High Yield Studying

I just got home around midnight from a power-study session with Jon, Cyrus, and Schai over at school. With our Pathology test tomorrow, we took advantage of a big group study session that began about 5pm and didn't break up until almost midnight. The picture to the right is the table in the cafeteria that doubled as our war room. This exam will be on about 7 week's worth of material and is worth about 40 percent of our grade. I have been preparing for about the last week or so, but gleaned a lot from our rapid-fire, "tell me everything you know about..." type session. Following every detail to its logical conclusion and trying to fill in the "whys" and integrate things we already know is the only way to fly! I am terrible at just straight memorizing. (information that would have been helpful before starting medical school hahaha)

In our Med Psych. class today we had a guest lecturer that was talking about stress in medicine and how it begins in medical school. He used an analogy that I found pretty accurate:

He said,"Medical school is like trying to drink water from a fire hose".

I think it is spot-on! As I approach the end of my 4th semester, I am realizing what an almost unimaginably huge volume of material we are responsible to know. In addition to my Clinical Medicine course the primary focus of next semester will be to review everything and be prepared for the board exam (that will pretty much determine the rest of my life so... you know....no pressure!)

I will be off to bed now as my exam is scheduled to start in 7 hours!