5 Ways Top Students Study That You (probably) Don't

1. Flood and retreat titration Take an hour/a day/a week to flood your brain with everything you need to know about a chapter. Retreat: learn things step by step to let it sit better in memory 2. Explain things like you would to a child 3. Malignant Active Recall Interrupts forgetting curves. Things taken out of original context and we become better at remembering them. YouTube, Wikipedia, Textbook, real life examples. 4. Emotional damage. Case where mistake happened that led to tragedy 5. Learn by osmosis Long exposure= source of valuable information. Being in environment helps you grasp things subconsciously. Passively absorb

Not to get heavy, generalise, or castigate med students, here (most are great people), just a PSA: if you're a non-med student or person who is close friends with someone starting a medical degree or course, be emotionally prepared to lose that friend inside of a few years, particularly if they're studying at a higher institution with a class-based reputation. These types take on a volume and intensity of work/study expectations that precludes a lot of friendships, plus their insular social bubble tends to shut out anyone not in the 'inner circle'. I lost a few good longtime school & Uni friends that way, realising eventually that their career track in medicine (and in white-collar) was everything to them, and my friendship was one of the sacrifices they deemed necessary to follow it. Am not making a moral judgement, either, just sharing my story and making sure others know that it is a very common one and likely to occur.

I grew up in an environment that there was a strict schedule I needed to adhere to regardless of my mental state to be even considered 'genius'. And as I grew up, I realized that there were people smarter than me that didn't need to follow the same drill I did and they are better in terms of output. I was in a dark place after that because my parents and peers compared me to them while saying I was lazy even if I did all what they said. Its a lot better now though, I realized that studying techniques can change since our mind does to, and it's totally okay to change your strategy and doing a lot of work without enjoyment is just painful versus and searching an alternative that can make you happy and allow you to retain more is not 'lazy'.

1- flood and retreat (learn it in that first instance, with all the complexity but not expecting yourself to remember or know everything. It is to get FAMILIAR with the extent of the topic- you will then begin to KNOW it LATER: ie when you choose to study or when you see it again practically etc.) 2- Feyman’s technique (How would I explain this to a patient/client?) Everything will need to be explained to a patient/client at some point, and the Sam- you need to be able to understand everything in it’s simplest terms and clearest forms, so always practice breaking down and explaining things to yourself easily. You can never know the most complex things the way you want to without first understanding it in a very basic way. *dont fear ‘not knowing’. -communicate in a way you would have understood 5-10 years ago. 3- active recall *forgetting is INEVITABLE; don’t fear it or think it means you do not know that thing well. •’Malignant active recall’ - getting yourself to recall things when they arise at different points in life, in random contexts at any point during your life. Getting into the habit of it; helps you to grasp the information in its fulness. Eg watching a movie or chatting at the dinner table. So we don’t have to rely on just scheduled study. 4- ‘Emotional Damage.’ Mistakes are actually super super helpful and very very important. Lool. You won’t forget after that. Also attaching what you’re learning to an emotional experience. 5- learning by Osmosis You learn a lot from ‘passively’ being in areas or places that are subject specific by absorbing information. Eg- greys anatomy; reading friends’ paper etc.

I'm a life-long learner, so I appreciate all of the techniques that I can incorporate in my studies.

I also think explaining things is the technique that helped me learn the most. Every time I stumble upon a new complicated topic I immediately explain it to people around me even though I might only understand 20% or less. Often their questions are similar to the ones I have, but through the dialogue answers just pop up and connections form in my head that I wouldn't have grasped by looking at the same text for hours.

Flood & retreat describes how I naturally approach subjects I want to learn, and have done this from childhood unknowingly. Who knew? Great stuff as usual!

The main thing is, how do you handle attending lectures, tutorials / seminars, and on top of that find time to do the flooding and titration of information, and then find time for revising the info to make sure it sticks in your brain? (AND ON TOP OF THAT DO YOUTUBE? / have a hobby / having enough sleep??)

Great points. I think the volume of information that medics need to learn means we have to study effectively, especially in postgraduate training.

also the ability to link different types of information is something I was able to learn in med school. organ systems are always linked together so when I did my clinical rotations I was able to finally understand how to link organs together since I was seeing the patient as a whole and not as a disease

Exams in three months. Trying to flood myself with information on study techniques. Thanks for tips, Elizabeth.

I grew up around doctors, I worked around doctors for many years... You are going to be a great doctor. This one is great! I have been following for a while over on Nebula and thanks for all the content. I did notice though, and confirmed by quickly going through older videos, your speech appears to have gotten significantly gotten faster and faster over the past two years. Just thought I would mention it. Thanks for taking us along with you through this journey.

When I was in my last school years (10-11 grades), the amount of information was just huge and it was in a test form, so a lot of unrelated information. I studied biology a bit better than other subjects, so we grouped together with anyone who wanted to study biology too and just retell each other topics. So I can definitely see perks of the teaching methods.

Another great video to improve study and recall. Helps with IT topics as well!

I wish there were more people like you on YouTube. You’re so unique and I wanna binge your content all day and I’m out of content 😂

I'm in a physics based field as a graduate student. I'm so glad to see we use a lot of similar techniques (they force us to describe what we're doing without jargon to discuss our experiments to the school newspaper often). I'm going to go forth and apply these more intentionally now. The one I've noticed I have to be the most intentional about is active recall. My field is aerospace so I clutter my subscriptions with pilot training videos and NASA related news. I also like to watch crash investigations from official sources or highly informed channels. It keeps me thinking about the fundamental principles and it keeps the idea of designing for the human factor firmly in my mind. There are crashes that seem like the crew were just bonkers, but those crashes are so often caused by the system not giving them good information and/or them forgetting a memory item (like a warning that means one thing on the ground means something else in the air... but they have never seen it in the air so they disregard it). Otherwise I am very far removed from the pilots who benefit from my work. I design and use software for the edge of what can be done on a supercomputer to research tiny effects in very simple geometries in high speed air flow. The end result of my research is often niche and it will have to trickle down for awhile until it gets to a real airplane design, but the goal is improved aircraft performance and safety. Even if I'm just looking at a tiny, simplified part in a big engine or the pylon in the juncture behind a wing.

Thank you for the flooding technique. I'm hoping it will help me be less hard on myself trying to remember everything at once. I'm studying at home for a few months while saving for actual classes where I will put the info to use.

Yes, we are flooded with the infos like crazy, the teacher expect us to answer each of their questions perfectly!! But at first in items, I have so many infos, that i gave up on learning, and thus when the term comes I go into more details, and when prof comes I gradually capture the whole concept. In medical college the topics are interrelated. So studying one concept doesn’t make any sense!! I have been avoiding panicking from using the flood & retreat titration method for so long without knowing it. Thank you so much!!!

This was a really cool video because I could relate to each study technique even though I was never a medical student. The flood and retreat one especially is what I do automatically when I'm interested in a topic, but I definitely remember the emotional damage one from playing in band in high school.

once in a math class, my class mate that sat next to me asked if i could share my notes with her from a lecture she missed, so after class i ended up rewriting my entire set of notes in a way that taught the entire lesson to be sure she had all of the information and concepts she needed, in a much more legible set of notes than my personal notes. that is the MOST i had ever understood a math lesson in my life and i aced the test 😂🫡