Staying sane

Medical school can be nonsensical at times. Sometimes, especially on this island, one starts losing track of... well... life, really. And what is important.

Something, or rather someone, that keeps me sane: Eckhart Tolle. If you don't know who he is... look him up. He is a pseudo-spiritual teacher that teaches eastern-religious philosophies to the layman-western-world.

Very enlightening. Listening to him and reading his books makes it easier to breathe sometimes.

Thats all.

Very confusing

Just to let the world know. The hardest and most confusing stuff to learn for the first time... in my whole life... is..... lymphomas and leukemias. Wow. Just... wow.

I feel like I have a pretty good grip on it now... but seriously, this topic took me like 3 straight days of non-stop studying to even start to understand what lymphomas and leukemias are "ALL" about.

In conclusion: if you would like to make your brain feel 1/3 bigger, study white blood cell disorders. White blood cell disorders laugh at red blood cell disorders for being so weak.

Studying and practicing

Why is it that I seem to get my best studying done late at night??? When I was in violin school, I used to get my best practicing in late at night too.

2X speed

Wow... I was just watching one of the presidential speeches and I found myself thinking... "can I double-speed this?" At school here, all of the lectures are recorded and if you would like to watch one again (or just opt to watch it instead of attending class) you have the option of watching it at 2X speed. Also, the videos from pathoma.com (my new favorite site) and numerous Kaplan videos I've watched give you the option of watching them faster. It is just more productive this way, in my opinion. People talk too slow. You can save yourself so much time by doing this. You should try it some time... you get the same info in half the speed. It is soooooo much better.

So, sitting here, watching the president's speech, I would really like to watch it at double speed. I don't even know if I'm going to watch it. The facts-learned-to-time ratio is just way to low for my taste.

FYI, other items with low facts-learned-to-time ratios include the following:

1. Actual text books (this does NOT include review books, which are KEY in med school)
2. Magazines in general
3. looking up facts on the internet and not using wikipedia
4. passive studying/learning (as opposed to active learning/studying) <---more to come on this later

Short post dedicated to the best book in the world

I don't go anywhere without this book. It has EVERYTHING you need to know for your first two years of medical school and it has nothing that you don't need to know (which is even better). This book goes with me EVERYWHERE. I am constantly using it and it is always open while I am studying. It is concise and to the point. It has helpful pneumonics to keep everything neatly organized in your brain. I'm pretty sure that if you memorize this entire book, you WILL get a perfect score on the USMLE step 1. What is this creation that god has sent from the heavens?

This piece of gold is called: FIRST AID! More specifically, "First Aid for the USMLE step 1," also known in the 'biz as FA or just "the bible."

So it's like 2:00 in the morning and I'm studying (hey, when you're in the zone, you're in the zone) and I have decided that I am in love.... with a book... First Aid. You are truly a hero. Where would I be without you? You get me points on every test that I would have otherwise missed. You tell me things that are REALLY important and guide me in figuring out what is important and what is junk. You even recommend other review books that might be helpful in specific subjects. You are really amazing, First Aid. I love you.

Term 4 update

So, I've been in the **dreaded** term 4 for a few weeks. Here's how it's going: pretty good. I've decided to do my own thing... kinda. I'll explain. I'm feeling pretty lucky that I freaking majored in microbiology in undergrad. Why? Because the first few weeks of micro has been a TOTAL review. We just started learning about viruses. I took an entire virology class in undergrad. Needless to say, I haven't been studying micro hardly at all this term so far. What have I been doing, you ask? I have been getting ahead in pathology... REALLY ahead. I've kinda been doing my own thing. I've been learning not only the upcoming week's material, but I have been getting really ahead... like learning the next 2 or 3 weeks material. I've never done this for any class. I kind of put myself on my own schedule. If all goes to plan, I'll have like 2 weeks to review all of pathology for our first exam. I guess I'll know if this works after I get my grade on the first test. I mean, it's going pretty well so far... I don't know... I guess we'll see.

As far as our other class, communications and physical diagnosis: I like it... A LOT. I'll explain in a subsequent post, but it's pretty cool. I feel like after this class, I'll probably feel a lot closer to being a "real" doctor. The class is hands-on doctoring stuff. We have to dress up and wear fancy shirts/pants every day... and we have "patients" who are basically REALLY good actors who are paid to pretend to have a particular disease. And when I say REALLY good actors... wow... I mean REALLY REALLY REALLY good. These people don't mess around. It's neat.

Anywho... back to studying pathology. By the way:

www.pathoma.com = game-changer
It's awesome.

Term 4

Term 4 is underway.... kind of. We just got done with term 3, which consisted of a behavioral science course, kinda like psychology, bioethics, health systems around the world, and how not-to-get-sued as a doctor all wrapped up into one. So, needless to say, I immediately threw my notes away for this class the second I got out of the final. I ended up getting an A though. So that's cool.

Now, we are starting term 4... which, as the rumors on the island have it, is the most daunting term in all of medical school. Why? I think because we have a 13 credit course called pathology (the study of disease) and a rote-memorizing course called microbiology. This week, we have just had a couple classes a day in microbiology, so it still kinda feels like vacation. Next week, however, is when pathology starts and the fun begins.

I don't know... I'm feeling pretty good so far about term 4. I think I have a pretty good game-plan for this term. Ahhh yes, the game-plan, the most important part of studying, in my opinion. The easy part is sitting down to studying the material. The hard part is coming up with a plan that will maximize your time studying and be most efficient as possible. I think that this is the reason why most people fail out of medical school. They don't have a game-plan. You really need to focus your time on what is important and come up with some good study aids and decide exactly what and how you are going to study for a particular subject.

I'll give you an example of kind of what I am talking about, a few weeks ago, a friend was looking through my notes for a class and started freaking out b/c I had put an X through a bunch of the lecture slides. She asked me, "why did you do that, you are crazy, you have to know that, it's in the slides." That is the completely wrong attitude to have... Lecture slides are literally hundreds of pages long for each course. Just because it is in the notes does not mean that it is important. If the professor spent 1 minute on one slide, and 20 minutes on every other slide, freaking cross out the 1-minute-slide. Seriously. Don't waste your time.

So, anyways. That's my rant. I'm feeling pretty good about this term. My game-plan for pathology: www.pathoma.com and a BUTT-LOAD of practice questions. My game-plan for microbiology: Study microbiology over this past summer break and get really ahead... **check that one off the list**.

We'll see how the next few weeks go. Oh, and one more thing about the game-plan: more often than not, it changes.