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Just a guy in med school

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justaloser:
Short post this week, I swear.

This week was a revision week so we basically had no classes or lectures -- we did have one on bacterial pathogenesis (how bacterial cause disease/damage) and epidemiology but apart from that none.

Study-wise I continued using Flora. I noticed that I was only clocking in 1-2 hours per day but that's alright because I'm not behind on lecture notes and tutes. Plus my friends in cohort also felt the same way so I don't feel like I'm dragging behind too much. On Saturday I had a pretty good day where I clocked in 3.5 hours and retired early but that was because I was synchronising my pomodoros with a friend -- I hope to replicate this
time (record is 6 hours but IDK if that's feasible) to the point where it's at least every 2 days. Today I've only done about 1 hour but I also spent 2 hours working out with friends over video call which was neat. I aim to do a further 1 hour or so after I've written this and cooked dinner.

In terms of how I've revised I've used "timelines" which link together all the content I've learnt into one page. eg. for Pharmacokinetics (from last week) I wrote a timeline summarising the process of drugs from administration to excretion. Also what's helped for taking written lecture notes is "blocking", graphically organising "chunks" of info into "blocks" with clear lines eg. Piaget's Cognitive Development theory is one block, Carey's theory is another block. With the summary pages I've made I've also tried to have a "block" for key words (I adapted this from Cornell notes, which are seriously worth the time trying) that make it easy to judge my knowledge. This works for every subject I have except anatomy which I haven't tried it with (I haven't really spent too much time on anatomy apart from quizzes and practising examinations on self/parents).

Mental health has also been good, idk how, but I just made myself stop comparing myself to others. It's weird to explain but I feel better and know better than to "indulge" in unproductive, self-deprecating thought. Diet is a lot better, just by paying attention to what I eat and avoiding eating out of boredom I cut out processed sugars almost entirely (no more chips, cookies, ice cream) and have returned to eating fruit/chugging water. I guess it's just being aware of what you're doing and avoiding "indulging" in things you know are bad for you. It's likely not as simple as that, there are probably other confounding factors though.

Sub-100 new cases daily for Victoria is also really good news, I hope people don't immediately rush out and start a 3rd wave once this Stage 4 is over.

Take care everyone, have a good week.

justaloser:

--- Quote from: justaloser on August 30, 2020, 05:20:15 pm ---(record is 6 hours but IDK if that's feasible)

--- End quote ---

It's feasible!

Managed 5 hours 45 minutes of concentrated studying today, treating time spent studying like weightlifting (progressive overload) (also having Flora to record my progress) really pushed me to keep doing more. That being said a lot of it wasn't spent "studying" per say but just going through mandatory content so maybe my triumph is baseless. That being said, I feel like I learnt a lot, and that's the key objective.

Anatomy of lower limb is quite tough because we got hit with a ton of lectures/content day 1, but I pre-answered some of tomorrow's tute questions/learnt the relevant muscles and I feel like I've gained a lot of progress (I tried to take it as a chunk-by-chunk process rather than "all at once"). I used a "Key Terms/Key Facts/Key regions" split for studying muscles of lower limb which helped *a ton* because I can chunk it down into "compartments" and then individual muscles and also keep track of stuff like which muscle attaches where. Also having a "tl;dr" section on Notion for the main compartments of the limb & what each compartment does is a nice way to take notes and make sure I get the big picture.

I feel like this is how Week 1 should have gone, treating it rationally and making sure to rely on the textbook whilst watching lectures and understanding that the knowledge will come eventually (rather than going "Oh shit I don't know anything!"). I think I can cope with anatomy slightly better, but it's a process and I'll never have learnt enough in anything.

Also drank a ton of water.

Tomorow's a long day with like 3 lectures & 4 hours of tutes so gonna retire to bed now.

chemistrykind:

--- Quote from: justaloser on August 31, 2020, 11:04:08 pm ---It's feasible!

Managed 5 hours 45 minutes of concentrated studying today, treating time spent studying like weightlifting (progressive overload) (also having Flora to record my progress) really pushed me to keep doing more. That being said a lot of it wasn't spent "studying" per say but just going through mandatory content so maybe my triumph is baseless. That being said, I feel like I learnt a lot, and that's the key objective.

Anatomy of lower limb is quite tough because we got hit with a ton of lectures/content day 1, but I pre-answered some of tomorrow's tute questions/learnt the relevant muscles and I feel like I've gained a lot of progress (I tried to take it as a chunk-by-chunk process rather than "all at once"). I used a "Key Terms/Key Facts/Key regions" split for studying muscles of lower limb which helped *a ton* because I can chunk it down into "compartments" and then individual muscles and also keep track of stuff like which muscle attaches where. Also having a "tl;dr" section on Notion for the main compartments of the limb & what each compartment does is a nice way to take notes and make sure I get the big picture.

I feel like this is how Week 1 should have gone, treating it rationally and making sure to rely on the textbook whilst watching lectures and understanding that the knowledge will come eventually (rather than going "Oh shit I don't know anything!"). I think I can cope with anatomy slightly better, but it's a process and I'll never have learnt enough in anything.

Also drank a ton of water.

Tomorow's a long day with like 3 lectures & 4 hours of tutes so gonna retire to bed now.

--- End quote ---

It's good to see that you feel better adjusted to your subjects homie :0
Also nice to hear how long other ppl study per day! I average around 4-5 omg

justaloser:
Really short update inbetween studying blocks. ("Short" because it took me 17 minutes instead of like 30-50)

Anatomy of the lower limb started this week. Initially quite intimidating with all the muscles and stuff but again, compartmentalising makes it fine. Spent Saturday going through Moore & Dalley blue boxes, learnt about what muscles are the hamstring muscles, learnt that there are bursa in the hip joint (it's like an "oh shit, what, they exist" moment, but then again, they should be there...). Apart from that, there was physiology and pharmacology. I love pharmacology, learning about how the drugs work is interesting and using it as applied physiology (eg. we learn about receptors in physiology, then study the relevant drugs targeting said receptors). But it's unfortunately taking a backseat to anatomy.

Mental health is still alright, not as good as the start of the week mainly because I had a day doubting myself because I thought I was answering questions too much. I don't want to be seen as a gunner lol, it's like a weird variant of Impostor Syndrome. But I bounced back pretty well I reckon and even though I'm not as ecstatic as I was on Monday I think I'm in a good space.

Also averaging like 3 hours' study a day which is good by my standards (others are probably studying more though), I never beat my 5h on Monday, but doing 3x1h study seshes seems to work. Having a friendly competition with a 4th year mate is what really pushes me, also the satisfaction of seeing the hours go up on Flora.
I'm feeling pretty confident with anatomy, but I probably need to write a timeline/summary sheet about neurophysiology which everyone seems to dislike (ran a poll about most disliked subjects in the gc, it was pretty tied between anatomy and phys).

The assignments are starting to flow in, two out of three have been released (one had a Q&A session without being released lol). One of them is a group assignment and our group is pretty good I reckon. I'm probably the weakest link because I'm the resident dropkick med student. I did some research on chronic kidney disease for our assignment today which is pretty interesting, but also tough because kidneys are Year 2 content. The other assignment is on epidemiology and I haven't planned that out yet. I found out it's basically identical to a Year 1 BMed assignment which was pretty interesting.

That's it for the week (or maybe today). Take care, stay safe.

justaloser:
Mid-week update, I reckon I'll post biweekly so each post is longer. Also doing this while waiting for a friend to get on to study. Happy R U OK day by the way, it's at least good that there's an event that puts the spotlight on mental health.

Content this week has been manageable. No anatomy lectures, just online, asynchronous activities that were a slog to get through but oh-so-satisfying to finish. A fair amount of physiology & pharmacology -- I love pharmacology by the way. It makes physiology feel rewarding to learn. We studied NSAIDs, SAIDs -- basically anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce pain like paracetamol. Had a good time today drawing a nice mindmap that incorporated drugs, inflammation in with how pain gets transmitted -- from the stimulus itself via the nerves to the cortex where it actually gets perceived. Maybe I should have put Pharmacy as my other-non-med option instead of Physiotherapy lol.

With the help of my mentor I've been able to improve my studying. She suggested taking down the 3 key ideas as dotpoints for each lecture, which complements my Cornell notes well. It makes the content easier to digest instead of noting every individual detail. I've been reverting back to logging notes physically, then summarising them as "factoids" (or 3 dotpoints) on Notion, which makes it so much easier to go back through (and nicer to look at!). That being said I've been noticing I haven't reviewed past weeks' content and I haven't been using Guyton & Hall enough to revise Physiology. That's midsem break stuff I guess.

Been clocking in average 3/4 hours everyday -- it's good compared to last semester. But my friend in a similar course has been clocking in 6 hours' daily study and I've been thinking that what I'm doing isn't enough. A friend of a friend apparently treats her study like a full-time job, clocking in 8-10h and although a friend and I discussed how that could be inefficient I think that's God-tier for medicine. (I feel like Patrick Bateman talking about study like this)

Mental health has been questionable. I've flip-flopped between feeling incredibly unstable and restless and feeling on top of my studies and confident about my progress with the content. Trying to hold out until my psych appointment next week -- looking very forward to it.

R U OK day hasn't really helped either -- I read an article by a guy opining that the day is more of a novelty than a real catalyst for change. I agree somewhat. One conversation can be what it takes to start further dialogue but a lot of the time you don't want to expose yourself like that especially to people you don't know especially well. I love my friends in med but I can't bring myself to be honest so it's yet another year of "Yeah I'm alright, wbu?". That's my hot take as someone who's been dealing with depression for the past 4 years or even more.

Anyway, enough pity-partying from your local dropkick medical student (that's my new title I suppose).  Looking forward to tonight's study and to tomorrow's ICL tute (our tutor shows us interesting cases he's found in clinical practice which I think are the highlight of the day).

That's it. Take care and make sure you're staying mentally healthy. :) And if you're ever experiencing any mental difficulties, just know it's OK and treat it like a regular sickness and talk to someone about it. As a friend said, if you had an acute fever, you'd probably see the doctor right?

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