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100 Things You’ll Learn Fourth Year of Medical School

Every year I’ve been putting together a list of 100 things I learned in that year of medical school. 

Here’s the (slightly belated) list for fourth year!! 

Read the other years here: 

First Year

Second Year

Third Year

Bonus: 75 Things I learned about Step 1 

This list includes things I learned about sub-internships, applying for and interviewing for residency, matching, and graduating! 

Sub-I is the smartest you will ever be in all of med school, enjoy it. 

ERAS will crash the day you apply. Don’t panic. 

Nothing feels as good as cancelling an interview. NOTHING 

Airport wine is ridiculously overpriced and often not that good, but so worth it after a long interview. 

Say thank you to all the people who got you here – it takes a village to make a doctor – you didn’t do this alone. 

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Anti-Indigenous things to quit saying/doing:

- Stop saying “off the reservation”. It’s a reference to the pass system that was in place restricting Native people from leaving without permission.

- Stop making “1/16th”, “great-great grandmother”, etc. jokes. All of these reference blood quantum, a system designed to “breed out the Natives”. Indigeneity isn’t defined by a percentage, fraction, etc. Quit policing Indigenous identities and quit joking about genocidal tactics.

- Stop calling things your “spirit animal”. You don’t have one. Only Indigenous people from specific nations have spirit animals.

- Stop making dreamcatchers. They are sacred Anishinaabe culture and are not cute trinkets, crafts, etc. Buy them from Anishinaabe artists.

- Stop buying those little cloth “teepees” for your kids/pets/whatever. Also stuff with tipi prints

- Quit referring to your “tribe”. Enough with the “bride tribe” nonsense and all the rest. Stop trivializing tribal affiliations.

- Don’t wear “war paint”. Don’t put a feather in your hair. Don’t dress up as Native people or characters.

- Stop referring to your meetings/side discussions/parties as a “pow wow”.

- Stop supporting sports teams that use racist terms and logos and caricatures of Indigenous people.

- Stop using white sage. It is sacred and overharvested. There are lots of types of sage you can use instead.

- Stop “smudging”. Smoke cleansing exists in many forms in many cultures, use that. Non-Natives can’t smudge.

- Stop tokenizing your Native friends, classmates, in-laws, half siblings, etc.

Please add more!

college note taking 101: how i take notes and use them to study for exams

in lecture:

i like to take quick/shorthand notes because i think learning to discriminate between what is and isn’t important material is a good skill to have so i’m not drowning in useless information when it’s time to study for a midterm or final.

i like to bring my ipad and use the notability app. it’s easier for me to just carry an ipad mini and stylus than it is for me to lug around a heavy notebook/binder and several pens/pencils.

if the professor makes lecture slides available to students online (via a class website), i like to download them onto notability and annotate them as the professor goes along. that way, i can focus more on what the professor is saying and less on merely writing everything down.

if lecture slides aren’t available, i type out my notes as i find it faster than handwriting them.

at home:

once i’m home, i take out my ipad and copy down my lecture notes into a specified notebook for that class, explain everything more thoroughly, make them neater, and organize them in a way that makes more sense to me (as opposed to copying them down exactly as how they were presented in lecture).

i like to use lots of colors, highlighters, and etc. and make them as pretty as possible so i actually want to use them to study from in the future.

integrating reading notes:

normally, what professors will do is assign reading from a textbook and base their lectures around the reading (or have the reading be based on the lectures). usually exams/tests will rely mostly on what was said in lecture instead of in the reading and this is partly because they overlap so much. what the professor says in lecture, you should consider the “important points” in your reading. sometimes, though, there are things in the reading that seem important and weren’t mentioned in lecture.

what i’ll do if this is the case is take post-its, write the piece of information down, and stick the post-it in my notebook in the corresponding section (i.e. where it fits best with my notes)

i like this method as opposed to taking notes directly in my textbook or having a separate notebook for only reading notes because 1) i’ve consistently found that reading material is not as heavily focused on in tests as lecture material and 2) i like to have all of my information in one place

using my notes to study:

when an exam is coming up, what i like to do is take all of the information in my notebook and condense it into a study guide that i can use to study from.

the format of my study guide varies depending on the class and which type of study guide and method of studying i think will help me best. my study guides range from flash cards to mind maps to sheets of paper with a bunch of condensed information.

if i come across a concept on my study guide that i can’t completely explain to myself/don’t fully understand, that’s when i’ll look back in my notebook for a better and fuller explanation of it.

i also like to give myself some time before an exam to completely read through my notebook and look at all the notes i’ve taken (not just what i have on my study guide) because i think it’s a good refresher of all of the lecture and reading material and all of the information will be brought forward in my mind.

[* a few of you have asked me for a advice on note taking: how i take notes, methods i use, how i study from them, and etc. i hope this post was helpful to you! feel free to message me if you have any other questions. happy studying! ^_^]

100 days of productivity || day 2

In the progress of making notes for my Psychological Statistics exam. I don’t get this shit 😭😭

#studyblr #originalpost #studyspo #psychblr #100daysofproductivity

To all my freshman babies who are panicking right now about how much your college textbooks cost: Yeah, you’re right, that’s some highway robbery. No, you don’t have to lie down and take it. You have options. Follow my advice and fly on your own debt free wings.

1. Forgoe the bookstore entirely. Sometimes you can get a good deal on something, usually a rental, but it’s usually going to be considerably more expensive to go through official channels. Outsmart them, babies.

2. Does your syllabus call for edition eight? Get edition seven. Old editions are considered worthless in the buyback trades, so they sell for dirt cheap, no matter how new they are. It’s a gamble, sure; there might be something in edition eight you desperately need, but that never happened to me. However, I’ve only ever pulled this stunt for literature/mass comm/religious studies books, so I don’t know it would work in the sciences.

3. Thriftbooks.com, especially for nonfiction and fiction. Books are usually four or five dollars unless they’re really new, and shipping is 99 cents unless you buy over 10$ in books, in which case shipping is free. 

4. Bigwords.com. It will scan every textbook seller on the internet for the lowest price available, and will do the same to find the highest price when you try to sell your books back at the end of term. Timesaver, lifesaver.

5. In all probability, your library offers a service called interlibrary loan which is included in your tuition. This means if your library doesn’t carry a book you can order it for free from any library nationwide in your library’s network and it will be shipped to you in a number of days. Ask a librarian to show you how to search for materials at your library as well as though interlibrary loan; you’ll need to master this skill soon anyway.  If you get lucky you can just have your required reading shipped to you a week before you need to start reading, then renew vigorously until you no longer need to item. I’m saving over 100$ on a History of Islam class this way.

You professors might side-eye you for bringing an old edition or a library copy, but you just smile right back honey, because you can pay your rent and go clubbing this month. You came here to win. So go forth and slay.

If you spend a lot of time on your laptop for work, study, etc., you should definitely check out this app called Noizio. It provides ambient background sounds that help calm you or keep you focused. You can even make and save your own combination of sounds. My personal favourite is winter wind + wind chimes + sea waves. Each sound’s volume can be adjusted individually as well!

I need advice. I've always had a problem with my grades. I've failed a lot of classes, not because I don't understand, just because I'm so depressed I can't find the motivation to do a single thing. I know that this year I NEED to get good grades. Report cards are almost out. Im more depressed now then ever. I have bad grades at the moment. I just recently learned that I have to put my cat down, and that is making it hard for me to even speak, let alone get stuff done. Any advice

/hugs/ I’m so sorry to hear that you’re going through a rough time. Especially with your cat. 

First thing is first: take time. From what you’ve written, it doesn’t sound like the content of your classes is causing you trouble. Rather, it seems like there’s external factors that’s preventing you from studying - circumstances which are triggering your depression etc. 

Studying with depression is difficult. Consider professional help as an option. Rely on your support network. Learn to forgive yourself for not performing at your best because of your mental illness. Remember - it is something to be managed; not a barrier to your success. 

I’d also consider speaking with your faculty/ advisor etc. There may be formal avenues of review or adjustments to where/ when you take your exams and/or deadlines that may help relieve the stress in the interim as you get back on your feet. 

Here’s some tips re: motivation 

Five Practical Study Tips to Keep Motivated in School by @nag-aaral/ @sadgirlstudying​ (working link by @pas-au-talent​)

Motivation by @areistotle 

Motivation masterpost by @elkstudies​ 

Motivation masterpost by @artkidstudies 

Tips for avoiding burnout and staying motivated by @coffeesforstudiers

And for dealing with failure: 

Dealing with Failure

Shit Grade? Feeling better after a terrible exam

This response

And this one

And this one here 

On Bad Semesters by @post–grad​

This Masterpost by @areistotle​

How to Fail by @psychstudyblr​ 

Good luck - give yourself time. Focus on “how” (not just a demand - ‘need’) to get exams. Celebrate your victories - not matter how small. Because it’s going to be a slow process. But you’ll get there. It may not be the ‘perfect’ solution or the perfect ‘result’ you want - but hell, we’re human. It keeps things interesting. 

tips for organizing quals notes/general studying tips...I'm taking them at the end of the Spring semester eep!

i sure do have some! context: i’m an english lit phd, at an R1 institution, & my quals involved 

3 reading lists (for major, minor, & research fields) totaling about 300 items

a written portfolio (3 sample syllabi, a publishable article, dissertation prospectus)

& a 3-hour oral exam (30-min presentation, 2.5 hours of questions from reading list & portfolio) conducted by a 5-person faculty committee (3 direct advisors, one for each field, & 2 additional examiners).

i took mine 6 months early, so i only had about 6 months to prep instead of the usual 10 months to a year.

>> advice on reading for your quals, under the cut.

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What made you get into bioethics? Like, what about it captivated you enough to go to school for it?

As with all the great passions of my life–theology, every boy I’ve ever liked–it started with an argument.

The summer before my junior year of high school, I went to a summer camp where we stayed on a college campus and took mini “classes” and generally nerded it up for three weeks. You got to choose your “major”–the main class you took–but you were also assigned a random “minor”. The minors were unusual, like Hebrew or pottery or the history of war.

I was put in Bioethics. 

My teacher was a professor of philosophy from a nearby university, and I fucking loved every second of it. I loved the articles we read, I loved watching Gattaca and talking about genetic manipulation and individuality, I loved the professor and the insights he brought up (one day class was totally derailed by the question of why we refer to the soul as “my/mine/ours” what’s doing the owning there? that blew my little high school mind.)

Most of all, I loved the arguing, I loved the wordy back and forth of it–I’d been reading Stoic philosophy in Latin and ethics is endemic to theology classes, so I had a vague grasp of the territory. The rest was being quick on your feet, taking in information and then twisting it, trying to articulate vast things, poking holes in someone’s argument and defending your own. Looking back, I am dead certain I was insufferable–there were whole classes that I spent just arguing with the professor, while my classmates looked on. But I was too excited by this new toy not to…be an asshole about it, basically.

The social dimension of science has always fascinated me–I can still remember our physics teacher sitting down and explaining the reason that Aristotelian physics hung around so long was because it bolstered Catholic theology, my AP Bio teacher talking about how Rosalind Franklin’s work was ignored. So when I was reading through UChicago’s course guide, and I saw their description of the major, I was sold.

And honestly, it was a perfect choice for me. “Bioethics” is a very simplistic way to put what I studied; the major itself was the history, philosophy, and social studies of science. So it was a chance for me to just glut myself on knowledge–one quarter I would hurry from my Cancer Biology class on the science quad to Magic & Medicine in Ancient Europe in the history building. I went to lectures about the social factors influencing kidney donation, and international medicine. I wrote my BA thesis on how bioethics has failed to respond to the changing way medicine is done.

There are things I regret about my undergrad career, but my major was absolutely not one of them.

A User’s Guide To The Brain

More about the human brain and behaviour on @tobeagenius