I have come to the conclusion that good time management skills are essential to being successful in dental school. What are some skills/routines that you guys have learned to do in school that has helped maintain your sanity?
Approach and time management:
Time management is indeed essential in dental school. It certainly improves your efficiency and gives u more bang for your buck. The concept of time management is easy to create: just devise a REALISTIC plan and STICK to it! The difficulty lies in the practice or execution of that plan. This measures how much discipline you have and how immune you are to distraction. Time management is a personality thing. If you've never been a good time manager before dental school, then a major behavioral shift is unlikely.
The other issue you have to consider seriously is your general approach to dental school classes. so while the bad news is the notion that you are either a good time manager or not (you do not become one), the good news is that you can compensate for poor time management skills by altering approach.
1-never approach dental school with an expectation of doing very well. The will to be a gunner is one thing but the ability of being one is another. Never expect a class to be difficult or easy and be cautious about interpreting the advice of upperclassmen. Expect everything to be challenging so that you can ready yourself for the difficult and relax yourself over the easy.
2-never ever approach ANY class with passion and subjectivity. NEVER! Treat classes as a duty, not as a creative learning experience. What I am trying to say is: curb your enthusiasm because it will ruin your experience and f-up your grades. For instance: a new class started and you find the subject super cool and interesting, so you get engulfed in actually studying the subject, researching the net and asking the professor questions in his/her office and you find yourself allover the material. You take amazing notes on the class and you learn it so well that you start saying to yourself "aah…that's why such and such happens…blah blah blah. Well guess what? You're mostly likely gonna get a C on the class and whatever you've learned, you will mostly likely forget within a month anyways! This happens because a few days before the test, you pull out your notes and realize they are inadequate because they are tremendous and low yield, all because of your passion. You find yourself tired towards the end of the class--which is when you need to be mostly rested so that you can crash your notes hard in the weekend before the test—all because your passion made you hyper-learn the material parts that are of YOUR interest and NOT the ones that are of the professor's interest. You kinda let yourself go and drift away. The person who memorized sheepishly will get an A and will not know anything about the material. You will get a C or a B and you will only know the material for a month after the test anyways. So guess what remains for ever? Yup! Not the knowledge but the GRADE. So the winner in the end is the person who memorized what is necessary dutifully, not the person who sought the knowledge passionately. Don't ask yourself "what do I need to do to learn the material?"…ask "what do I need to do to get an A?"…don't ask yourself "how cool or boring is this class?"…ask yourself "how many credits is this class worth, and is an A on it more important than an A on other classes?"…..don't ask "this class is boring…how do I make it fun?"….ask "how can I suck it up and do what it takes to get an A?"….don't ask "how do I study this intensively so that I can understand what is going on?"…ask "how can I study this extensively so that I can get as many easy multiple choice questions right as possible?"…..becoming objective is difficult though because you must go above and beyond your interest, temptation; you have to deny yourself in the sense that you should study for what works not what makes you feel good. also, if you get used to studying hard for a class only if it suits your fascination, you will likely ignore classes on which you are more likely to get an A just because these were not interesting. when you're in the first day of a class, and the professor talks about the resources available to study, they might mention old exams, old questions or practice questions on the department's website. DO NOT CONSIDER THESE ELECTIVES FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EXTRA TIME ON THEIR HANDS! THESE ARE WHAT YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON TO GET A GOOD GRADE!.....Again, you will be tempted NOT to use questions to guide your studying because you will think that it's ******ed. Well guess what? Do that and you'll be lucky to get a borderline B.
I do not know what your intentions are and how good or average you wanna be in dental school but to wrap it up, let me give you a brief account of what I have witnessed.
In the first few weeks, students A,B,C, and D would smile, laugh and chat and sing the praise of classes and say how cool such and such class is and how easy it is to do this and that, and exchange studying tips and habits…….blah blah blah…guess what? Those students are going to later on have difficulties in the classes and most likely end up being just average students. On the other hand, students W,X,Y, and Z are sitting quietly in the corner, neither enjoying, nor hating classes. They are dispassionate and have no feelings of any sort towards any class. They are not exchanging tips and they do not even talk much. Well guess what? Those are the gunners of the class. They are objective and they study to get As, not to learn. They do not come to lab to look cool or chat or talk about the news. They come to lab to get things done so that time becomes available for didactics.
Much of this is not making sense to you but once you start dental school, read my post again and you will understand perfectly well the points I am trying to make. The take home message is: passion and subjectivity ruin; pragmatism and objectivity rule!
... I wonder if anyone uses your strategy at Penn where a major test is administered every week ...
) so do what you can to break it up into pieces.
