Medical School Resources and Tips

Study Tips

Studying to become a doctor is NO easy task. When I first started school, it's a firehouse of information that was thrown at me. It CAN become overwhelming because it's time consuming to learn all this new information. The best way to learn EFFICIENTLY is actually making condensed notes. Learn the broad strokes and then go into the details. Before I write out the details, I thought it would be easier to bullet out my tips.

Summarize lecture notes into condensed notes
UNDERSTAND the material
Teach the material to others (sometimes, I would speak out loud as if I'm lecturing to an actual class)
Anki Flashcard's!!! Very good for spaced repetition and long term retainment. I made flashcards for small concepts or for quick memorization.

Outside Resources

School is hard! They throw a large volume of information at you, and it becomes overwhelming! I struggled on managing this information! I wasn’t sure how to study so much and in such little time! Then I started to realize, that I had to condense my notes and lectures onto a separate piece of paper. Color coded them accordingly to how my brain functions. UNDERSTAND The notes and use Anki! I utilized outside resources a lot! The lectures were hard to follow along at first. Once I added outside resources to supplement with my lectures, school became manageable! Definitely NOT easy. I used USMLE-Rx (Scholar-Rx) and their bricks! This is a great resource for me personally! The bricks were easy to read and easy to understand! I would do the bricks before the lecture so when I went into lectures, I had enough background to follow lectures easily. Then second outside resource I utilized was First Aid Step 1 book. FA is a great book to reference back on what I needed to learn! The information was condensed so it was served as a great review and a supplement. I also annotated that book with my own notes! The third resource I used was Pathoma! This was handy during the immunology block! All the diseases and their mechanism were condensed in an outline format, so it was easy to follow along! I listened to Ninja Nerd lectures and Lecturio! These were my two favorite resources for lectures! The instructors delivered the material in a comprehensible manner, and it was easy to follow along! Lastly, I used Osmosis for practice questions! Do practice questions every day!! And read those explanations!!! LIFE SAVER I am telling you!

Pathoma
First Aid Step 1
Lecturio
Ninja Nerd
USMLE-Rx

Preparation

When preparing for school (or anything in general), make a schedule!! Either have a digital planner or actually paper planner (I prefer the physical one) and write in what YOU need to do!! Its instant gratification to cross off that task once it is completed. I always recommend skimming through the notes and then do USMLE-Rx Bricks before lecture starts!
Then I watch the lecture at 2X speed listening attentively to the instructor. Then after the lecture, I review what I learned about three times and then I start making condensed notes from what I understand. After a quick break, I make flashcards and start studying my notes. Once I've learned the subject, I would go back to the learning objectives and answer the questions broadly. Sometimes, I pretend I am lecturing to a class so I walk around in my room talking to myself or Meriam's stuffed animals lol. This is a great way if you know your material. I think it's good to skim over class notes before class starts as a preview! Always do practice questions!!!!!!!! Learn from the answer choice and explain it to yourself! Practice questions are a good indicator if you know your material, and if you can't answer the question or get it wrong, that indicates you need to review that topic. I recommend to form a study group and share your notes with each other! This is a great way to learn and it really reduces the load! Overall, school is manageable! You just have to keep up with it! You will face burn out but you can avoid that (I'll write a post about that too)! Also, NEVER compare yourself with other students! Everyone works at their own pace! Just keep working hard! It will show! We are not all rocket scientist! It's hard work that pays off.

USMLE-Step 1

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