Can I tell you a secret?
Anyone who graduates med school is a doctor, even if you are the last in ranking.
Being an achiever in med school is a plus but not a requirement.
There are other benefits to having honors, but that’s for another time.
Now that’s out of the way, I’ll tell you practical tips I learned that will help any student pass med school easily and still be able to enjoy their weekends (or what I like to call, ‘Reach Your Goals and Still Have A Life’).
Here’s what you’ll hopefully learn:
- Finally make studying fun (study and fun in one sentence…whaat??)
- Organize your time…to have more time
- Attain unlimited motivation even if you don’t feel like it
- Tap a gold mine of resource to your advantage
Now, let’s learn…how to properly learn!
Studying
Can I tell you another secret?
*whispers* I didn’t study 8 hours a day while in med school. *SHOCK*
But I did study in my own way.
Because you can’t go around it.
By the way, the things I will mention can applied to any year you are currently on, and not just med school, but to any college, degree or anything you are pursuing.
So, listen up.
Prepare your pencil to take notes. Because if you don’t get this right, the rest of the article will be in vein.
Yes, I did put ‘vein’ in purpose to see if you are paying attention.
Here’s the important nugget: Plan what to study.
Does your daily schedule look like this?
- 5am Read 1 chapters Guyton
- 6:30am Read 1 chapter Grays
- 8am Lecture
- 12 Lunch
- 12:30pm Read 1 chapter Parasitology
- 1pm Lecture
- 4pm Read 2 chapters Guyton
- 6pm Read 1 chapter Neuroanatomy
- 8pm Read 1 chapter Biochem
- 10pm Relax
- 11pm Sleep
- Repeat the next day
Phew.
Let me catch my breath first after reading that schedule.
For someone not disciplined (like me), good luck following that schedule even for a week.
You’ll burnout faster than a nosedive plane crash.
About the example schedule, that was my schedule. Because I was always told to ‘just keep reading your books’, ‘you should study at least 6 hours a day’.
Resulted in missing sanity, sleepless nights catching up, and on ‘survival mode’ for months.
So, here’s what I changed it to:
Before the start of a subject, I scanned the syllabus. Doing this will give you an idea what to expect. This is what you would call ‘North Star.’ A North Star is a guide to where you are going and what to study.
If you can’t get a hold of one, go up to a senior and ask for a general outline of what they did in a particular class.
*Side note wisdom from someone who has finished med school:
Since you are still in med school, you can’t yet grasp the broad and complex connections from each subject. That’s a concept that took me a long time to learn. Learn this as early as now.
Now that you have a ‘North Star’, focus on learning one concept at a time.
Here comes the strategic part:
Sometimes, that one concept is something you will read in passing, but turns out to be a very important concept.
What I challenged myself was to do active learning, by teaching someone else what you just read.
“If you want to master something, teach it.”
-Richard Feynmann
Teaching does not have to be in front of an audience. You can do it by yourself. Say it out loud. Does it make sense to you?
When you feel confident, try it with one friend. Do they understand it?
