Written By: Lauren Griffin, Class of 2022
Here’s My Advice…
Even if you think you’re the study-alone-type, you should still make time for studying with partners and/or in groups as well, as this is an excellent way to:
- learn other study strategies
- hear others’ perspectives on what’s important
- hear their interpretation on some of the harder concepts
- Sometimes I would breeze over some concepts, thinking I understood them, and would then hear friends talking about them and realize I had a very shallow understanding.
Take advantage of the free tutoring!! I never actually sought out tutoring personally, but I did get lots of second-hand help from friends that got tutoring, and it was life-changing when it came to hard stuff like immuno and neuro.
We have some incredible faculty members here that you should really get to know. I’ve never been one to go to office hours, make friends with professors, etc., but it just happened naturally here for me. Just a few of the most welcoming that you could easily get to know first (if you’re the shy type, like me): Dr. Bridges, Dr. Peterson, Dr. Ziegler. Mentors are important on the journey to becoming a physician. So, find your people.
Get involved in extra-curriculars! Join a couple clubs and be active in them. Take advantage of the volunteer opportunities within these clubs. Not only will it be fun, but you’ll slowly be working on that CV for residency applications. I’d recommend choosing one academic club (like family med club) and one non-academic (like garden club) in which to really dedicate being an active member.
Do practice questions! I did these for each system during 2nd semester for physiology. Probably would’ve been helpful for anatomy as well. The online library has BRS (Board Review Series) available, which has a manageable amount of questions (with very good explanations for right and wrong answers). Emily Hudspeth and Seth Bayird made this website with practice questions also. There are a ton of other resources with practice questions. Kaplan online board prep should be made available to you 2nd semester, which has videos, PPTs, practice questions, etc. Random tidbit: Kaplan practice questions saved me in FHC1 (biostats, prevalence/incidence, sensitivity/specificity, etc).
Pre-reading everything isn’t really practical… but always 100% of the time helped me. So, if you have time, do the pre-reading. Or find videos online that correspond with the pre-reading subjects.
Ninja nerd. Watch all of his videos for everything. Everything.