What if you don't learn by reading?

[Gabby]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I'm going to be starting clerkships in a few months and I'm concerned. During these first two years of med school, I've noticed that I just don't learn very much from reading on my own. I learn a lot from lecture, but when it comes to reading medical books on my own, it all blurs together and I can't pick out what's important or what I should be learning.

When I hear about all the independent reading that needs to be done to do well on shelf exams, it freaks me out. I do learn from quizzing so I definitely will do all the q-banks, but I've been told that just answering questions and reviewing answers isn't sufficient.

Any other auditory learners out there? How do you deal?

 

[DrVanNostran]

I hate reading texts, I think most med students do at this point. Questions sources and Casefiles ease the burden of reading during your third year.

 

[mordounhas]

Depending on your school and the rotation, you might have lectures offered by faculty as well. In my experience, this has generally been about a half-day of lectures a week, with some rotations having a bit more or less.

 

[Gabby]

In your experience, are those lectures along with question books sufficient for doing well on shelf exams?

 

[McGillGrad]

Some rotations have teaching a couple times a week, but you need to read, especially for the shelf exams.

 

[vicinihil]

In my experience, rotation lectures have been mostly a way to see your friends during the work day. The lot of them are useless. Then again, I found school lectures to be useless too but it may be your cup of tea.

My way of learning is by doing LOTS of questions ( Kaplan, PreTest, UW) and Case files. You have to look through SDN to see which sources were good to use. For certain clerkships, eg surgery, pretest was useless where as for others, neurology, pretest was really useful.

 

[2012mdc]

Some rotations have teaching a couple times a week, but you need to read, especially for the shelf exams.

It really depends on how much teaching is going on and how comfortable you feel with that rotation.

On Surgery I did a good amount of reading because it was my 1st rotation and the lectures weren't that useful for the shelf

On FM I barely read anything and just did the pre-test questions

On IM I struggled to finish Step Up to Med once but did ~2000 questions. The lectures were pretty helpful for the shelf.

84 on Surg, 85 on FM, 94 on IM.

It just sucks to read after being busy all day. On Surg I read a little bit every day to make it bearable. On FM I just didn't care. On IM I tried to read Step Up early but just struggled, ended up reading most of it the last 5 or 6 days before the shelf

 

[cowme]

My first rotation, I read every OB-GYN recommended book, and got the worst shelf exam score.

After, I ONLY did QBanks and question books. I got high 80s to mid 90s every shelf thereafter despite not reading a single book.

I don't learn by reading either. If you learn by doing questions, you are in luck, because there are plenty of them at your disposal (not to mention, they are the best way to prepare for shelf exams).

 

[McGillGrad]

My first rotation, I read every OB-GYN recommended book, and got the worst shelf exam score.

or it was because it was your first rotation and you didn't know what you were doing.

 

[kryptik]

Get the kaplan videos for each rotation