Med School Musings | Tips on Starting First Year of Med School - Pandemic Style

Hello everyone and happy December! I cannot believe 2020 is nearly over, but cheers to a happier, healthier, and brighter 2021. This year brought a lot of change: Post-grad life, starting medical school, and navigating 2020 in the midst of a pandemic. As I look back at this year, I'm so grateful the amount of change and growth that this year has allowed. If you recently started college, grad school, or a new job this year, massive CUDOS to you! This year brought upon a lot of unprecedented changes that none of us could ever dream of and we made it!! Cheers to that!

After two semesters of medical school-pandemic style (we start in the summer), I thought I'd reflect a bit on the journey so far and hopefully share a few of my experiences with any incoming med students!

With the new normal of "Zoom" classes, telehealth patient encounters, and a mix of certain in-person classes (depending on your school), there definitely is a lot of adapting! While it was quite daunting at first, I must say I've embraced this new style of learning. Even though we have limited in-person classes/experiences, the amount of learning material still remains the same.

With that being said, I've found a few of my favorite studying resources that have helped me stay on track and keep up with the material!

1. First Aid Book aka the Med Student BIBLE: An essential, even starting in 1st year. I like to annotate important notes from lecture (whatever is high yield) and review each relevant chapter as I prep for my block exams. Our exams are typically NBME, so this is SO helpful! It'll also save a lot of time down the road when it comes to studying for Step 1.

2. Board Review Series "BRS" Review Questions: awesome practice q's for multiple subject areas (anatomy, microbiology/immuno, pharm, etc.); I like to start doing practice questions about a week out from each block exam. I believe that BRS requires a subscription for online practice q's but they also sell the BRS subject books with the same questions!

3. ANKI: While I was hesitant at first to use Anki, I've found it soo helpful for retaining material. This is especially important for Sketchy videos, but also for all other topics. When preparing for my Micro, Immuno, and Pharm block exams, it's been so useful.

Pro tip: use PREMADE decks; check out Reddit! (I personally use the Zanki decks).

4. Sketchy Medical: Cartoons + Learning = A win-win. I can't say enough about how useful Sketchy is! I loved being able to connect what I learned in lecture to Sketchy videos and First Aid. I've found that most of Sketchy takes the high yield info from FA, and condenses it into a digestable amount of information! Also, watching the videos multiple times helps immensely.

As you may be able to tell, I'm all for condensing my studying resources into high yield, effective, and efficient ways. While there are numerous resources out there that many med students use, I've discovered early on that less is more--especially considering the amount of material and resources we are provided from the start. Resource overload is REAL (lol).

Below is a short list of a few resources that may be useful down the line, but if you're like me, stick to what works and remember, what works for one person may not necessarily work for you! It's totally fine if you're not using "x" amount of resources like everyone around you. Stick with what you like and find helpful!

Other Helpful Resources:

1. Boards and Beyond: informative videos, helpful for the Boards. Haven't used this yet, but a lot of people seem to love it.

2. USMLE-Rx: Practice questions/Qbank for Step1 relevant questions; I'll likely use this closer to Step 1 time.

3. Pathoma: (videos) Good for pathology/immunology topics; I used this a bit for Immunology, but I'll likely use it again when it comes down to studying for Step1.

Let me know if you've found this helpful! If you're a current med student, let me know if there's any other resources that are a must-have!

Stay safe and be well,

Brittany

Instagram: @styleandscrubs