How do you study?

liberal

Say you've an exam on haematology this day week,
you have 18 sets of lecture notes, and a pock reference book of haematology, MCQ based exam, do you make your own condensed note? I do but im starting to think its too time consuming... would you find a suitable text book? use flash cards? make ryhms?

PhysiologyRocks

I try to force the information in. I read around it and then focus on the important stuff. I think hard about it and chat about it with my friends.

When I know the basics well, it's easy enough to deduce the harder stuff logically. I always learn in small chunks so it stays in.

In a short space, I read and repeat it in my head, and make sure I consider it, so I'm not just reciting stuff.

I've tried making notes and that doesn't suit me all that well, but I do record myself saying significant/big/difficult things.

ergo

I found that making my own clear, well-structured and easy to read notes based on a combination of lecture notes and core textbook material was the way to go (for me...)


but if the exam was next week and I hadn't already done this then it may be too late for that approach - maybe a combination of reading the book/highlighting, making short points (possibly on post-it notes and sticking them on relevant pages) - I don't know, for me I find that the physical act of writing something down does help it to register in my memory

and depends on the exam - if it's all MCQ's well then need to practise them too...best of luck...and if it's haematology....argh...that's tough :eek:

liberal

yeah its a tough subject, the lecturer is a hard ass aswell

Im beginning to realise that my simultaneously reading the text and taking notes approach isnt for me

in college i pride myself on being the guy that understands instead of learns by heart, but i study like a guy who rote learns, having a bit of an identity crisis

thanks for all the tips lads

imported_guy

im doing mechanical engineering :O, i usually rely on my math in every subject, and i just practice questions/do past exam papers/try to predict whats comming up (works in atleast 3-4 subjects out of 6 every semester), watch youtube videos, i never really use text books, i usually try to summerise the whole course in 1 to 2 pages every semester, (its probably not possible in medicine lol), back in school if i had to learn stuff, id just make bullet point notes, and i still do that.

chanste

If an exam is looming and I feel like I'm up the creek my methods would be quite different to normal, but in such a case I would try to list as comprehensively as possible all the things I am supposed to know for the exam, then attempt to reduce it to a list of things I NEED to know for the exam bearing in mind any options available etc. I would highlight anything which I feel I know or partially know and immediately focus on bringing this knowledge up to scratch so as I can remove them from the list which so desperately needs shortening. Of the rest I would try to identify any topics which were stressed during the course and focus on them using past exam papers wherever possible, then finally I would try find key chapters in books I like working from that are less intense, but provide a nice overview and plough through the remaining stuff (I don't bother writing a thing when I've little time - unless I am having difficulty remembering something in which case the act of transcription can help retainment)

A few useful things to bear in mind:

• Test yourself within 30 mins of learning something to see if there is anything that you simply never absorbed.
• Test yourself the following day too. I find the best time to study something is a point in time when you were likely to start forgetting it and in many cases this will be the following day (Doesn't have to be hardcore - things like flash cards or diagrams you were to learn are great.).
• Never study when you are tired. If its 8 o'clock and I'm tired of studying (but too worried to stop), I go to bed and wake up at 3 with a somewhat fresher head.
• Be careful about the books etc that you choose. I find the most basic book in a subject is almost always the right choice, unless I need a specific detail in which case I go to more complicated books only for that detail.
• Try to associate whatever you are learning to anything from your own personal experience.
• Study stuff in small manageable chunks and you should feel some sense of progress which may encourage you, and make sure to take a break every now and then (even if only 5 mins to listen to a song or make a cup of tea)

tech77

liberal wrote: »

yeah its a tough subject, the lecturer is a hard ass aswell

Im beginning to realise that my simultaneously reading the text and taking notes approach isnt for me

in college i pride myself on being the guy that understands instead of learns by heart, but i study like a guy who rote learns, having a bit of an identity crisis

thanks for all the tips lads

The thing about Medicine is an awful lot of it seems to be a narrative, a story (lists of arbitrary symptoms etc) from which it's often difficult to infer any real meaning.
And even if meaning is inferrable, a lot of textbooks (even big ones like Kumar and Clarke) won't make explicit that particular meaning.
So without meaning, it's difficult to retain (for me it's nearly impossible ).
There are literally hundreds of conditions which have arbitrary constellations of symptoms and associations (with no obvious understanding of mechanism).

Off the top of my head (maybe not the best example) i'm thinking of:
Crohn's associated with smoking/
UC not.
Both IBD though- so this is, if unaccompanied by further textbook explanation (often the case), counterintuitive.
I'm sure someone here will give an explanation but in most textbooks an explanation isn't offered- so you gotta learn it off without understanding it.
You risk forgetting if you don't understand it.

That may be not the best example (because an explanation is out there somewhere if you look hard enough) but there are countless conditions with arbitrary lists of symptoms seemingly (and actually) not amenable to actually understanding them.
Just my 2c.