How do you study?

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One of the biggest things I’ve been thinking about lately has been study habits. This semester was supposed to be easier than last (according to students in 2nd year, partly because of classes like behavioral science and nutrition) but I have not seen it that way at all.

I am a bibliophile–I’ve collected textbooks for subjects I don’t even have and may never have, simply because they’re interesting (Half-Priced Books has taken way too much of my money), so it’s no surprise that my first study instinct is to read the textbook faithfully. Sure, I’ll skip a part that’s clearly extraneous for the interest of time (Guyton and Hall comes to mind), but some of the most rewarding time is spent just reading, highlighter in hand, marking those few items I think are important/worth going back for further review. Note the word few. One of the reasons I don’t buy as many used textbooks as I would like to is because of incomprehensible highlighting to the point where non-highlighted text is the minority. Multicolored highlighting on the same block of text is especially baffling.

In a perfect world, I would do the following:

1. Read the textbook, highlighting important points not to miss
2. Review my class notes which usually come in PowerPoint format, considering the above
3. Make my own notes, mixing the two sources
4. Use BRS or other good review book to make sure nothing important is left out
5. Review my notes
6. Make flash cards on those things which I think are necessary for memorization details
7. Further review of my notes, perhaps re-reviewing BRS
8. Look at PreTest/online quizzes/old school tests if available

If I were to follow that plan with the time I currently spend studying, I’d probably get halfway through #4 before exam time. Remember that I’d have to do this for EVERY class, and there’s really no let-up in things to be done; I’d have to essentially be near perfect with my time management to get this done, and I ain’t close to being halfway there. Basically what gets sacrificed is the review, and that’s where the real “stickiness” of the material should be. I feel I’m still going over relatively new material almost all the way up to the test instead of reviewing, mastering, and taking it “to the next level.”

I don’t have first-hand knowedge of attending any other medical school, but I have a feeling that ours is lacking in prepping us for the USMLE in terms of rigor, consistently deciding to administer tests that have already been given (in various forms) that reflect the professor’s or department’s objectives. Often times I feel compelled to do learn the material well for its own sake, make sure and focus on what I think will be on the exam to get a good grade, but at the same time not think that just because omitted from our course objectives or that it didn’t get tested on I can let it slide. All of this can make for a level of performance and expectation that basically leaves nothing out if you want to excel, and that is stressful as all hell.

So to my medstudent and recently graduated readers, how do/did you study during this time? What gave you the most return for your time, and what changes did you have to make? I’ll post again on what I think are technological advantages and obstacles in learning (ie, laptops, PDAs, Internet, etc.) for me, and see what else that uncovers.

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  By Niels Olson, March 31, 2006 @ 9:46 am

  Enrico,

  I don’t read textbooks. I have them, and I refer to them, I carry around more than most, but I definitely don’t sit down and read a chapter from the first page to the last page. I noticed during the first weeks of this semester: I didn’t read books on the job in the Navy, I just had tons of them and read the sentences, pages, or paragraphs that I really needed to solve whatever problem faced me at the moment, which was usually oriented around producing something, a security plan, a casualty report, something that told somebody else what I needed to know. Now I’m producing things for myself, things I use the week before the test. A port plan, a maintenance schedule, was always written for somebody senior to me, who’d know quite a bit about what I was trying to convey. Similarly, as we progress through blocks of material, we become more informed. That’s the person I produce the flashcards for: me in a couple of weeks. The flashcards should at a minimum address all the learning objectives in the notes and anything I didn’t pick up in class (I usually write cards in class also. I get either the whole question and answer, or just the question, or just the answer. This is fine for me. That’s what the end of the day review time is for. Flashcards also minimize the barrier to repitition. In fact, they make repitition the norm. You have to shuffle through the cards looking for one, you’re constantly reorganizing them, looking at them. That seems to me to be only a good thing. They don’t travel perfectly well, not as well as 8.5″x11″, but nothing’s perfect. Sometimes I forget flashcards and just have paper, in which case I write as though I was writing flashcards and then I rewrite the notes as flashcards once I have some blank ones in hand. Production and repitition. Not enough time to read about this stuff and producee and repeat. The textbooks are just there to provide answers for flashcards that I can’t otherwise complete.

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