In which it is revealed that I’m more OCD than previously imagined

The Memoirist — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:12:12 +0000

I’ve talked before about my (bad) study habit of making tons and tons of flashcards. At one point, it seemed like a good idea–all along I had planned on making a bunch of flashcards during my first two years so that I would have a leg up in preparing for Step 1. Somewhere along the line I realized that this plan wouldn’t work, because of my OCD nature to make a flashcard for every single factoid possible, combined with my lack of the proper organizational abilities to keep everything in a coherent order. What ended up happening was, after a test, I would just toss all my flashcards from that unit into a box and forget about them. Two years later, my study room was cluttered with a ton of disorganized boxes from the first two years of med school. If I had possessed the willpower to actually go through everything and organize it in a coherent manner, my efforts during the first two years of med school would have actually made a pretty good, if overly thorough, study aid for Step 1. But I realized some time ago that this would not really be feasible, or necessarily useful. So, at some point, I just decided to collect all my flashcards all until the end of second year to see if I could quantify my insanity during the first two years of med schoo. So today I dumped out all my boxes to view my collection in all its “glory.” I was actually pretty impressed with myself–I wasn’t expecting it to be such a big pile. It was so big, in fact, that I had to take pictures…

After I dumped out all the boxes I got a shot from above to show the mass, but there was no perspective, and it doesn’t look all that impressive.

So I stacked it up next to the biggest textbook I could find, Robbins & Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease, which is a massive tome that stands ~11 inches tall and weighs about 7 pounds.

As you can plainly see, my mound of flashcards dwarfs Robbins in every dimension. This is two years worth of med school.

I spent about thirty minutes removing all the binder clips, paperclips, and rubber bands from all my piles of flashcards.

And in the end, it all winds up in the garbage. Oh well, I won’t be sorry to see it all go. My study room is far less cluttered now.

Tomorrow I begin my preparation for Step 1.

There’s Gotta Be a Better Way

The Memoirist — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:40:39 +0000

Seriously?

You’re looking at my ridiculous flashcard collection. Those aren’t my accumulated flashcards from throughout med school. No. Those are my flashcards FOR THIS TEST. WTF?

The cards in the box are what I feel relatively confident I know. The stack next to the box is the stuff I need to learn in the next 48 hours. Looks like I have my work cut out for me.

Last year I did well by making flashcards for every little fact or funtoid I could possibly need for the test. (I tend to learn well by flashcards, sue me.)

The problem here, as you might be able to see, is that I’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. Hell, I reached that point, blew past it at ludicrous speed, and left it spinning behind me like a cartoon road sign. I slammed on my brakes somewhere around the point of futility, and came skidding to a halt at the point of absurdity. See, it wasn’t always like this. Last year, I might have a couple hundred flashcards per test. That might sound like a lot, but it’s actually very do-able. I’m estimating my current collection here at somewhere around 1200. That isn’t gonna work. I can’t even carry them all around with me.

The main reason for this dramatic increase in flashcards is largely because we’ve started Pharm, and there is a LOT of memorization for that class. But still, I’m obviously gonna have to re-evaluate my study methods for the next test. This is ridiculous. With this many flashcards, I don’t even have time to review them all enough times, let alone actually LEARN them.

A Med School Memoir » study techniques

In which it is revealed that I’m more OCD than previously imagined

There’s Gotta Be a Better Way