if you have time before u start med1 i would take an anat/physio 2 semester course at your local juco. with a good background/base in anat and phys you can not only do better in these classes, but it will allow more time to be put into the other classes in their corresponding term, which will ultimately help with your boards.

if med1 is right around the corner i would suggest prereading, then post reading every day. don't just preread and then sit in class and do nothing. stay on top of things and it will help...cramming will only hurt in the long term.

good luck!

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But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that.

and see what works as you come along. Study groups are good if you find the right ones-- basically they have to be on your level and motivated as you.

For example I learned the 12 cranial nerves much better by teaching it to others. Break things down into little pieces. Know what the four nerves are that have both sensory and motor 5,7,9,10-- for example. And then the first two are sensory and the last two are motor. That kind of thing. But other than that it just takes you sitting on your bottom and studying.

Another thing I used this semester is taking a sheet of white paper and folding it into 16 squares-- and using the outline/creases as a guide to draw a box/square. I write topics on the top with one color and write bullet points/key words underneath with a different color. I would do this for the powerpoints, questions etc. I found it much better than index cards. You can see the whole picture in a sense just by looking back a few squares. You have to be able to draw small. I think that this worked for me because you are active during the learning. And I used this to quiz my study partners. World Poker tour is on. Later and good luck.

p.s. I just looked and saw that I made a mistake and put 4 instead of cranial nerve 5 for a CN with both motor and sensory. Which ironically leads to another point/advice about studying and doing well. MINIMIZE YOUR STUPID MISTAKES on exams. We all do them but try and do as FEW as possible. One of my stupid mistakes was the ratio of T-cells and B-cells in a patient with HIV. I was going really fast and made a careless error even though I knew the answer.

or u can use mnemonics to learn CNs...its up to the person really.
good ideas by all.

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But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that.

from asking other people is that study groups should be small and one person takes the lead. There is nothing worse than 3 people talking at the same time. I'm the enforcer in my group-- when people start going off topic I steer us back ASAP. And I generally take the lead.

Don't worry about offending people if you don't think the group is a good one. I tried studying with one group and it was ridiculous. Two people were chatting, one person was always leaving to do something, etc. I gave it a try and left in about 30 minutes. Later one guy was like -- what you don't like us or something? This isn't high school. Common sense stuff but I see it all the time-- people so worried about offending others that they forget what they are here for.

Going over questions and answers seems to be the major theme/advive when it comes to USMLE. I think this is good also for your classes.

Another point. Sometimes when I ask a classmate if they want to go over a few things for about an hour or so-- they say that the haven't gone over that stuff yet. Which is fine. But on several occassions I was a bit aggressive and I pushed them to study anyways. I took the lead and in a sense spoon fed them the information-- they knew a lot more than they thought. And afterwards said that they got a lot from it. A recent MD grad once mentioned to me a pshycological term called "creative avoidance"-- and said that medical students do this often. Create trivial things to avoid the inevitable--you must sit down and study. My thing was "I'll wait for a good review sheet to surface". I've slowly gotton rid of this habit.

I found the best way to study anatomy was to just look at the pictures in netters and commit them to memory,,i'm a very visual person, so when the test came i could picture what i had seen in netters and i scored very high marks..in first semester you will have afternoon classes, so wake up and study for 4 hours or so, go to class, come home and review a little bit and take the evening to chill out and relax...one stupid thing alot of people do is try and stay up all night and study and when classes roll around the next day they are dead and don't pay attention in class, remember it is Quality not Quantity in hours studying, i used this method and scored much much higher than most others who stayed up trying to read for 12 hours...also, use the BRS to get the theory down...........other than that, group study really helped me, but like others have said you have to find a group of 2 or 3 that fit you...........one thing to remember, DO NOT study with people who panic and/or are negative all the time, they will bring you down(i witnessed this happen to some of my classmates)......good luck!

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SMU School of Medicine
5th Semester, Kaplan

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