In order to do your best, sometimes you have to study less.
If you set out to get an A in the most difficult, hardest, most challenging class at your school, how would you go about it? What would your strategy be? For many of us our reaction to taking very difficult classes is simply to lock ourselves in the library for days on end before each test and to pour every waking moment into our preparation. This was my initial reaction as I began to take organic chemistry. As I began to struggle in the beginning of the semester, I spent more and more time at the library until not only my grades were suffering, but my friendships began to suffer as well. Eventually I learned something that is very counterintuitive, but what I believe is actually the secret to long term academic success as a premed student. In order to do your best, sometimes you have to study less. We can all agree with this principle on a microscale, but for some reason there is a disconnect when we decide to apply it to the rest of our lives. For example, let’s pretend that it is bedtime and you are taking the MCAT tomorrow morning. There are two options available to you: 1. Go to sleep and get eight hours before your test tomorrow 2. Stay up all night cramming as much information into your brain as possible while drinking as much coffee as possible Which of those two options will result in the best test score? While I absolutely love coffee, obviously the best thing to do is to get a good night sleep. That sleep though comes at the cost of several hours of studying. Sleeping well, spending quality time with family, hanging out with friends, volunteering in a meaningful way that serves the community, going to church, exercise, investing in the next generation, and having fun are all things that will improve your test scores if you include them in your schedule. The key is balance. You will preform your best in your most difficult classes when alongside your studying you are also keeping the rest of your priorities in line. This is because while the quantity of the time you spend studying will go down, the quality of that study time will dramatically increase when your life is balanced. This is a tension every student has to learn how to manage. There are weeks when your every waking moment is spent in preparation for a really difficult set of tests, but if every single week is like that then you will start to burn out and preform worse and worse as time goes on as the quality of your study time steadily decreases. The other reason it is important to keep your priorities straight is because they are your priorities. If you preform excellently in all of your classes, but lose hold of the more important things in life, then at the end of the day that report card is worthless. Work is just one part of life, and the key is to keep it in its proper place. The most intense academic semester I have had so far was the Spring of my junior year while I was preparing for the MCAT, but it was also one of the most enjoyable semesters of college. Yes, it is possible for those two things to go hand in hand. I found that having a balanced schedule of hard work actually gave me a great deal more of satisfaction in my work, I preformed better and achieved better results from my work, and I didn’t lose sight of the things most important to me. It was a great semester. It is great to talk about balance, but practically it is difficult to put into practice because when the next big test rolls around the stress you feel will cause you to be tempted to throw everything by the wayside and hit the library. My biggest practical recommendation to is to decide how much you are going to work every week. Be intentional about that decision, don’t just let it happen as your stress level dictates. During my MCAT prep I made a weekly calendar template and set aside time for the non-negotiables such as work, class, sleep, small group, and free time. Then I penciled in the hours I was going to study each day. It is important to decide what your typical week looks like instead of just letting it happen to you. Then in that MCAT semester as I was studying for my Genetics class I would get out two pieces of paper, and write down everything I wanted to do to study for the next exam. On one sheet I would write down everything that I wanted to do as the class went through the material, and then on the other I wrote what I wanted to do in the two weeks leading up to the exam. Then as each week started I would take my checklist for what I wanted to do for Genetics and assign those tasks to those chunks of time when I would be studying in my generic weekly schedule. Then each morning as the day started I would rearrange that day to fit the specific things happening that day. Intentionally deciding how you are going to spend your time on paper allows you to make clearer decisions about your time, and it allows you to improve your schedule from week to week to make better use of your time. The irony is that it takes time to do this, but I have found that investing a small amount of time in planning how I will spend my time actually results in a lot more free time than when I just kind of wing it. Having a balanced schedule frees you to truly do your best in your classes while insuring that the most important things are kept in front. And as an aside, I am NOT an organized person, and I was able to make this work. It doesn’t have to be a fancy little notebook or anything, I personally use blank pieces of 8 ½” x 11” paper for my everyday and Google Calendar/iCal for my weekly template. Don’t bite off more than you can chew As you take a look at your weekly schedule, you might realize that there is no way to make everything fit. Lots of premeds find themselves in these crazy semesters where they are trying to take lots of intense science classes along with getting shadowing hours, working in a lab, trying to actually have friends, and sleep all at the same time, and at the end of the day they end up doing none of those things well. As you plan for your next semester position yourself for success and only bite off as much as you can chew. As much as possible, spread out your difficult classes across different semesters. I took organic I, organic II, biochemistry, genetics, and Spanish literature all in different semesters, but if I had taken those classes all at the same time I would have done poorly in all of them. Think very carefully before taking leadership positions in organizations on campus. It is a good thing to be involved, I am personally on leadership at RUF and Mercy Health Center here at Georgia, but think carefully about your schedule before adding anything to it. If you try to do everything you will do nothing well. Pick the two or three things you want to do and go all in for those things. This is especially true for the semester you will take the MCAT. Do everything you can throughout your college career to make the semester before the MCAT as chill as possible. This will enable you to study the way you would like to for the MCAT so that you can confidently feel like you have done your best to prepare for it when test time comes. There are students who start studying for the MCAT the month before the test because of busy school schedules who do very well on the test, but just from my experience it was so nice to be able to take my time and go over the material at a steady pace. If you absolutely have to have a busy schedule that semester it will be ok because there are lots of other students just like you, but if you can afford yourself the luxury of studying for the MCAT at a slow steady pace definitely take advantage of it.
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AuthorI am a premed senior at the University of Georgia, and I hope you find this blog helpful in your journey. Archives
January 2016
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