Using firecracker to supplement class instruction during the academic year?

[dr.0ne]

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I've heard rave reviews about using firecracker during board studying, but have anyone of you used it during the year to do well on your classes? If so, how's that worked out for you.

I've been looking more into firecracker, namely how expensive it is and wanted to know if it's a smart investment to have during the year.

Thanks!

 

[Cskidd359]

It was highly beneficial for first year but I used it strictly as a supplement to lectures. Wait for sales though.

 

[JackieChanFan]

When are the sales?

 

[NWwildcat2013]

I've heard rave reviews about using firecracker during board studying, but have anyone of you used it during the year to do well on your classes? If so, how's that worked out for you.

I've been looking more into firecracker, namely how expensive it is and wanted to know if it's a smart investment to have during the year.

Thanks!

I was under the impression that most people used it long term and not during dedicated.

I used it for the last month of medical school and I think it helped. It was hard to balance the two, and you may find some contradictions but overall worth it. You just need to squeeze an extra hour of productivity out of your day when you add it on. Don't let it detract from class. I think it will be more worth it in the long run when I find I don't have to review a bunch of biochem enzymes because I've been seeing them intermittently for a year.

 

[sliceofbread136]

Personally I found firecracker to not be worth the time that you need to put in. In my opinion you are better off just reading FA and pathoma along with what you learning in class.

Only think I though firecracker was good for was an anatomy review during my dedicated studying

 

[Donald Juan]

If firecracker is your thing, then it could be very helpful for increasing long-term retention. You could also make your own anki cards throughout the year and do the same thing. The problem with firecracker is that it really takes daily dedication. What begins as a simple task will build up into a daunting prospect throughout the year as you add more and more questions. It gets to be too much for many people and they give up on it. I say try to get a trial period or something rather than just dropping money on 2 years of it.

Also, firecracker is for long-term studying. Not for dedicated time. If you had stayed with it throughout say the first two years of med school, you might have use at continuing it through board prep, but starting it would be wasteful. You probably wouldn't finish it, and there is better sources out there if you are just using it as a straightforward question bank.

 

[Cytarabine]

Personally I found firecracker to not be worth the time that you need to put in. In my opinion you are better off just reading FA and pathoma along with what you learning in class.

Only think I though firecracker was good for was an anatomy review during my dedicated studying

^this. Big fan of spaced repetition but not a fan of firecracker. Used it to ~75% banked

 

[abolt18]

Started it right when M2 started and only wish I had started at the beginning of M1. I don't 'like' using firecracker but it worked phenomenally for me. I was 77% banked before boards. I did use it to review a few things during dedicated. It is definitely a big time commitment, but worth it for me. Agreed though, definitely wait for a discount. They frequently do things like 40 or 50% off. Try the free month and see if you like it.

 

[Tintinnabula]

Hm. Got a link? I'd not heard of it and would like to check it out. ( Yes, yes, I'd Google but don't know if there's a referral thing. I'm also at a hotel this morning and the connection is kind of crap here.)

 

[Cskidd359]

When are the sales?

Typically they do a summer sale. Like 40-ish percent off.

 

[DrEnderW]

I've heard rave reviews about using firecracker during board studying, but have anyone of you used it during the year to do well on your classes? If so, how's that worked out for you.

I've been looking more into firecracker, namely how expensive it is and wanted to know if it's a smart investment to have during the year.

Thanks!

You may have some misconceptions about what exactly Firecracker is. Starting FC during dedicated would be an extreme waste of time and the program is not designed to be used like that. It's best to start as early as possible and add content as you encounter it with your classroom studies.

In my opinion, it's a phenomenal resource. You can always start with a 1 month free trial. Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions as well.

Echoing others, you can expect a 40-50% discount early in the semester (start after your free trial).

 

[seminoma]

I liked it and used it regularly for about 12 months. However, I don't think it helped me in the end (i.e. I don't think my step 1 prep would've been affected had I not used it).

 

[DocWinter]

I tried it and didn't like it. It's more a less what works for your style. I don't like flashcards, and I don't really learn from Qs until the few days preceding the test. So it's just not worth the time to me, and I haven't heard it being used as great boards study tool- not like Qbank or USMLE-Rx, etc, anyway.

To each their own. Best advice I got was to not buy into everything, but see how you do on the tools that got you to med school (flashcards, powerpoint pages, study guides, textbooks, etc)

 

[abolt18]

When are the sales?

What do you know? Just saw this in my email. Said there were 66 discounts left.
https://med.firecracker.me/purchase/weekend_flash3

 

[Psai]

The advantage of firecracker is being able to see things multiple times. Spaced repetition is a good thing. However, medicine is all about making connections and understanding concepts. Running through flashcards multiple times is not very good for that.

 

[emraldragon]

The advantage of firecracker is being able to see things multiple times. Spaced repetition is a good thing. However, medicine is all about making connections and understanding concepts. Running through flashcards multiple times is not very good for that.

I apologize for asking, but I do not start school for a few more weeks and thus I don't want to start a free trial just yet. My understanding of firecracker from their website was that it was like anki and flashcards, except that you were essentially paying someone else to make the cards rather than taking the time to do it yourself. Is someone able to tell me what the difference is? Thank you in advance.

 

[Psai]

Make your own cards - make your own connections and can tailor to your needs. But it takes a lot of time to make which isn't worth it in my opinion

 

[emraldragon]

Make your own cards - make your own connections and can tailor to your needs. But it takes a lot of time to make which isn't worth it in my opinion

Gotcha. Thanks.

 

[NWwildcat2013]

The advantage of firecracker is being able to see things multiple times. Spaced repetition is a good thing. However, medicine is all about making connections and understanding concepts. Running through flashcards multiple times is not very good for that.

This. When I am using Firecracker and I see a topic that ties into another I may make a note explaining that. I try to make a ton of notes like that and rephrase the answers in a way that makes sense or it more memorable, so its more of an active process for me. The risk is that you will get to a point where you've seen the card 10 times and you've forgotten the explanation but know the answer. You won't have the energy to really THINK about all of your 4 million reviews.

 

[a good soldier]

What do you know? Just saw this in my email. Said there were 66 discounts left.
https://med.firecracker.me/purchase/weekend_flash3

Do sales like this happen very often? I don't start classes for another month and was planning to do the free month trial before paying for a full subscription. However, $200 off is huge.

 

[abolt18]

Do sales like this happen very often? I don't start classes for another month and was planning to do the free month trial before paying for a full subscription. However, $200 off is huge.

Yeah relatively frequently. And don't forget you can get free months by having others sign up with a link you send them. So maybe only buy a year first when you do buy it, get as many free months as you can sharing with friends, and buy a few more months as needed when a deal pops up.

 

[masaraksh]

Don't buy into everything seems like decent advice too.

For every person who raves about firecracker it looks like there's a dozen 260+ students who focused on class work then come boards hit it hard with pathoma+FA and qbanks

 

[sholamd]

I would exercise some caution in using someone else's flash cards - which is what Firecracker is. You always waste a ton of time looking through information that you already know (which someone else thought was hard or novel). You are dealing with their shorthand and complicated explanations, or else with oversimplified cards that don't test concepts or add anything to your long-term retention.

Like others have posted above, I'm a fan of spaced repetition memorization, but only if you make your own materials. I did, and found it to be worth the time.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

I wasted my money on. I didn't like it. I don't think the space repetition of getting it wrong and then seeing it until the next day is all that good. It also didn't correlate that well with my classes, so it became a time consumer rather than something that aided learning. I wish I could get my money back.

 

[DrEnderW]

Don't buy into everything seems like decent advice too.

For every person who raves about firecracker it looks like there's a dozen 260+ students who focused on class work then come boards hit it hard with pathoma+FA and qbanks

This is definitely true, without question.

However, most the the students dedicated enough to stick with a FC schedule also hammer FA, pathoma, and UWorld thoroughly. I just want to make it clear for incoming M1s that it's not one method or the other.

 

[The Kraken]

Firecracker for me was doing it the first half of blocks/quarters and not touching it the rest of the block until exams were over. I'm doing brain dead research this summer and it's pretty easy to do cards during downtime. Issue I have is that I have a lot of cards to catch up on, but it's surprising how much you remember from topics you haven't seen in a while. Honestly, I don't think firecracker is worth the amount of money you spent on it, because it takes too much time with classes, especially as exams get closer. It is nice in that it's curated and brings back topics you forgot existed.

 

[BruceWilly]

Uworld depth: crohns causes malabsorption of fat, excess fat in the gut saponifies with calcium, saponified calcium cannot bind oxaloacetate, excess oxaloacetate is absorbed into the blood and crystallizes with phosphate forming crystals in the kidneys. Which drug would alter the pH preventing crystal formation?

Firecracker depth: drug A prevents kidney stones.

Firecracker is a great refresher if you've already learned things completely.

 

[slopes23]

Sounds like a fair amount of people who say its not worth the time required to actually do it, say it after they have done like 75%banked or whatever. This is interesting to me. I wonder what would have happened to their Step 1 scores had they actually taken this advice and not used it? Scores higher, same, lower....

 

[PlasticBag]

I would exercise some caution in using someone else's flash cards - which is what Firecracker is. You always waste a ton of time looking through information that you already know (which someone else thought was hard or novel). You are dealing with their shorthand and complicated explanations, or else with oversimplified cards that don't test concepts or add anything to your long-term retention.

Like others have posted above, I'm a fan of spaced repetition memorization, but only if you make your own materials. I did, and found it to be worth the time.

Can you say a bit more about how you made your own materials and the way you used them?

Your argument is quite convincing but I'm worried that self-made flashcards made mostly for classes might not emphasize high yield board material enough. In a perfect world, there would be an overlap between class and board material but I hear it depends on your school and your professor? Did you make separate "board flashcards" in addition to regular ones? Or cross-checked them with FA or something?

I'm starting this summer and want to have some kind of system for committing knowledge to my long-term memory. I was definitely a procrastinator-crammer type in my pre-med classes which is the worst way to actually retain what you learn

 

[sholamd]

I made my own flash cards in Anki. The process of making them (i.e. turning facts into questions) helped me learn. I did not make separate boards flashcards. But when it came time for Step 1, if I missed a fact, I would look up the keyword in my decks (Anki is nice because you can search all flash cards you've ever made, at once) and turn that old forgotten card into a new card in my "Step 1 Deck," and start to learn it from scratch. That meant I didn't have to make flash cards during boards study (which isn't a great use of that time anyway - you should be focusing on practice questions in a q-bank). So ultimately, I felt the time investment was doubly effective - used for the school exam and again for boards.

In 3rd/4th year rotations, many of those facts would come around again for the shelf exam, so I recycled those cards yet again, and they became triple effective. I also learned the forgotten facts in a flash (ha!) because the info was so familiar and I had already gone through the mental process of turning that fact into a question. So for all these reasons, I would use Anki early in med school. I'll probably put out a podcast next week Monday with a few tips on how to use Anki, since this seems to be a hot topic. Good luck in school!

 

[BurghStudent]

How well do you retain information with a first read? Second read? If you can't remember the basis of orotic aciduria vs ornithine transcarbomoylase deficiency after reading it a few times, and you are in your M1 year, or summer, consider Firecracker.

 

[CR7MedStudent]

I tried ANKI, didn't like it. I tried firecracker, free trial of course, and didn't like it. I tried memorang and loved it. Just try a couple of the big resources and see which one you fancy.

 

[NontradCA]

Firecracker is good for after you learned the material. It is probably bat to start it year 2 (sorry @DrEnderW). You will run into the problem of it being too detailed in one area (anatomy) and not enough in others (micro). Just supplement your supplement with wiki 🙂.

 

[DrEnderW]

Firecracker is good for after you learned the material. It is probably bat to start it year 2 (sorry @DrEnderW). You will run into the problem of it being too detailed in one area (anatomy) and not enough in others (micro). Just supplement your supplement with wiki 🙂.

Blasphemy! I'm reporting you!