Study

[Belgarion]

HI, im a first year biomed student. Ive noticed that for many of us, most of use spend our time summarising our lectures, tutes, etc as well as the textbook briefly if we dont understand something. I feel like we should be dong more revision but summarising takes up most of our time. Exams are in 5-6 weeks and i was just wondering, do people usually leave their revising to SWOTVAC? Or are they constantly revising? Because i just dont think its realy possible to summarise all this content and revise.

Looking for advice from 2nd and 3rd years who have experienced this. Thanks

[golden]

Summarising your lectures is partly revision!
Commonly the lectures are highly reflective of the exam.

[Peedles]

When I did my Science undergraduate, it was definitely possible to summarise all the content and in essence, be revising at the same time. When SWOTVAC came along, I would revise these summary notes that I had made. It's kind of at your own discretion if you choose to summarise all the lectures or not. For anatomy I did, but for biochemistry for instance, I only summarised the lectures that I had trouble with and only used a textbook when necessary (which wasn't much). With 5-6 weeks to go, it would be impossible to summarise now as you would just be wasting your time. But then leaving 72 lectures or whatever crazy amount you have for your core subject would be silly. Skim through the lectures, find the ones that you struggle with and summarise those. I'm using the same approach to study as I did for dent now and its working fine.

Wait... I assumed you were in 2nd year, but hopefully you get the jist of what I'm saying.

If you are just summarising lecture notes because other people are, then don't waste your time. Be efficient, when you are summarising your lecture notes ACTUALLY revise.

[Greatness]

Last year, I didn't really do any summarising or revision throughout the semester. I left it all to swotvac then summarised lecture slides or textbook as my method of revision, then if there was time I would do tute questions or sample exams. I passed everything and did alright in some subjects, but I don't recommend it. It's pretty inefficient.
I hate summarising. The slides that we're given are essentially summaries of the textbook. I know that some lecture slides are pretty bare when it's like that highly recommend summarisng textbook or reading it and taking down main points.
I still don't have a study method... I find reading lecture slides as revision very very very boring and painful so I avoid that, even summarising is quite infuriating lol But I think doing the tutorial questions until you understand why you apply certain techniques or the concept is probably what's worked best for me so far, especially in summer semester when I did 2 subjects. Of course if I don't understand something then I have to read the slides/textbook but if I'm trying to revise I prefer to do something that is active i.e. doing questions and applying knowledge rather then passively reading slides or copying out notes.

[Belgarion]

When I did my Science undergraduate, it was definitely possible to summarise all the content and in essence, be revising at the same time. When SWOTVAC came along, I would revise these summary notes that I had made. It's kind of at your own discretion if you choose to summarise all the lectures or not. For anatomy I did, but for biochemistry for instance, I only summarised the lectures that I had trouble with and only used a textbook when necessary (which wasn't much). With 5-6 weeks to go, it would be impossible to summarise now as you would just be wasting your time. But then leaving 72 lectures or whatever crazy amount you have for your core subject would be silly. Skim through the lectures, find the ones that you struggle with and summarise those. I'm using the same approach to study as I did for dent now and its working fine.

Wait... I assumed you were in 2nd year, but hopefully you get the jist of what I'm saying.

If you are just summarising lecture notes because other people are, then don't waste your time. Be efficient, when you are summarising your lecture notes ACTUALLY revise.

Ive been summarising since the start of the semester, so its not a spur of the moment thing lol. Im good at summarising, always have been. The thing that worries me is time. One bio lecture for example take 2-2.5 hrs to summarise which is a lot but reasonable for the amount of content. Since being good at summarising, its a benefit for me, but i know others have to spend 3-4 hrs per lecture. If your essentially doing that for all your subjects, it does take quite a lot of time.

I know summarising is a form of revision, but you still have to go back and go over and over so you know it, it is a lot of content. Thats what im having difficulty with and i know for a fact its not just me. And i really dont want to start revising in SWOTVAC, i want to start earlier but i just cant seem to find the time without falling behind. I don't even read the textbooks as much as i did at the start as it is too time consuming, only if i need clarification. Now you know my dilemma lol.

P.S i was told that the biomed course goes through content a lot faster and there's more of it compared to the science degree, so im not sure if its an accurate comparison. Feel free to correct me if im wrong.

[Russ]

I did biomed and I don't think I ever actually was up to date with summaries at any point during the degree, for any of my subjects (and I'm still not lol). Don't stress too much about it. As long as you are making a consistent effort and you're not way too far behind, it really doesn't matter. You only have 36 lectures for the subject, of which 3-6 are probably blanks (intro lectures, summary lectures, revision lectures etc.). In my experience, you can easily read through and learn 10 lectures in a day in SWOTVAC, so you can finish the subject in 3 days of committed study. My methodology for revision was to write out in a summary book the lecture slides + my annotations and then to read over them verbally, to reinforce them. I found that unless I actually didn't understand something at all (rare), I didn't need to ever consult a textbook or spend time actually "learning".

[Belgarion]

I did biomed and I don't think I ever actually was up to date with summaries at any point during the degree, for any of my subjects (and I'm still not lol). Don't stress too much about it. As long as you are making a consistent effort and you're not way too far behind, it really doesn't matter. You only have 36 lectures for the subject, of which 3-6 are probably blanks (intro lectures, summary lectures, revision lectures etc.). In my experience, you can easily read through and learn 10 lectures in a day in SWOTVAC, so you can finish the subject in 3 days of committed study. My methodology for revision was to write out in a summary book the lecture slides + my annotations and then to read over them verbally, to reinforce them. I found that unless I actually didn't understand something at all (rare), I didn't need to ever consult a textbook or spend time actually "learning".

Now that you mention it, i did revise lectures 1-9 in a day during the break for the assignment. Im up to date on my summaries, which is a good thing. At the start i was consulting the textbook a lot, but now i rarely do. You just brightened my day russ, thanks. I still believe no amount of revision or study will help with this new maths subject though, but oh well. Thanks for the advice

[Shenz0r]

Is it just me or is Chemistry a subject where there isn't a whole deal of things to memorise? I expected at least 2-3 hours to summarise a lecture for Chem since it always takes me around the same time for Bio, but some lectures took like seriously 30-60 mins to summarise from the slides.

And I'm also finding it very difficult to keep up-to-date with subjects (Maths just consists of trying to do the exercise sheets, done 0 work for my breadth in the past 2 weeks, need to summarise the last 3 lectures in Bio and lectures 2-11 for Chem...)

[Peedles]

Ive been summarising since the start of the semester, so its not a spur of the moment thing lol. Im good at summarising, always have been. The thing that worries me is time. One bio lecture for example take 2-2.5 hrs to summarise which is a lot but reasonable for the amount of content. Since being good at summarising, its a benefit for me, but i know others have to spend 3-4 hrs per lecture. If your essentially doing that for all your subjects, it does take quite a lot of time.

I know summarising is a form of revision, but you still have to go back and go over and over so you know it, it is a lot of content. Thats what im having difficulty with and i know for a fact its not just me. And i really dont want to start revising in SWOTVAC, i want to start earlier but i just cant seem to find the time without falling behind. I don't even read the textbooks as much as i did at the start as it is too time consuming, only if i need clarification. Now you know my dilemma lol.

P.S i was told that the biomed course goes through content a lot faster and there's more of it compared to the science degree, so im not sure if its an accurate comparison. Feel free to correct me if im wrong.

Yeah, there is a difference between going over it again after you have summarised a lecture to make sure you have a grasp of everything. Compared to going over it again having never looked over it after going to the lecture. If you've understood everything when you were summarising then it will be alot less stressful during SWOTVAC. If you are looking back at your summary notes in SWOTVAC having forgotten everything, then maybe summarising lectures is a waste of time and you should find a more efficient and effective way of studying.

Whether biomed goes faster than science is irrelevant since you're a first a year, this is my general advice on one way of approaching study to you based on what has worked for me for my whole Science degree and now.

Hope this helps!