Worried I can't balance Zanki with school curriculum (very different from Step)

[IWishIWasBuff]

My school does not use NBME exams. I've spoken to some older med students and they said Zanki is little help with learning the school curriculum (systems based). Also curriculum is less helpful for Step. Some of them do vouch for the effectiveness of Zanki but also admit they barely scrape by for the school exams, always one of the lowest scorers. Not a lot of people use Anki here, supposedly, but a handful of them do use it religiously and somehow make it work. I go to a P/F UNRANKED school but remediating a course goes on your record. We also spend about 12 hours a week, at least, doing PBL-related things.

I'm pretty sold on Zanki and would ideally like to use it. I am fine with not being a top performer in my class if it contributes to better results in the long run (Step 1, 2, clerkships). But I am uncomfortable with barely passing, risking remediation, every exam. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for my situation, especially if you went to a school with a similar curriculum set up.

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[The wise one]

I would go to class. Make you own flashcards; Zanki works but it's a bit over hyped.



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[slowthai]

I've dealt with similar issues in terms of having a low yield curriculum. It really sucks and is a massive pain in the butt. Just make sure to get 2-3 solid passes of lectures before your exams. Usually two is good enough for me. Even with the waste of time they are, you'll be able to fly through them because you've seen it all in Zanki.

 

[RadOncMD]

I go to a very similar school. All I’ll say is the majority of the highest scorers in the class last year still used Zanki alongside lecture. (Two people scored a 265, a few were 250+). One 265 scorer didn’t use Zanki but used Pathoma+ Qbanks, etc. They all did well on in-house exams.

Based on that data (small sample size, granted) I’d say your odds of doing well are still correlated with using Zanki to supplement in-house lectures. Lecture 2x speed and you’ll realize there is still a lot of overlap. Of course, if you have access to old practice questions that are specific to your school those are gold for filling in any gaps Zanki doesn’t address.

 

[IMG69]

Just go over your school material a month out from exams (basically speedrun it for differences) and do zanki throughout the year. It's what I do and it works well. I also had PBL in my earlier years and I literally only did zanki for it and no major differences were brought up when I presented info to the group.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

How do you learn/first-pass the Step material (BnB, Constanzos, FA?) prior to Zanki if your school material doesn't really cover it? Do you use Zanki as your "first-pass" as well as retention? My school lectures have not yet started, so I can't speak on it for myself, but some M2s I have spoken to basically say the lecture materials are mostly irrelevant to Step.

Edit: Yup, all systems-based

 

[RadOncMD]

How do you learn the Step material (BnB, Constanzos, FA?) if your school material doesn't really cover it? My school lectures have not yet started, so I can't speak on it for myself, but some M2s I have spoken to basically say the lecture materials are mostly irrelevant to Step.

Are your M2 lectures organ systems based? If so, learn the relevant cards in Zanki based on that organ system. For example, if your professors are covering cardio, you will need to learn Step 1 cardio one way or another. Your lectures may be very low yield, but no matter how low yield they are there will still be overlap with Zanki.

Definitely watch your in-house lectures, but Zanki is meant to make the process much more efficient so you can afford to 2x speed the lectures and still get a lot out of them. Then spend the rest of your time doing in-house practice questions (for in-house exams) and Qbank questions (for Step 1).

 

[IMG69]

How do you learn/first-pass the Step material (BnB, Constanzos, FA?) prior to Zanki if your school material doesn't really cover it? Do you use Zanki as your "first-pass" as well as retention? My school lectures have not yet started, so I can't speak on it for myself, but some M2s I have spoken to basically say the lecture materials are mostly irrelevant to Step.

I don't really understand what you mean, all pre-clinical medicine is the same regardless of country or course? The only difference really is treatment algorithms (asthma seems to change by the hour). Just skip the cards you know obviously aren't relevant, like almost all biochem was irrelevant for my M2.

Zanki is everything, just mature the deck and you'll be fine. I mean all you really need to start zanki is a basic grasp of the physiology of all organ systems, the rest falls into place after that.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

I don't really understand what you mean, all pre-clinical medicine is the same regardless of country or course? The only difference really is treatment algorithms (asthma seems to change by the hour). Just skip the cards you know obviously aren't relevant, like almost all biochem was irrelevant for my M2.

Zanki is everything, idk what this first pass non-sense is just mature the deck and you'll be fine. I mean all your really need to start zanki is a basic grasp of the physiology of all organ systems, the rest falls into place after that.

Again, I'm not sure either. This was based on conversations with some M2s at my school, who primarily use Anki because they feel the school lectures "poorly prepares [them] for Step and filled with irrelevant material" (direct quote).

Edit: My immediate inference was that they used BnB, Constanzos, or outside resources to learn Step material not covered or poorly covered by our lectures, though in hindsight, I should've clarified this with them...

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I don't really understand what you mean, all pre-clinical medicine is the same regardless of country or course?

That’s definitely not true. My friend’s school’s curriculum is a completely different setup from ours and they have much less emphasis on clinical applications of things, how to work them up, etc.

 

[IMG69]

That’s definitely not true. My friend’s school’s curriculum is a completely different setup from ours and they have much less emphasis on clinical applications of things, how to work them up, etc.

But the underlying physiology and anatomy, pharma etc is still the same? So he/she's just asked questions in a different format. I'm talking about medicine itself, whether they ask you undergrad type questions vs clinical questions, It's still the same underlying physiology. I've studied medicine in 3 countries, it's all been exactly the same underlying stuff regardless if they try make it a clinical question or not.

He's talking about M2 so I assume things are starting to be clinically focused rather than pure science anyway in prepping for M3+?

 

[Cornfed101]

they have much less emphasis on clinical applications of things, how to work them up, etc.

That sounds like a stupid med school

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

But the underlying physiology and anatomy, pharma etc is still the same? So he/she's just asked questions in a different format. I'm talking about medicine itself, whether they ask you undergrad type questions vs clinical questions, It's still the same underlying physiology. I've studied medicine in 3 countries, it's all been exactly the same underlying stuff regardless if they try make it a clinical question or not.

He's talking about M2 so I assume things are starting to be clinically focused rather than pure science anyway in prepping for M3+?

I guess. My friend is also an M2, and his profs specifically ask questions that are not in pathoma/FA/etc because they don't want them to use outside resources. So obviously the underlying physiology and anatomy is the same, but the schools can be totally different.

 

[deleted1005514]

I guess. My friend is also an M2, and his profs specifically ask questions that are not in pathoma/FA/etc because they don't want them to use outside resources. So obviously the underlying physiology and anatomy is the same, but the schools can be totally different.

Wow, do they not care about their board passing rate or scores? I mean, boards cover the same material for everyone, so why be so insecure that you write exams questions designed to exclude board resources?

My school has 100% in house exams. I just took a two week exam, didn’t watch a third of the lectures, did BnB, sketchy, anki, USMLE-Rx and flipped through the powerpoints looking for stuff not covered by those, and scored above the class average.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Wow, do they not care about their board passing rate or scores? I mean, boards cover the same material for everyone, so why be so insecure that you write exams questions designed to exclude board resources?

My school has 100% in house exams. I just took a two week exam, didn’t watch a third of the lectures, did BnB, sketchy, anki, USMLE-Rx and flipped through the powerpoints looking for stuff not covered by those, and scored above the class average.

Yeah, I don't know. I almost went to that school and am really glad I didn't. I don't watch any of our school lectures (except for the neuro block because they were great), and we have both NBME and in-house. The only lecture material I do is skim the powerpoints because our in-house exams often cover stuff specific to our patient population and stuff that is low yield for step can be a big part of some of our in-house exams; however, outside of those few things, BnB, cheesy LY, USMLE-Rx, and Osmosis have been plenty for me to do really well on NBME and my in-house exams the whole of MS1.

 

[IMG69]

I guess. My friend is also an M2, and his profs specifically ask questions that are not in pathoma/FA/etc because they don't want them to use outside resources. So obviously the underlying physiology and anatomy is the same, but the schools can be totally different.

Goes back to my first reply then; look at your course material a month or so out from the exam to fill in the blanks or recognize things you have/haven't covered.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Goes back to my first reply then; look at your course material a month or so out from the exam to fill in the blanks or recognize things you have/haven't covered.

Well it isn’t my school, but my school has an exam every 3-4 weeks, so that wouldn’t work for me. I’m glad my school doesn’t purposely try to make things difficult.

 

[IMG69]

Well it isn’t my school, but my school has an exam every 3-4 weeks, so that wouldn’t work for me. I’m glad my school doesn’t purposely try to make things difficult.

If your having an exam every month it can't be that much material anyway but obviously just look at it a week or two before the exam aka just check that your covering the stuff in advance lol thats the take home message.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

If your having an exam every month it can't be that much material anyway but obviously just look at it a week or two before the exam aka just check that your covering the stuff in advance lol thats the take home message.

I'm not having any problems. I'm doing fine in school, and my school's curriculum overlaps with board material mostly well. I'm just saying, not every school is the same, and I couldn't look at the class material a month out because we have exams every 4 weeks. I'm not sure where you go to school, but it must not be at a place with a 1.5-year preclerkship curriculum, because you most certainly can have a **** ton of material in 3 weeks. We do entire systems in that time.

 

[deleted1005514]

If your having an exam every month it can't be that much material anyway but obviously just look at it a week or two before the exam aka just check that your covering the stuff in advance lol thats the take home message.

My school averages 15 hours of lecture (45-60 questions, about 750 slides) on a one week exam, 30 hrs of lecture (90-120 questions, about 1500 slides) on a two week exam. Not sure what schools “don’t have much material” on a one month exam but I’m personally glad I only have to stay on top of 1-2 weeks worth of material at a time.

 

[deleted804295]

Everyone in my class uses ANKI.

Maybe you can find an upper classmen that already made all the decks relevant to lecture material and incorporate it with ZANKI?

 

[IMG69]

I'm not having any problems. I'm doing fine in school, and my school's curriculum overlaps with board material mostly well. I'm just saying, not every school is the same, and I couldn't look at the class material a month out because we have exams every 4 weeks. I'm not sure where you go to school, but it must not be at a place with a 1.5-year preclerkship curriculum, because you most certainly can have a **** ton of material in 3 weeks. We do entire systems in that time.

Well these comments are directed at OP not you. I'm glad your doing well. I'm not saying you start studying a week out, i'm saying check that your on track a week out. You have a cardio exam coming up, you've been studying cardio cards for that whole month/block and then a week or 10 days before w/e check your lectures to make sure your not missing anything? Not sure what's controversial about that?

My school we have about 1.25 years of pre-clerkship curriculum, I mean yeah we had to learn whole systems to present in PBL in a week, you just get used to it after a month or two. My first year was two 50% exams assessing half the systems each (+2 50% social sciences/epi exams), my second year was one 100% exam assessing 380 diseases/conditions to a FY1 (first year resident) level.

I think this has gone off topic a bit, i'm simply telling OP what worked for me being in his exact position, so he can take what he wants from my replies if he chooses to.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

Thanks for all the thoughts. Here is my tentative plan but let me know if it will be feasible and any potential adjustments.

1. Watch class lectures at 1.5-2x speed (16hr lecture a week -> ~8-12hrs). (Make cards for this??)

2. Watch BnB at 1.5-2x speed for corresponding topics. Make notes into FA.

3. Anki (studying will be centered around this)

4. Review in-house slides before exams

5. Study for anatomy

My school also offers review sessions every week, could I use this instead of in-house lectures?

My school has a crud ton of mandatory stuff. So this is all on top of: 10hr/wk PBL, 2-4 hr/wk anatomy, 2-6 hr/wk electives. Also need to consider time to do PBL busywork/homework. I’m honestly intimidated due to all this mandatory crap. Don’t even know how I’m going to fit in research.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Thanks for all the thoughts. Here is my tentative plan but let me know if it will be feasible and any potential adjustments.

1. Watch class lectures at 1.5-2x speed (16hr lecture a week -> ~8-12hrs). (Make cards for this??)

2. Watch BnB at 1.5-2x speed for corresponding topics. Make notes into FA.

3. Anki (studying will be centered around this)

4. Review in-house slides before exams

5. Study for anatomy

My school also offers review sessions every week, could I use this instead of in-house lectures?

My school has a crud ton of mandatory stuff. So this is all on top of: 10hr/wk PBL, 2-4 hr/wk anatomy, 2-6 hr/wk electives. Also need to consider time to do PBL busywork/homework. I’m honestly intimidated due to all this mandatory crap. Don’t even know how I’m going to fit in research.

I personally would drop the in-house lectures. You’ll learn the material better from BnB anyway and you’ll be skimming the in-house powerpoints to make sure you don’t miss something they foot stomp anyway. Are the reviews recorded? You can watch them on 2x just to see what they emphasize.

 

[Cornfed101]

Thanks for all the thoughts. Here is my tentative plan but let me know if it will be feasible and any potential adjustments.

1. Watch class lectures at 1.5-2x speed (16hr lecture a week -> ~8-12hrs). (Make cards for this??)

2. Watch BnB at 1.5-2x speed for corresponding topics. Make notes into FA.

3. Anki (studying will be centered around this)

4. Review in-house slides before exams

5. Study for anatomy

My school also offers review sessions every week, could I use this instead of in-house lectures?

My school has a crud ton of mandatory stuff. So this is all on top of: 10hr/wk PBL, 2-4 hr/wk anatomy, 2-6 hr/wk electives. Also need to consider time to do PBL busywork/homework. I’m honestly intimidated due to all this mandatory crap. Don’t even know how I’m going to fit in research.

there are great Anki decks that are based on BnB so you really don’t need to make your own cards for it. I use Anking and I think lightyear/zanki is what he took the BnB cards from

 

[RadOncMD]

Thanks for all the thoughts. Here is my tentative plan but let me know if it will be feasible and any potential adjustments.

1. Watch class lectures at 1.5-2x speed (16hr lecture a week -> ~8-12hrs). (Make cards for this??)

2. Watch BnB at 1.5-2x speed for corresponding topics. Make notes into FA.

3. Anki (studying will be centered around this)

4. Review in-house slides before exams

5. Study for anatomy

My school also offers review sessions every week, could I use this instead of in-house lectures?

My school has a crud ton of mandatory stuff. So this is all on top of: 10hr/wk PBL, 2-4 hr/wk anatomy, 2-6 hr/wk electives. Also need to consider time to do PBL busywork/homework. I’m honestly intimidated due to all this mandatory crap. Don’t even know how I’m going to fit in research.

I would watch BnB at normal speed. The videos are already condensed and every word Dr. Ryan says is crucial. You want to absorb every single detail. My general rule is never 2x speed high-yield board videos. Only 2x speed low-yield class lecture.

I would watch BnB/pathoma and study the corresponding unit cards in Anking BEFORE even touching class lecture. If your lectures aren’t mandatory attendance (likely not due to the shutdown), save watching them for end of the week/weekend. Use the beginning of the week to do BnB/anki related material for those lectures and use these as your primary study tool. Approach lectures as review at 2x speed; at this point you would have already learned a lot of it in Zanki and would just be picking up details that Zanki didn’t cover but your professor covers.

I wouldn’t make cards for in-house lectures. Rather, get those details from hammering a ****load of in-house practice questions and referring to in-house slides for questions you get wrong. To really ensure a high score, you can create a filtered deck for missed questions and cram them every night up until the in-house exam.

This is what I do and this order will make the process much more efficient.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

I personally would drop the in-house lectures. You’ll learn the material better from BnB anyway and you’ll be skimming the in-house powerpoints to make sure you don’t miss something they foot stomp anyway. Are the reviews recorded? You can watch them on 2x just to see what they emphasize.

Thanks, I think I'll cautiously try this. I'm a bit worried because some M2s told me in-house is so different that they barely pass/borderline fail simply relying on Anki + BnB. My school really does have an air of "trust OUR system" to be completely honest.

 

[RadOncMD]

Thanks, I think I'll cautiously try this. I'm a bit worried because some M2s told me in-house is so different that they barely pass/borderline fail simply relying on Anki + BnB. My school really does have an air of "trust OUR system" to be completely honest.

I respect that it’s ultimately your choice, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend this. Just like you, my school’s in-house is extremely different from Step resources and students have failed and had to remediate doing this. Do your professors write exam questions based directly on the lectures? If so, I truly believe it is important to watch those lectures to do well on in-house. It is 100% possible to balance both in-house and step prep. My method is based on the Anking’s method and he did well on in-house and also got a 260+.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

I've been using a lag strategy for the Anking/Zanki deck and it has been working perfectly so far. Basically at the end of each block, I would unsuspend all of the cards that I had learned for that block and do 40 cards a day throughout the next block. I can blast through these cards easily as I had just learned all the material and additionally, I'll watch the accompanying Bnb/Pathoma/Sketchy Videos along with additional boards resources for that previous block. I learned about the 40 cards a day technique from @AnatomyGrey12 and @slowthai but I didn't want to randomly start at the beginning of the deck nor did I want to spend a lot of time going through the boards material specific to the material that we were covering that block.

Therefore, the downside of this technique is that you won't get additional reinforcement from using boards material/ Zanki simultaneously with your school curriculum. However, I don't care about that because the goal is to do well on Step 2 CK and I already get enough enforcement from my school curriculum. The upside is that you save a lot of time because you already learned the material from the block prior and getting through the boards material/ Zanki will be much quicker. Also, because you're only doing 40 cards a day, your number of reviews will only peak at about 200 a day, which you can get through in an hour. Finally, I feel like I can think more deeply about the subject matter after finishing all of the material for that block.

Would doing 40/day be at a disadvantage compared to strategies that do hundreds of cards a day? I've been watching the Anking videos and even with his "efficient" study methods, it looks like he does 300-400 reviews/day and adds 150-250 new cards/day. Though I assume it would take up many hours of his day.

 

[slowthai]

Would doing 40/day be at a disadvantage compared to strategies that do hundreds of cards a day? I've been watching the Anking videos and even with his "efficient" study methods, it looks like he does 300-400 reviews/day and adds 150-250 new cards/day. Though I assume it would take up many hours of his day.

No. The strategy behind doing 40-50 news a day is to cover the deck at a good but manageable pace, allowing you to finish well before dedicated. The total number of cards someone has to do will depend on multiple factors: the average number of new cards you do per day, your settings, and your retention of those cards.

There are multiple ways to do this; you just have to find the one that works for you. Some people like to just do a massive bolus of the new cards for the whole block during the first week and just keep up with reviews after that. Some like it slow and steady with the 40-50 news/day setup. It can quickly get out of hand once you hit 150+ news/day; that's another reason why I recommend starting at 40-50 and then titrating up if the pace is too slow or you want to get ahead. The more news you do each day, the more reviews you'll have to do, which is when people start to struggle with Anki.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

I respect that it’s ultimately your choice, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend this. Just like you, my school’s in-house is extremely different from Step resources and students have failed and had to remediate doing this. Do your professors write exam questions based directly on the lectures? If so, I truly believe it is important to watch those lectures to do well on in-house. It is 100% possible to balance both in-house and step prep. My method is based on the Anking’s method and he did well on in-house and also got a 260+.

Lectures actually have not yet started, which will in a week. So I don't know how much time I will need to do all these things, but I made this post in preparation for the coming storm. I am also unsure how the exams are written, but I know for sure that they are not NBME and are pretty different. I'm not sure if this is the same for other schools, but for each block, we have like 5-6 different professors giving maybe 1-3 lectures each. I assume they jointly write the exams or exams are written by the block director.

Ideally, I'd like to balance both in-house and step prep. What is worrying me is the large number of mandatory hours I have to show up to; aside from anatomy and reasonable clinical experience, mandatory stuff still takes up at least 12-16 hr/wk I could otherwise be devoting to studying/research/having a life.

I guess I'm just freaking out because I don't know what to expect. In terms of hours, the math doesn't add up to me, which makes me feel very pressured to cut out unnecessary things.

 

[RadOncMD]

Lectures actually have not yet started, which will in a week. So I don't know how much time I will need to do all these things, but I made this post in preparation for the coming storm. I am also unsure how the exams are written, but I know for sure that they are not NBME and are pretty different. I'm not sure if this is the same for other schools, but for each block, we have like 5-6 different professors giving maybe 1-3 lectures each. I assume they jointly write the exams or exams are written by the block director.

Ideally, I'd like to balance both in-house and step prep. What is worrying me is the large number of mandatory hours I have to show up to; aside from anatomy and reasonable clinical experience, mandatory stuff still takes up at least 12-16 hr/wk I could otherwise be devoting to studying/research/having a life.

I guess I'm just freaking out because I don't know what to expect. In terms of hours, the math doesn't add up to me, which makes me feel very pressured to cut out unnecessary things.

Understood. Definitely a good idea to ask these questions now and save this thread for reference later.

I want to clarify that I started this routine during M2. M1 at my school was basic principles and physiology for organ systems. M2 is when my school teaches path/pathophys along with micro and pharm. My M1 year was very similar to what you described about having 5-6 different professors giving maybe 1-3 lectures each. Honestly at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re talking about the same school lol.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Thanks, I think I'll cautiously try this. I'm a bit worried because some M2s told me in-house is so different that they barely pass/borderline fail simply relying on Anki + BnB. My school really does have an air of "trust OUR system" to be completely honest.

I go to USUHS where we take nbme and in-house exams. Some of our in-house exams focus on stuff that is highly relevant for military medicine but basically absent in nbme stuff. A lot of my classmates still just completely skip lecture and do fine on the in-house exams.

That’s why you have to look at the slides and make sure you don’t miss stuff they hammer on. My in-house neuro midterm was like 25% about TBI, and there was maybe 1 question on it on the nbme and a single lecture. But it’s super relevant to my future patient population, so it was heavily tested on the in-house. I had looked at the lecture slides for that lecture and made some extra anki cards for it and did fine.

There’s more than one way to do things so do what works for you and lets you still have a life.

 

[slowthai]

Yup, Zanki is a marathon not a sprint. Most people who start do not finish and I'm assuming a big factor is because of the number of news they do every day, leading to hours of Zanki a day. Ultimately, they just end up quitting. Also, the people who do hundreds of news a day are trying to match Zanki completely to their curriculum, but that's not my style. I want time for other things like research and I learn the material well enough through my in house lectures (which are pretty good).

This right here. There is zero need to search by keyword for what your school is covering. It's a massive waste of time and is an inefficient workflow. If you just do enough cards in whatever subject you're covering, you'll end up covering all that you need to for school and step (obviously supplementing with school lectures prn). You're going to cover everything in the deck anyway; why waste time focusing only on cards tied to keywords? Plus, just like TheDavidLettermanShow said (and I've said in the past), you'll end up doing a crapton of news, just ballooning your review workload, maximizing the difficulty of remaining consistent over the long term.

I think part of the reason why people do this is because they are so focused on what their school is doing; I would encourage people to look at Anki and boards resources as allowing you the freedom to create a self-styled curriculum for yourself, learning the way you like, going at your pace.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

This is random but the quote in your signature really hit me. Haha. " Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."

If you like that, you should check out the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. That’s what it’s from.

 

[IWishIWasBuff]

I would watch BnB at normal speed. The videos are already condensed and every word Dr. Ryan says is crucial. You want to absorb every single detail. My general rule is never 2x speed high-yield board videos. Only 2x speed low-yield class lecture.

I would watch BnB/pathoma and study the corresponding unit cards in Anking BEFORE even touching class lecture. If your lectures aren’t mandatory attendance (likely not due to the shutdown), save watching them for end of the week/weekend. Use the beginning of the week to do BnB/anki related material for those lectures and use these as your primary study tool. Approach lectures as review at 2x speed; at this point you would have already learned a lot of it in Zanki and would just be picking up details that Zanki didn’t cover but your professor covers.

I wouldn’t make cards for in-house lectures. Rather, get those details from hammering a ****load of in-house practice questions and referring to in-house slides for questions you get wrong. To really ensure a high score, you can create a filtered deck for missed questions and cram them every night up until the in-house exam.

This is what I do and this order will make the process much more efficient.

Following up with this, do you recommend taking notes during either BnB lectures or in-house? I ask this because I've read some comments saying this will slow down efficiency and Anki reinforces concepts anyways, so no need to take notes. Though, the thought of not taking notes feels a bit...strange to me.

Do you use any 3rd party practice questions or Qbanks for M1 (or other means of practice)?

 

[RadOncMD]

Following up with this, do you recommend taking notes during either BnB lectures or in-house?

Do you use any 3rd party practice questions or Qbanks for M1 (or other means of practice)?

I wouldn’t recommend taking notes on either. For BnB, there are PowerPoint slides that go with his videos, so you can read along if you want. But I would emphasize just focusing on the videos. Treat Anki cards as your “notes” which are already written for you.

For in-house, don’t waste time re-writing notes on ppts slides. Just read, understand, and go straight to practice questions. Refer to slides for questions you get wrong.

 

[RadOncMD]

Some people start Rx in M1. I didn’t b/c I wasn’t aware of the resources back then.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Following up with this, do you recommend taking notes during either BnB lectures or in-house? I ask this because I've read some comments saying this will slow down efficiency and Anki reinforces concepts anyways, so no need to take notes. Though, the thought of not taking notes feels a bit...strange to me.

Do you use any 3rd party practice questions or Qbanks for M1 (or other means of practice)?

He says stuff that isn’t in the slides. I jot those things down into first aid in the relevant sections. That’s the only note taking I do.

 

[deleted1005514]

He says stuff that isn’t in the slides. I jot those things down into first aid in the relevant sections. That’s the only note taking I do.

Same. My professors either read the slides or put everything they say in the notes section. For BnB I take notes in First Aid.

I understand wanting to take notes though, because I pay attention better if I’m doing something with my hands, but it doesn’t need to be excessive notetaking. I could jot simple questions for later quizzing, rewrite things in my own words (quickly), doodle, etc. I just need to be doing something. I can’t just listen and learn. I’m not an auditory learner at all.