What is your best studying advice?

[wanderer123]

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What have you found to be most helpful towards success in learning all the information that is getting thrown at us? And for students in/done with their second year - did you find it necessary to change your approach during second year?

Just finishing up my first year of medical school and I've definitely learned a lot about myself in terms of what works for me. I never developed good study habits in undergrad and I have seen how that has been a liability so far and how my classmates who had good study habits are benefitting from their previous efforts.

Personally, the things that have worked best for me are:
1) Using Anki/other spaced repetition programs to study
2) Doing all the practice questions I can get my hands on for a subject and
3) Making sure to relax by hitting the gym or watching some TV everyday.

Can't wait for this summer to come!

 

[jm192]

I wasn't a class goer in college, and it held over through medical school. They give us notes on blackboard, and at first I tried just studying those.

There's so much extra CRAP in those notes, that studying those is the most inefficient thing I've ever done. I started going to class, taking my own notes, and studying only those. Maybe there's some small tidbits in the notes that I'm missing by doing this, but I feel like most teachers only test you on what they tell you in class. My grades went up by 10 points by simply going to class. So, if you're not, do.

Also, the practice questions is the best thing ever. If teachers provide question sets, a lot of times they'll use similar questiions/ask about the same concepts on tests.

If old tests exist (from the same professors) get them. We seem to still have old tests from professors that are no longer with the school, and they are useless.

TALK about things with other students. It's easy to be all "oh I'm so smart, I'm not asking anyone about anything." But, I found a lot of times when I was struggling with something, another student could explain it in five minutes as opposed to me beating my head into a wall for the next 30.

 

[amakhosidlo]

Single best piece of advice I can give:

Whiteboards. For biochem, for anatomy, for everything really. Draw out those pathways, the vasculature, etc. Really useful for visual learners.

Anki's really only useful to me for stuff I need to be able to recognize/identify (Anatomy, again. Also Micro)

More broadly, probably the top 3 things that will influence your success in med school are (in order):
#1. Sleep (Get enough)
#2. 'You' time (Reading/Partying/TV/whatever)
#3 Food: Breakfast, seriously.

 

[Perrotfish]

Be aware of how your classes are paced. If the class is front loaded, keeping up with the material is not necesarily the best strategy.