How I study for finals
The most important step, PLAN PLAN AND PLAN!
This includes both a bigger plan for how you’re gonna cover the syllabus and a smaller day to day plan, for example if I have one month’s worth of classes in a final, I’ll usually do 5-7 day’s worth in one day. And I start out by the things I know very least. What I find most useful is downloading a calendar and filling it in this is an example of my brutal internal medicine schedule
As you can see, I don’t go by the order of the class schedule, instead I divide topics depending on what I already know most about and plan accordingly, taking both order and workload into consideration (obviously the things in lilac above would take a fraction of time compared to the things in yellow for example) and when it comes to reviewing, I go through the yellow stuff first. A crucial thing I do is that I leave at least 2-3 days empty because we all know schedules don’t always go as planned. And obviously this isn’t my entire IM syllabus, I already finished cardiopulmonology and other branches so I didn’t include them.
As for the actual day plan, I find that studying for the entire day can be extremely tough for me and wears me out like crazy, I only do one study session in the morning, spend 3-5 hours hanging out with people or playing sims, whatever I want basically, do practice questions for 2 more hours (relevant to that study session of course) and chill out for the rest of the night.
Moral of the story, pulling an all day study session/cramming=early burn out. You don’t want that so literally plan every part of your day, this is a crucial time.
I always say this but it’s so important, passive reading is NOT ENOUGH DO SOME PRACTICE TESTS/MCQs or whatever you can. Like I said, I do practice questions for things I’ve went over every single night during finals and that honestly imo is waaaay more important than just reading the stuff over and over. An important thing to mention here is to NOT GET DISCOURAGED when you get stuff wrong, that’s actually something you learned and you won’t make that same mistake again so .. it’s all good, you’re making progress.
That’s the main part of how I actually study, below are some of my tips that I stick to by heart.
Use the same source you learned from during the year this is crucial for your memory, do not *spontaneously* decide to use a different textbook or source just before your finals, whatever you studied from HAS TO BE what you revise from.
All nighters won’t do you any good Obviously your brain needs to sleep in order to consolidate information so just make sure you get enough sleep, some people study better at night and they get plenty of sleep during the day, not the ideal situation for your circadian rhythm or hormones but if it works for you, do it (it’s finals, we’re all practically dead anyways) .. yeah just make sure you get some sleep in. And trust me when I say no matter how much you think you can cram and get in during those hours you’ll be sleeping, sleep is so much more important than that, I know it’s tempting but GO TO BED.
Now is not the ideal time to eat absolute garbage food because you’ll feel like shit and (if you’re anything like me) won’t get anything done …so just eat the best way you can and I’m not gonna be one of those people who tell you to work out because I can’t bring myself to do it during finals, it’s just too much for my lazy ass .. but I do stretch every now and then and my “breaks” usually consist of me going on a walk or something. So just do little things that can make you feel good but don’t freak out if you can’t exercise or get 2 hours in at the gym, just keep a healthy balance. I have no idea if there’s any scientific background to this but I (think) honestly believe that almonds help with my memory?
Know that it’s honestly okay to stop when you’ve had enough and that everything eventually ends and that a bunch of numbers (your grade) DOES NOT DEFINE YOU. So what if you lose a few marks? So what if you don’t get this and this right? Even if you fail, what the fuck is wrong with that? You’ll learn from your mistakes and do better. The fact that you’re trying to better yourself and trying to learn new study techniques is enough, you should be proud of yourself regardless of the outcome.
