Learning how to study

In my Master's program at BU I took medical school classes.  We had the same syllabi, professors and everything that the med students did.  I studied all the time and got straight A's.  I mainly studied by rewriting my notes at least 3 times and gained a deep understanding of each subject.  I did well enough that I was asked to tutor students in both the school of medicine and dental school.  I thought that same approach would work well in medical school, but I quickly learned that I barely had time to go through all my notes even once before an exam.  I forgot about one key difference between my Master's program and medical school:

A typical week in grad school

last week

Many (I might even say most) students in my class don't go to lectures.  The lectures are all video recorded and can be played back at double speed, opening the door for more efficient, high speed studying.  I was against this approach at first.  I have been going to school all my life, and I have always gone to lectures.  The professors teach you what you need to know in lectures, and that's how school works.  Well, going to lectures and attempting to rewrite notes led me to barely pass what should have been an easier module.  With a kinesiology degree, a master's degree and experience as a personal trainer, I should have CRUSHED the musculoskeletal module.  

For the current module, I revamped my study approach.  I stopped going to lectures.  I watched most of them on double speed, and only read through the slides for certain professors.  I bought outside study materials. First Aid is like the manual for med school.  I wished I had bought it earlier.  It doesn't tell me everything I need to know, but presents a good, organized framework of the "high yield" information that I can add to.  I also started using Picmonic which helped me remember some of the vast number of diseases we need to know for pathology.  I also changed my approach for studying anatomy, focusing more on the dissections than the self-study, and actually making use of my Netter's flash cards that I had neglected previously.  The true test of these methods was midterms this past week, and I did awesome!  Way better than any exams up to this point.  It was hard to transition away from my traditional learning methods, but it paid off.

With the completion of midterms we are done with learning about the heart.  I loved cardiology!  I am constantly changing my mind, but I think if you held me at gunpoint right now and forced me to choose a specialty I would say cardiology.  I love that everything makes sense - your heart is just a pump and your blood vessels are just pipes that change sizes.  The hardest part of cardiology was the huge amount of pharmacology, however this scene from Something's Gotta Give makes a lot of sense to me now.