Tired and frustrated

[Perrotfish]

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Alright, I am now 9 weeks away from my exam, almost 1/3rd of the way through my study schedule, and according to the practice tests I am taking I am still very much in danger of not only not getting the 230 that I was aiming for but also of actually failing the test outright. I've been cramming a good amount of USMLE prep into my daily schedule (I still have one more week of my classes going full force), doing 48 questions/day, and going through books on pharm and micro but that score just doesn't seem to be moving much.

I am getting tired of working all the time, I am getting tired having to 'fail' something everything single morning when I do my 48 questions, and most of all I am very frustrated that, when everyone told me that I was retaining more than I realized from my studies, they were appartently lying to me. I got good grades in almost all of my classes (the exception being micro) but NOTHING stuck. It's not just that I can't get the answers, it's that for the majority of questions I don't even recognize the words on the screen.

Anyway, I am looking for advice. Is there something different I should be doing here? Books, flashcards, or eastern philosophies that might help? Is it time to start buying Ritalin on the black market? Should I (serious question) put off the exam until after my internal medicine block and see if THAT makes it stick? Failing useful advice, could anyone share a motivation platitude that will keep me going the next time I score a 30 something percent on USMLE world?

 

[FutureDoc4]

Which Q Bank are you using? If UWorld, don't worry everyone gets beat up by that. Here is my advice (take it for a grain of salt cause I have yet to take the exam).

Do as much as you can a day but know when to take breaks. Otherwise your studying stuff you will never retain. I would also be listening to "G money" (I hope you know who I am talking about 🙂). When you want to work but cannot read anymore.

I would also start using Robbins QBook (make sure you have your pathology down) along with USMLERx (to make sure you are understanding everything in first aid).

I would also mention (this is me personally), that I feel like I retain more when I am working with multiple sources at once. For example, reading robbins (or Goljan) and keeping FA open to teh corresponding section.

And just keep telling yourself you will make it through this. Finally, take a look at the Tau method if you are really struggling.

 

[thechad]

So UWorld has got you down? Yeah, that's happened to me too. Made me depressed and drove me to study more. I've had a couple blocks in the 30s and 40s, and even one in the high 70s! At completion of the qbank, I had an avg score of 51 or 52 percent correct (I think it was 52, but it doesn't even really matter). Got a 234/99 on the real thing. UWorld makes crazy integrations that I bet most students wouldn't understand (and yeah, the 14% that got that answer right, probably guessed). Don't listen to the people who say they got like 77% right, that's unlikely, but I digress.

Are you an AMG? I'm just curious. The best advice I can give you is to take the DIT course about 5-6 weeks before your exam. It is worth every penny in my honest opinion.

Also, I LOVED Robbin's QBook...for class. It is much to detailed for step 1 (just my opinion).

 

[vicinihil]

Yeah...I just strive for avg on Qbank haha and hope for the best. Test in a month...we'll see how that shiz goes. Robbins is really good with path class but I agree that it may be overboard for step 1's.

Studying for step 1 is Teh L33t.

 

[Phur]

For starters, it is difficult to Step study while you're still in class or at least I found it was. I didn't really hit my stride until classes were over and could focus 100% on Step. You said you've done well in your classes, so it's not like you don't know how to study. While it feels like it hasn't stuck, it is up there somewhere. Just needs to be refreshed.

It is really frustrating at the beginning in getting low scores. You can't let that get you down. Being mad going through the explanations is going to hinder your retention. Try and turn it positively into motivation if you can. (I know. This is all easier said than done) At this point if that is a problem, maybe doing them in tutor mode might be more beneficial. That way you're not frustrated over the total percent you got until the end, but at least now you've reviewed them already. Just a thought.

Now, you said you're not recognizing the words in the question stem? Are you meaning some of the buzzwords? That definitely comes with time. When you're looking at the answers are you getting that "Oh. I should have known that" feeling? If so, that's good. It means it's up there. Take the time to really understand the explanation, why the correct answer is correct and why the other answers are wrong and how you could twist the stem to make one of the other answers right.

Good luck

 

[MilkmanAl]

What has your study plan been so far, and what are you going to do with the 8 weeks you have after classes end? What I've been doing so far is basically ignoring class and studying from Goljan and FA. I still go through my pharm notes and hit micro 2-3 times before the test, but other than that, it's all board review (for the subjects we're on), all the time. Like futuredoc, I benefit from hitting the same subject multiple times from different sources. Judging by practice test scores, the strategy seems to be working pretty well so far. I'm hitting about 62% overall on USMLERx questions, which obviously isn't breaking any records or anything, but I'd consider 5% above average pretty good for this point since I'm taking the test in late June. My grades have suffered a little bit, but I find that a very worthy trade off for what I hope will be a bunch of extra points on Step 1.

You have a ton of time yet, so I'd just take a subject and repeat, repeat, repeat until you feel like you're going to puke if you read the material again. When you've got it down, move on to something else. I'd advise using Taus's method for this strategy since it has lots of repetition built into it. Maybe you could alternate 2 subjects every day for 6 days which would give you a total of 9 passes through each from 3 different sources during that week. That should hammer home what you need to know in a hurry.

 

[username456789]

What has your study plan been so far, and what are you going to do with the 8 weeks you have after classes end? What I've been doing so far is basically ignoring class and studying from Goljan and FA. I still go through my pharm notes and hit micro 2-3 times before the test, but other than that, it's all board review (for the subjects we're on), all the time. Like futuredoc, I benefit from hitting the same subject multiple times from different sources. Judging by practice test scores, the strategy seems to be working pretty well so far. I'm hitting about 62% overall on USMLERx questions, which obviously isn't breaking any records or anything, but I'd consider 5% above average pretty good for this point since I'm taking the test in late June. My grades have suffered a little bit, but I find that a very worthy trade off for what I hope will be a bunch of extra points on Step 1.

You have a ton of time yet, so I'd just take a subject and repeat, repeat, repeat until you feel like you're going to puke if you read the material again. When you've got it down, move on to something else. I'd advise using Taus's method for this strategy since it has lots of repetition built into it. Maybe you could alternate 2 subjects every day for 6 days which would give you a total of 9 passes through each from 3 different sources during that week. That should hammer home what you need to know in a hurry.

I don't mean to hijack the conversation here from Perrotfish, but when you mainly study from RR/FA, are you following along with anything else? (like, if you're doing a specific system like Renal, do you go through a Pharm book like Lippincott/Katzung and Trevor/etc?) And do you basically just go through RR and read it, or do you take down notes on what you're reading or what?

 

[MilkmanAl]

I'm mostly just reading with no notes. For RR, I figure the margin notes and charts are sufficient if I want to go back through and get a really quick overview of the key points. I just try to keep all of FA straight since I figure it's probably all important. Since we have a systems-based curriculum, I can just go study pharm for class if I want to get that info integrated as well. That might not be the best plan since our pharm shelf scores are notoriously awful, but we'll see once I start taking pharm practice tests. I'm actually a little worried about pharm, and I'm not totally sure what to do about it yet.

I should add that, at the moment, my practice questions are coming from USMLERx, WebPath, and Robbins Review. I plan to get Kaplan's QBook going at some point, too. (Is it just me, or do the Rx renal questions seem super hard?)