When to start FireCracker

[SKaminski]

Hey Everyone,

I'll be starting Medical School this August, and wanted to make sure I was on top of optimizing my study habits. I was able to find two flash-card based resources: Anki and FireCracker.

I'm planning on using Anki to create my own detailed/memorization flashcards and I was wanting to use FireCracker for long term retention of reviewed material via "spaced repetition". I see a lot of posts on here asking if they have begun firecracker "too late". The FireCracker website recommends you start using FireCracker from day one.

What does SDN recommend?

(I'm also planning on buying First Aid (but not writing in it until im starting boards) as i've heard it has some good mnemonics.)

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[pdxhopeful]

I've used Firecracker, and I think I've found it helpful. I used Anki as well, for class material (a decent portion of which is unlikely to ever show up on boards).

If you're going to use it I think starting from day one would be optimal *as long as* you are only flagging topics as you cover them in class. It's meant to jog your memory of what you've learned, not teach you (same goes for First Aid). If you start a bit later it's not impossible, but you're going to have to be getting through far more questions a day to complete it on time. Make use of the free trial month, see how it works for you. You'll learn once you start that the most important thing you can do to succeed in med school is figure out how YOU learn best/most efficiently, so be ready to experiment.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

I've used Firecracker, and I think I've found it helpful. I used Anki as well, for class material (a decent portion of which is unlikely to ever show up on boards).

If you're going to use it I think starting from day one would be optimal *as long as* you are only flagging topics as you cover them in class. It's meant to jog your memory of what you've learned, not teach you (same goes for First Aid). If you start a bit later it's not impossible, but you're going to have to be getting through far more questions a day to complete it on time. Make use of the free trial month, see how it works for you. You'll learn once you start that the most important thing you can do to succeed in med school is figure out how YOU learn best/most efficiently, so be ready to experiment.

How does this work for you? You study the topic then flag it or you wait more?

 

[DrEnderW]

I think Firecracker is great and always recommend that people try it out.

If I restarted M1, I would have started FC from the get go. I began at the end of winter break of first year and I obviously have topics that piled up from first semester. It would have been great to flag this content while I was learning it the first time through and continually see it up until this point.

This advice is all retrospective though. I knew all about FC from Day 1 but was hesitant to have that time commitment when I was setting the goal of getting a very high class rank. I didn't want any added time commitments yet. For that reason, it may be beneficial to get a test or two under your belt to see how you are performing.

As was stated above, start with the free month trial and see what you think.

Anki is a cool programs and a lot of people love it. I tried it very early on for anatomy and biochem but stopped using it a few weeks in. The program just wasn't for me but I can see the utility of it.

 

[pdxhopeful]

How does this work for you? You study the topic then flag it or you wait more?

Yup, study and flag without waiting would be the idea. I wasn't able to do this personally since I started FC later.

 

[IH8ColdWeath3r]

I usually flag the topics either the day after a major exam. I also started using it at the start of second semester but would recommend it from day one, *granted*, as Ender mentioned above, that you can get through all of the material adequately and still have time to tag topics. It does require a time commitment daily, and some people don't like having "extra" work in between tests. Like everyone else, I would recommend the 1 month trial when you first start school to see if you can use it.

I tried making notecard at the beginning of the year, but found it WAY TOO time consuming. I know someone who made notecards with Anki for each exam this year (not sure how), but to me personally, I find it to be a bit too time consuming.

 

[THH]

I completed Firecracker throughout 2nd year starting in August and I feel like it benefited me a lot. By the time dedicated study time showed up, I felt I already had a very strong foundation of knowledge to build on.

With that said I would not recommend starting FC before your 1st/2nd year summer unless you like studying for class using Firecracker. It is extremely time consuming and ultimately it feels like I spent all of 2nd year studying for boards. I wouldn't recommend inviting that level of stress into first year, which should be about getting your bearings and studying and enjoying your free time with classmates. Starting in August I managed to finish in April and then switched to other study sources. I think ideally you start it at the beginning of that summer, and flag all the material you learned during first year throughout the summer. That will put you in a great spot without having to stress about it during first year at all. Firecracker was originally called "Gunner training" and it lives up to that name, it is VERY time consuming and many many people do great on boards without it. It's up to you to decide if its worth it to you. In my opinion, if you're not shooting for a 250+ then you shouldn't bother with it at all. Everything up to 250 and even above is very achievable using your dedicated study period alone.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

I completed Firecracker throughout 2nd year starting in August and I feel like it benefited me a lot. By the time dedicated study time showed up, I felt I already had a very strong foundation of knowledge to build on.

With that said I would not recommend starting FC before your 1st/2nd year summer unless you like studying for class using Firecracker. It is extremely time consuming and ultimately it feels like I spent all of 2nd year studying for boards. I wouldn't recommend inviting that level of stress into first year, which should be about getting your bearings and studying and enjoying your free time with classmates. Starting in August I managed to finish in April and then switched to other study sources. I think ideally you start it at the beginning of that summer, and flag all the material you learned during first year throughout the summer. That will put you in a great spot without having to stress about it during first year at all. Firecracker was originally called "Gunner training" and it lives up to that name, it is VERY time consuming and many many people do great on boards without it. It's up to you to decide if its worth it to you. In my opinion, if you're not shooting for a 250+ then you shouldn't bother with it at all. Everything up to 250 and even above is very achievable using your dedicated study period alone.

Every M1 I've talked to has told me they spend less than 6 hours a week using FC. I'm confused. How time consuming is it for you? Would it be that it felt harder and longer because you had to pile year 1 on top?

 

[DrEnderW]

Every M1 I've talked to has told me they spend less than 6 hours a week using FC. I'm confused. How time consuming is it for you? Would it be that it felt harder and longer because you had to pile year 1 on top?

That's pretty minimal, IMO. It depends how many topics you have flagged, the amount of questions you have per day, and how generous you are with giving 5s.

If you've banked 10% of the material and are using lite mode, it may not take much time. Once I hit about 25% flagged, I started getting 120-200 cards per day. That's a lot of questions and doesn't account for adding any new content. Most people in my class who say they use FC don't actually use it to the full extent and won't reap the full rewards. If you take a day or two off to study for an exam (which you should attempt and try not to), you can get 500 questions for the day of your test. Although some questions, take 5-10 seconds, others take longer and the idea is you have to try and learn the material you miss. I would say I do closer to 1-2 hours per day and 100 questions per hour is a decently fast pace (I'd say I'm not slow but not insanely fast either). You have to remember it's recall and you don't get to see answers to jog your memory. You're looking at 900 question per week at least, plus at some point you have to add the 1,119 topics, which some have up to 25 questions/topic. Right now my average is just less than 10 concepts/topic with 77% mastery. That means about 25% of the time I have to stop to read the whole card and contemplate why didn't recall the answer and try and commit it to memory.

Perhaps I am just slow, let's see what @THH says. Whatever your milage is, I agree there's a reason it was called Gunner Training. You won't get much out of it doing 30 questions a day and putting everything 4/5s. It's an awesome resource if you do it full tilt.

 

[SurgeDO]

i have used both anki and FC, and i can say they contributed nearly nothing to my medical school success.

try anki first. it is free, and you have the option of downloading sets of flashcards made by other students (there are tons of downloadable decks to choose from--the FA deck has been nice).

if you like anki but get sick of making flashcards constantly, look into firecracker.

i have never been a flashcard person. obviously, the above users have had really positive experiences with either program, but i would use my money elsewhere (pathoma, FA, UWorld).

 

[NontradCA]

That's pretty minimal, IMO. It depends how many topics you have flagged, the amount of questions you have per day, and how generous you are with giving 5s.

If you've banked 10% of the material and are using lite mode, it may not take much time. Once I hit about 25% flagged, I started getting 120-200 cards per day. That's a lot of questions and doesn't account for adding any new content. Most people in my class who say they use FC don't actually use it to the full extent and won't reap the full rewards. If you take a day or two off to study for an exam (which you should attempt and try not to), you can get 500 questions for the day of your test. Although some questions, take 5-10 seconds, others take longer and the idea is you have to try and learn the material you miss. I would say I do closer to 1-2 hours per day and 100 questions per hour is a decently fast pace (I'd say I'm not slow but not insanely fast either). You have to remember it's recall and you don't get to see answers to jog your memory. You're looking at 900 question per week at least, plus at some point you have to add the 1,119 topics, which some have up to 25 questions/topic. Right now my average is just less than 10 concepts/topic with 77% mastery. That means about 25% of the time I have to stop to read the whole card and contemplate why didn't recall the answer and try and commit it to memory.

Perhaps I am just slow, let's see what @THH says. Whatever your milage is, I agree there's a reason it was called Gunner Training. You won't get much out of it doing 30 questions a day and putting everything 4/5s. It's an awesome resource if you do it full tilt.

Does it help you at all for exams though? Seems like a huge time commitment on top of everything else.

 

[notbobtrustme]

Personally, I would recommend using FC during your 2nd year. You will have a grasp of what your school wants and you know how to study. With that in mind, you can also allocate your time better because when you are doing path of the heart, you can flag the physiology and anatomy and basically have a cardiovascular party for that section. It's a good way to catch up on board relevant material rather than class specific material, which you should be doing your first year.

I used it during my 2nd year and I personally have mixed feelings about it, but I don't deny that it can be a strong learning tool for those it works for. I definitely would recommend trying it during your 2nd year over your 1st year though.

 

[DrEnderW]

Does it help you at all for exams though? Seems like a huge time commitment on top of everything else.

No doubt it's a huge time commitment. I flag content prior to exams about 50% of the time. It helped me a lot for micro, physio, and neuro. I didn't begin until winter break M1 after I knew my class rank was where I wanted and I knew how to manage my time and spare a few hours. I can imagine it being very helpful for anatomy but I missed that boat.

If time commitment is a concern, I'd hold off a few exams, or semester, to see how you're managing. I knowingly wanted the extra time commitment to force me to keep reviewing. If I wasn't wanting a competitive specialty, I probably wouldn't use it as religiously.

 

[MirrorTodd]

I'm curious, you all are talking about the time commitment and what not, is there like some sort of penalty that forces you to keep up with the information on a day to day basis? Why couldn't one just use the program when they had the time? Do you end up missing tons of info and it won't let you get back to that section or something?

 

[pdxhopeful]

I'm curious, you all are talking about the time commitment and what not, is there like some sort of penalty that forces you to keep up with the information on a day to day basis? Why couldn't one just use the program when they had the time? Do you end up missing tons of info and it won't let you get back to that section or something?

It's more that questions assigned to prior days will accumulate fast, and you're losing at least some of the benefit of spaced repetition by not doing them as assigned. Let's say you miss a card, remember it the next day, then you see it two days later, and so on - you've had the material you had a hard time with reinforced 3-4 times in a week. Let's say you miss that card and don't touch FC for a week - chances you'll remember it then are fairly low, and now you've only seen it twice.

 

[DrEnderW]

It's more that questions assigned to prior days will accumulate fast, and you're losing at least some of the benefit of spaced repetition by not doing them as assigned. Let's say you miss a card, remember it the next day, then you see it two days later, and so on - you've had the material you had a hard time with reinforced 3-4 times in a week. Let's say you miss that card and don't touch FC for a week - chances you'll remember it then are fairly low, and now you've only seen it twice.

This is perfectly explained.

There's just diminishing returns if you're not dedicated to the program. Sometimes you have to skip FC for the day or reschedule your questions, but if you do that for a few days, you can get 1000 questions back logged. As was said above, you lose out on the value of spaced repetition if you don't see content that isn't sticking for you again and again.

In theory though, you could just use it whenever you have free time. Many people do that in my class - I'd say the majority that have the program. With that said, they aren't reaping the rewards of doing it daily or at least a few days a week.

 

[MirrorTodd]

This is perfectly explained.

There's just diminishing returns if you're not dedicated to the program. Sometimes you have to skip FC for the day or reschedule your questions, but if you do that for a few days, you can get 1000 questions back logged. As was said above, you lose out on the value of spaced repetition if you don't see content that isn't sticking for you again and again.

In theory though, you could just use it whenever you have free time. Many people do that in my class - I'd say the majority that have the program. With that said, they aren't reaping the rewards of doing it daily or at least a few days a week.

Damn, I didn't know the volume was so high. I think I'll give it a try this summer.

 

[notbobtrustme]

Damn, I didn't know the volume was so high. I think I'll give it a try this summer.

ah, that's probably an over exaggeration. If you flag 3-5 topics a day, you end up with a very manageable schedule of around 50-60 cards, depending on the topic. I usually shot for ~100 cards/day and it was very doable in an hour or two.

The worst I ever had was like 400 questions because I didn't log into FC for like a week.

 

[DrEnderW]

Might be a slight over exaggeration... But 1-2 hours a day is 7-14 hours a week (exactly what I said, although I think it's more in the 10+ range). I get about 130 questions a day and a week off would be about 910 questions (just under the 1000 I said).

The average questions done per day for all users is just over 100. The average for my class is just under that (M1) and is about 120 for my school.

 

[pdxhopeful]

In terms of time, I'm a little ashamed to admit this but I've done a fair amount of my Firecracker time during required lectures. I'm not someone who learns well from lectures so... figure I might as well get some work in.

 

[MirrorTodd]

Ya, I just flagged all of cardiology since that's what we're starting with next semester and it's like 230 something questions. Maybe I'll start off a little slower, like 50 a day for a week and then bump it up.

 

[ortnakas]

Incoming student here as well. Has anyone used Firecracker for a PBL program? Is it compatible with a curriculum (mostly) without lectures?

 

[Ogmora]

In terms of time, I'm a little ashamed to admit this but I've done a fair amount of my Firecracker time during required lectures. I'm not someone who learns well from lectures so... figure I might as well get some work in.

I can't do lectures either. I went to every class the fall semester of my grad program and finished with a 3.15. Then I went to only 3 lectures in the spring semester and finished with a 3.75.

Because of this, I was actually considering using firecracker in class since it seems like lectures wind up negatively impacting my grades anyway.

How's the method working out for you?

 

[notbobtrustme]

I can't do lectures either. I went to every class the fall semester of my grad program and finished with a 3.15. Then I went to only 3 lectures in the spring semester and finished with a 3.75.

Because of this, I was actually considering using firecracker in class since it seems like lectures wind up negatively impacting my grades anyway.

How's the method working out for you?

That depends on your school and your lecturers. Unfortunately, most lecturers don't emphasize board relevant material and overemphasize details/concepts of their own liking. FC is a pure board study material resource. If I relied solely on FC, my grades would have swung widely, depended on what the particular lecturers of the block emphasized. Cardio? FC was easily enough. GI? Probably wouldn't have even passed.

 

[Back 5]

I've never been a flashcard person in any of my previous schooling, whether it be undergrad, chiropractic school, postbacc or MCAT. If I have never used flashcards, would I even want to attempt it for this iteration of medical school?

 

[IH8ColdWeath3r]

Yes. But I wouldn't spend the time making the flashcards myself. The reason this program is so effective is because the information is all high yield and board pertinent. There is so much information in the first year of medical school, and without REPETITION, it becomes easy to forget most, if not all, of it. So, the information that you commit to long term memory is really vital and the best way to do that is through periodic repetition + good sleep.