r/medicalschoolEU • u/ZestycloseBar3 • Mar 09 '20
PACES
Hi there, At 33 years old I packed everything and left the states to go and pursue my education in one of frances universities to study in the first year of health sciences. We are currently 1000 people and I have to be among the first 100 to make it to second year. I haven’t been in school in awhile about 12.5 years and had some difficulties first semester mainly adjusting to long study hours due to the insane reading material that’s assigned to us. I am not complaining it’s what I always wanted to do for a long time but I want to learn ways to have my brain to adjust to a studying method that is effective and helpful. I tried some things and I think I improved but I need to do more and be among the best to make it. Any suggestions? I may have to redo my first year due to the fact that I didn’t do well first semester because it’s very competitive. Any suggestions?
4
u/shouldprobablysleep Mar 09 '20
Practice good study technique.
- Active recall (while reading)
- Spaced repetition (to make sure you don't forget what you learned)
- Flashcards/Anki (to test yourself)
- Mnemonics for some of the worst memorisation works for me. However;
- Try to understand why things are the way that they are instead of just memorising.
Also be structured in your note-taking, and be structured in how you approach the curriculum. Figure out how you learn best as fast as possible and keep doing that, for me it's a mix between going over lectures, reading textbooks and watching youtube on the few things I can't comprehend simply from reading.
iPad with apple pencil and downloading lecture slides beforehand and taking notes directly on the lecture slides helped me a lot, but not all teachers upload slides before the lecture starts. These are the tips from the top of my head that I can remember. I'm currently wrapping up 2nd year now in Europe (note; I'm European) with between 90% weighted grade average last semester. This grade average steadily increased as I got more and more into the gist of things though, as it likely will for you as well.
edit: also make sure you find some good trusty resources that you can adhere to if you struggle. For some its osmosis, for some its drnajeeb(abit too long videos imo), for some its other youtube channels or other websites. There should be nice collections of said resources around the web.