Your First Semester at Ross

Studying during the Basic Sciences:

Medical school is hard.  Information flies at you 10 miles/min and at the end of the day, you’re swamped by how much you learned and yet how much you still have to learn that day. I know I cried a lot of tears throughout my first five semesters due to just feeling overwhelmed.

  

First Semester:

Time management is crucial in making it through first semester especially.  You’ll have lectures in the mornings and lab times a few afternoons per week.  This means you need to get yourself a study schedule and stick to it.  I would look at my schedule and make a table of all my lectures so I could check them off one-by-one as I watched them; I’d also make a column for the second time to watch each lecture as well as each time I wanted to complete the practice questions.

Some people attend class so as not to fall behind.  If you need this accountability, go for it!  During my first semester, my baby was four months old, so this mama wasn’t sleeping through the night, at all.  Because of this, I found myself drifting off to sleep during lecture (sorry professors, I promise it wasn’t you, it was me.)  So I decided to use Panapto and it changed my life.  Panapto is the recording service RUSM uses to tape our lectures so you can watch the lecture at your own pace.  I would get up and go to school, hunker down in my cubicle and watch the lectures at 1.5x speed.  If I missed something, I’d rewind it.  If I needed to pause to think about something, I could.  If I didn’t understand something and needed to pull up a different resource, I could.  Yes, lectures took me a little longer to get through, but I felt like I understood so much more at the end of them than I would have had I sat in class. If you suffer from ADHD and get all sorts of distracted, this might not be the method for you, or you’ll be working till midnight every night to finish things.

When you finish your lectures, do not forsake the professor’s practice questions.  These give you good insight into what they think is important and how they might ask questions on the exam.  When I started doing the practice questions, I saw my exam scores go way up!  Do them right after lecture to see what you missed and then give them a week or so after you’ve reviewed the lecture and try them again (if you haven’t memorized the question) and see if you remember the material.

Using Panapto also allowed me to get ahead for lab.  Because I didn’t go to class in the morning, I’d review for anatomy so that I’d be prepared for lab.  I was blessed with two really good lab partners (we were still dissecting cadavers, which I believe will be done digitally now in Barbados) and one, who honestly slacked the entire time, rushing through things and working in a sloppy manner.  On this note, I’d like to say that medicine is a team-sport, you have to bring your A-game because you’re responsible for how your teammates perform too.  If you work hard before lab, all of a sudden, lab becomes a lot more useful to you and not the time-suck people can sometimes see it as. 

                Outside Resources for Firsties:

1. I’d like to say first that Boards & Beyond Review Series is beyond amazing.  I wish I would have known about it in first because I *suffered* through biochemistry.  Honestly, biochem and immunology were so difficult for me.  They throw a lot of immunology at you in first and it isn’t a discipline (one of the things you absolutely need to pass to get through 1^st, the disciples in first are gross anatomy, microanatomy, and biochem) so immunology gets pushed to the side.  BUT IMMUNOLOGY IS SO IMPORTANT.  (I know you read that as “immunology is so important,” but I mean IMMUNOLOGY IS SO IMPORTANT.)  So much of my remaining semesters would have gone more smoothly had I not had to look up simple things week after week because I didn’t understand it in the first semester.  Here’s where Dr. Ryan (Boards & Beyond) works his magic.  After I watched the immunology videos and biochem videos, I felt like I understood it.  Medical school has a lot of information you can memorize your way through, but not really understand.  When I watch B&B, I get it.  I want you to “get it” too.  It’s $19 for a week trial (I’m not paid, I just love it) and if you are struggling with biochem, try it.  Some of the stuff might be a little advanced for first semester, but honestly, those videos are worth their weight in gold.
2. Second, anatomy challenges you, even if you feel prepared.  You have to learn nerves and muscles, and veins, and the brachial plexus.  I loved kenhub.com for their anatomy quizzes and videos.  https://act.downstate.edu/courseware/haonline/quiz.htm has cadaveric pictures you can use to quiz yourself, which proved immensely helpful for the anatomy practicals.  Other people like Netter’s flashcards.
3. Finally, I’d like to say, in first semester, learn what RUSM professors are trying to teach you.  I’ve seen a lot of great students who just couldn’t make it through first because they tried to do too much.  You have plenty of time to get involved, so give yourself the first semester to settle in and grind it out.

You just have to survive first semester.  You’ll find a rhythm that works for you.  It might be different than what everyone else is doing, but if it works for you, do it.

I wish you the best of luck!