy for me to remember figures if I'm the one who made them.

My school also gives us a list of all of the "high yield" topics from each lecture as Learning Objectives. As a class we work to complete the ~150-200/wk objectives and I'll give these a pass at the end of the week to verify that I had seen all of it before. So I learn and retain most (70%) of it as first-pass, then work with it a bit to solidify my understanding, then review the collaborative explanations for each Learning objective.

Reading is absolutely not my thing. 1. it puts me to sleep, 2. It's too easy for me to read/write without thinking, 3. I'm just a slow reader and much prefer double-timing lectures with skimming handouts as a supplement. My only other concern is that I don't really spend any time reviewing previous information. At some point during M1 I'm going to start FA (1.5yr preclinical) and I will use that as my guide to review old material.

IMO practice questions are the best way to solidify knowledge. It also requires you to apply knowledge in a novel way. Makes it extra sticky.
 
1) I read silently and highlight the important info
2) I start reading ALOUD(while pacing in my room or just sitting) and trying to explain the concepts to myself. I only write words/mnemonics/sometimes mechanisms(for biochemistry and physio).
3) For the review, I just read different source-another textbook,class notes, powerpoint slides and read all the stuff I haven't highlighted yet. I also listen to the lecture if I'm in mood.
 
Another vote for anki
 
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