 Happy Saturday everybody! I'm gonna wait for some people to get in, but if you can hear my audio thumbs up would be super helpful. Let's have a bit. How's it going? Hey, if you can hear me, can you just give me a nice thumbs up just because I'm using a different setup? If you can't hear me, clear audio. Beautiful! Okay, what is going on guys? Happy Saturday! Either you guys are joining from email us, YouTube, Instagram. I promise that Kobe would be in the background, but feel free to drop your comments. I really enjoyed the last YouTube live that we did. It was really fun answering your questions and hopefully today we can make it a little bit more interactive. I may just stop my answering and ask you guys questions to just kind of see where you guys are. So first question and then you guys can drop your questions. What career path, if you had your ultimate kind of goal, five years, ten years down the line, what kind of doctor, specialty, medicine career do you want to see yourself as? I'm really curious and I'll give you guys my thoughts. I'm gonna go grab Kobe to join, have him join the feed, but add those in the chat box. I'm super curious to see what you guys think. No one wants to be brave and tell me what they want to do? It's fine. I'm gonna keep asking it throughout. You want to say hi? Kobe is about 10 months old and he's like the chillest dog ever, just lays around everywhere. Family medicine, academic medicine, that's cool. I was considering family for quite some time and then, hey, I'll leave the mic alone, and then I realized that probably not for me. It's a little too slow. I like internal medicine where it's a little bit quicker. Academic medicine is like pretty much what I do right now, especially where I work. So cool. Yeah, keep dropping all things in, but if you guys have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, I can go through questions that I've been getting. Ortho, nice. I was, I think I was like for five minutes of medical school, I considered ortho and I realized I didn't like the OR. Hey, talk bro. But I really enjoyed sports medicine. I think the idea of like people getting injured and then you being able to like literally fix it is cool. But unfortunately, that's not all you do in ortho. I also just don't like the OR. I already mentioned that, but I don't. But ortho is cool. Ortho is cool. So awesome. Definitely takes a lot of hard work out of research, but I'm sure you already know that. So good luck to you to the medical enthusiast. But while I'm waiting for questions and other chitchatting to go on, let me just pull up the questions that I get throughout the week and hopefully I can answer them in today's episode. And if you guys really do enjoy these, we can make these kind of like a weekly occurrence. Many of you guys are applying or at some point applying to medical school, applying to residency. If that's you, let me know in the comments just because the application season is starting. So I'm sure a lot of you guys may be in that boat at one point or another, but pull up some questions. The nice thing about today, by the way, is that I am officially starting like a vacation elective kind of rotation. So I get to do a lot of things from home, which will be great because I can make more content. Obviously join you guys on more live, hang out with this dude. And so it'll be fun. I'm really excited. I'm not terrible at vacations. I don't know what you guys are like, but I'm more like that person who like after three days, like I'm so bored, need to go back to work. So I'm hoping I can keep myself busy with projects. Let's answer some questions. Usually I have a bunch of comments that I haven't been able to get to and I get through them at the very end of the week. So I think I'll start there. How can you best learn clinical skills, procedure? That's a good question. It depends. So if you are in like your medical school career kind of phase, there's like the trap Kobe just because he's being annoying. If you're in medical school, obviously it's hard like somebody to give you permission to do a procedure. There's some apps that I use to really like kind of learn the step by steps like mentally kind of prepare myself if I was a procedure. I didn't do a lot when I was a medical student. I think I did like the basics like paracentesis and the ED and things of that sort. But there's like a easy surgery kind of app or something. And it's basically like a nice, you literally slide through the various steps and then you can like practice as if you were going to do them on a person, but it's on your phone. So those are pretty cool. But once you're in residency and you're kind of in mind situation like last month I was in the ICU and I think I did about 30 procedures, either putting like central lines and people putting arterial lines. And I hated those initially just because I mean, look at that sucked at them. When you do 30 of them in a month, you really get really good at them and then you like look for them. So the trick to how to, you know, best learn them is to, you know, using those kinds of apps like easy surgery is a good one. If you're doing like basic procedures, New England Journal of Medicine has like these really cool videos for things like lumbar punctures, which I don't do very often. So I always watch those videos again. And sometimes I just refresh on them. But after you get good at learning it or just like seeing somebody do it once the first time you do it, you're probably going to be terrible just because like the feel of everything, whether it's a decision, you're doing a lumbar puncture, even if you're just putting an IV in somebody you've never done it before, there's a lot of like feel that goes into it. But then the second or third time you do it, you know, ask yourself like, what made me successful versus like what didn't. So like, for example, an arterial line is simply like putting almost an IV in somebody's radial to get like a constant blood pressure check on them, constant ABGs on them. And you do it a lot in ICUs or YCUs and obviously in the OR. Sometimes people do them blind. I do them ultrasound guided because it's easy and fun, but it's almost like a freaking video game. Like you're just literally just looking for this like nice pulsating radial artery and just like finding a needle and just like just trying to jam it in there without hitting anything else. And then you have to like keep it consistent. So to make those better, I sucked at them initially, but I just got better at asking myself every time I failed, like what was the reason that I missed it this time? It's usually getting my hands were too shaky or I was like, it's too excited too quickly. And so every time you do the procedure, if you're like evaluating kind of what caused you to fail the first time, it's good. If your upper level does it for you, then, you know, you can pay attention to like what they do, how they position things. That really helped me like get better at procedures to the point where I can just do a central line within like a few minutes of somebody, like meeting it compared to like when I was a first year physician, it took me like almost an hour, which is embarrassing for now, obviously not. So depending on where you are, but I'm assuming you're a medical school. So like he's those online resources, but once you like in into it, imagine doing it once and then just get better at giving yourself feedback. All right, got questions rolling in. If there are a limit to how many on key cards you would do in a day, that's a good question. I think it depends on how your on key cards are organized. Like if there's just one fact, you know, one fact, one question, I don't think there's necessarily a limit. Mainly you should find the limit in your energy because I don't really feel like learning those parts where you're just like barely like, just like holding on in terms of mental capacity is a good thing because you might as well just not have studied at that point. But I mean, I've done like four or 500 cars and I was studying like for step one. And that was probably not recommended. I was just trying to get through as many as possible. So if it's just you studying for your class, I would say, you know, instead of thinking about how many on key cards you should do a day, I actually don't like using the on key recommendation just because it's easy to get overwhelmed because we have attendance making too many flashcards. And then we have a tendency of somehow getting behind. And then we'll have a tendency of saying, oh, crap, I need to do all these flashcards. So instead, I usually go take a step back and say today I'm going to do lecture one and two and do all the flashcards from there. So maybe I need to do 40 flashcards or 100 flashcards. I just need to get those lectures done. And so that's my way of doing those on key flashcards just to avoid like overwhelming myself. So I don't think there's like a top number, you know, I probably wouldn't go over like 200 a day, but I'm sure some of you guys do that. And for some of you guys, I may be like the ridiculously higher than you're doing, but it really just depends on how dense your flashcards are. But that would be my question there. Abbot said summer classes, Jen, Jen Kim one, love it. How should I approach it because there'll be a lot of info. It's a six to seven week course. The nice thing about Jen Kim is that it's obviously very repeated in terms of like everyone teaches it similar. So for you to get like the highest yield, I would recommend, you know, especially if you're taking it, excuse me, if I don't sound great on this audio, it's probably because I'm still recovering from like a cold. So apologies. But going back to the question of kind of how to prepare for even Jen Kim or any kind of college pre-med class, I would recommend because they are so repeated that you go to a resource Khan Academy is a beautiful resource where you can watch the video for the lecture you'll see tomorrow and say, okay, this is definitely what somebody who has done this before thinks to be important. Now let me go to class and pay attention to what I hear on both resources, what I hear in Khan Academy or anything. And then what I hear in class, because those means that this is like definitely worthy enough for me to hear and paying attention to. So even when you have a class with a lot of material, med school is a great example of this. But, you know, even when you're studying for your pre-med courses, it's hard for us to say, oh, like, holy, I was almost about to curse. Holy crap. There is so much information that we need to know. How do I know what's important? What's not? And if you go to one of those generic classes, chemistry, OKM, biochem, biology, use a resource where somebody has done the hard work for you to say, this is important, then go to class and pay attention to hear that same thing again, ideally, and saying, okay, I need to focus on that part first. And then I can focus on the details and the professor wants me to know. So there's a nice kind of like hierarchy of how you want to learn things. And then you can just do things with a lot less stress, because if you're still confused, go back to the video, watch it, you know, make that kind of help you in terms of long-term learning. And then you can learn those little bits of details. So all right. And if you guys are still joining in, one of the questions, because I want to make this more interactive instead of me just babbling about, you know, other stuff, is go ahead and drop your questions or actually drop. I want you to tell me in the comments down below what career path you're considering, because I love to know, you know, I was considering pediatrics, I was thinking ortho, I was thinking sports medicine, I was thinking radiation oncology, oncology, and now I'm in an internal medicine position. Whether or not I do more in the future, I'm not sure, but I love to know what you guys are thinking. Medical enthusiasts, our first year at MVVS, one month in, how do you balance memorization and understanding of that school? That's a good one. I think my first kind of goal when I'm learning something is I just want to be able to be a pair of it, as in like, do I know this content or not? So that's kind of where the memorization comes in. But then I usually have these strategic kind of placements throughout the week where it's kind of like my testing of how well I know something. And so usually like a simple way I do this is let's say you learn 150 topics in a week, which is very kind of typical in medical school. And I usually have a list or something or it's flashcards and Excel sheet or something of saying, these are the things I learned this week. If you're learning anatomy, it's a great example because usually somebody's made a list of all the things we are learning at that time. And then you can say, let's, you know, focus on memorizing this during like the day of the lecture, day after the lecture. But in terms of the weekend, my focus should be, can I look at this list? And now like from scratch, from memory, focus on how well I retained it. And like one of my favorite techniques, you know, you guys hear me talk about this all the time on the channel is the brain dump. So I have a notebook, this is not my brain dump notebook, but you can do this on scratch pieces of paper and then literally try to recreate that lecture and focus on where you can't go from point A to point B. That's a great thing that means that you know that there is a point B, but you just don't know what is kind of there. So you want to go from A to B to C to do well on your exams, but you don't know what B is. And do that for each of your topics and make them really quick. And so the whole idea is for you to identify your weaknesses as fast as possible. So then you can spend more time saying, let me go back to that PowerPoint, let me go back to that lecture, let me go back to whatever I use to learn and fill those holes. And so, you know, focusing on the memorization initially, and then coming back and saying, let me focus on long term retention now and using a technique like that to help you say, oh crap, I don't know that, let me go back, fill in the holes and then repeat. So hopefully that makes sense. Most effective approach studying anatomy. So the nice thing is, I was an anatomy tutor, so I love giving advice on anatomy. But one of the things that I would recommend doing is to, you know, before you go into lab, and it looks like you're doing 3D structures, or you're having trouble remembering your 3D structures on your cadavers, is, you know, picture, whether you're using a text or something and imagine like what this would look like. And so, for example, if I'm reading something about the rotator cuff in my head, I want to think about what those muscles would look like when I actually do the dissection in person or if you do virtual dissection, whatever it may be. And then go into your lab and seeing how well your initial kind of concept of what that body part looked like to what ultimately it did. Because then you could say, oh, this is a self-correction, I need to fix that. Then after lab, you kind of already have an idea of saying, okay, this is now what it needs to look at. Go look at another cadaver and compare and contrast, because then you have a very solid, solidified model of what something should look like. And if you need help creating that 3D model, then one of the favorite kind of recommendations that I give on the channel is to go to AnatomyZone. It's a website that just kind of breaks down nicely in 3D, but also through video and conversations like this, walking through the 3D model of all the veins, all the arteries, all the nerves, all the different parts of the body. I used it as a medical student. It still exists. I'm sure they made it even better than before. So I recommend maybe using that video to give like a nice mental model of what the body would look like, going into lab and saying, oh, shoot, that still is not the right mental model that I needed. I need to make this quick change. Then go into another cadaver and compare and contrast and repeat the process. That's how you get good at 3D models. There's a reason surgeons are so good at being able to identify like where something is just because they've seen it so many times. And so for you, seeing it even two or three times, we'll be able to help you over time self-correct. So that's how I would recommend going through that. If you guys are enjoying the live feed so far, if you're finding any of these answers helpful, if I've answered any questions, hit that like button. It definitely helps me just understand if you guys enjoy these live sessions, please keep doing more and answering more of my questions. So hitting that like button and that subscribe button for sure. I'm not sure what is important to YouTube at this point, but I obviously even want to make this content go to somebody because hopefully there's somebody just like you guys who are asking these questions that are hoping that this channel may be able to help answer it. So hit that subscribe button if you guys haven't already because lots of new content coming your way. All right. Tilly Lee, thank you for being so helpful. I appreciate those kinds of comments. I'm glad that anything on this channel has been helpful. Your voice is very soothing. So funny story about that before I give out two questions. If my brother and my wife are watching, they make fun of how I sound on camera. And I think I've gotten better at this because I think I used to have a higher pitch voice when I would record my videos and there is like radio voice and there's my original voice. But right now I'm talking normal just because I'm like recovering from like a cold. So I'm glad this is this is soothing because this is like 80% health. So maybe I should just have a raspy voice at all times. I've had so any advice on how to figure out if outlines flashcards, one page sheet sheets work for you as a learner. Yeah. So outlines are not my favorite. And I'll be honest just because it leads you to want to read things and just say like, I got it. Maybe you can do it as you get closer to test day. But that's kind of kind of how I would approach it. Michael, it's going on. I appreciate you saying hi. Hopefully you're doing well. But in terms of answering the question for you before I forget, so flashcards, I love one page cheat sheets are I love. But the thing about like cheat sheets is that it forces you to saying like, let me just learn everything on here. And usually how do we learn it? We want to read it and just memorize it. And then just like forget, you know, that's the very college mentality of things saying, like, find me the highest yield stuff that can memorize it. And then just say, like, I need to move on. But once you do plenty of those one page sheets, you have even 30 of them, you're going to forget something that was on that sheet. And so that's where the problem lies. So I recommend flashcards because it's a very repeated process where you're constantly being asked information instead of a sheet that you look at and somehow you have to quiz yourself. So unless your outlines are in the form of questions, I made a video on YouTube that you guys can check out. It's called the Q&E method. It's also in the level up your studying course, which you guys can check out. I think it's linked down below. But it basically talks about how to make your notes in the form of questions, effective questions. So then when you review your notes, Kobe wants to say hi to you guys. When you're reviewing notes, it's not about, you know, whether you can read and identify the right information. When you review your notes, it becomes a very active form of learning. So if you're going to do it that way, you know, I would recommend everything kind of be in a Q&E format. Obviously I'm biased. That's how I did it. But, you know, that's why I love flashcards. So in terms of how to identify, if it's the best for you, just ask yourself, if the test was tomorrow, what would you do to make sure you increase your retention? Would you look at all the page sheets or the cheat sheets? Sure, you probably would. But ask yourself where you get the most benefits. Honestly, like draw a graph and one, make the y-axis be retention and the x-axis be like your motivation to do something. So find something that is easily motivating you to do and also increases your retention. So, you know, ideally, we want to do something that's like, oh, this is super fun. And I'm also going to benefit from it. So if you pick something that's not motivating, it's also going to be hard to stick to. But that's kind of how I would approach it. So find something that's super motivating, higher retention, and then list those different things you just asked me for your personal self. And that's how you'll know what kind of learning bar, because that's what you all automatically will go to first. All right. Now, I need to catch up. A question about residency applications. The work, clinical settings, how to explain the gap of 2020? I think, to be quite honest, I think, you know, and this will depend on where you're applying, but IMGs and not having the full access to clinical exposures here in the United States due to COVID is going to be something that a lot of people will understand. But if you go to an institution that has experience taking IMG students, then, you know, that will probably be something that they'll be understanding of, because all of their IMG applicants will likely have similar experiences. So if you can do clinical settings, you know, where you are and explain the benefits that you got from there, that may be able to overshadow a little bit about not having the clinical experience here in the United States and volunteering and not in clinics. That's fine too. So again, just understanding that you're not the only one in this predicament. So if you're applying to places that have taken people for positions in the past, ideally, they should be able to look past that too. So I wouldn't focus too much of like, this is not, you know, because of COVID, I wasn't able to do this. I mean, sure, they already kind of know that. But to say, because of COVID, I wasn't able to do this, so here's what I did instead. Focus on the work and the input you put in versus like the obstacle you had to face. Because, you know, everyone doesn't want to be feel like you are a victim, which all of us are, for some different parts of being involved in the COVID pandemic. But saying how you took advantage of it by what you did, by what you made out of it, and hopefully that helps you. So hopefully that helps. All right. Currently revising finalities of exam, how would I split time before practice questions and Anki 50, 50, or 75, 25? So I love practice questions. And honestly, I recommend doing them first because it just highlights what I don't know super fast. So if you're going to do Anki, you know, maybe do them in the times where your energy is the lowest, because that forces you to say like, okay, like, I need to do something. It's very easy to do a quick couple of flashcards versus practice questions require a lot of, you know, energy. But if you have those high energy moments in your day, excuse me, then I would do those practice questions and then look through the explanations, look through what you missed and then make those flashcards. And then during those times where you're not motivated or the end of the day, do those Anki flashcards for your concepts you already learning, but also to review the things that you missed. So that's kind of how I would do that. So hopefully that helps. Do you ever use Anki for any pre-med classes? So I actually didn't learn about Anki until I was in medical school, but I definitely recommend it to pre-med students now, just especially things that are very retention heavy. So biology, what else, chemistry would be a good one. Physics maybe a little bit hard, maybe the concepts kind of would help, but physics is probably going to be one where you do more problem questions to help you. But definitely. So if you have those really heavy intensive pre-med courses or if you're taking medical terminology, that would be a great one. But definitely. I love Anki just not because of the actual software itself, but just the idea that you don't have to ask yourself, what do I need my quest myself on? What do I need to test myself on? It's literally there. And the things that you suck at are going to show up first. So that's the beauty of it. Let's see. I'm in the mid of preparing for step one. Awesome. I'm struggling on memorizing things and it's devotes and demotivates me a lot. Okay. Any advice? So yeah, step one is rough and you feel like there is this idea of you struggling to memorize mainly just because there's so much information you learn. And one of the courses that we have on MD journey is called the step on the cabinet. And there's this idea that you can imagine like this is like a Gatorade bottle. You know, all of step one is this idea of like, I want this to be as full as possible going into test day. What happens is that you're constantly putting more stuff into your mug in this case, but you have little holes of knowledge that pop out. So eventually you just end up with like creeping amounts of knowledge because you're losing more than you're able to keep. And then you keep trying to add more every single day. So my concept of how to increase your step one score is not necessarily trying to memorize more information because you're going to have things in the test. You just don't know, unless you want to get a 270, you know, I can't help you because I didn't get a 270 there, but I did do well on step. And my concept was instead of trying to focus every single day of adding more and hoping I can keep on to more, let me just focus on keeping on to more and then having a natural flow of information coming in daily. So how you do that is different. But like usually the way I'd recommend is you keep an idea of all the questions you're missing on your step one rep and then have kind of a session at the start of the day at the end of day of saying, I'm going to increase my motivation going into step one because ideally I just want to focus on all the holes that I'm plugging. So I'm going to do an Anki cart or I'm going to have a list of all the questions that I miss. I'm just going to scratch them out as I get better at understanding those. That would help you with your confidence. I'll feel like you're memorizing more, but really just holding on to the stuff that you memorized in the past longer and then having a natural flow. I'm going to read your first chapter. I'm going to repath out whatever it may be to say I'm going to have new information, but constantly focusing on the things you're missing. Sorry I'm pointing to a mug, but hopefully that analogy helps. But that's kind of how I would do in terms of the motivation aspect. Start your day with stuff saying this is going to be the most valuable because I have missed this in the past. I don't want to miss it in the future. It's going to not take me so hard to memorize it because I've already memorized it once and let's work on fixing that. So that's how I would increase your motivation. Also understand that this test is not about the questions that you miss. It may seem like it, but every question is an opportunity for you to raise your score. So either you know it and you'd be like, this is awesome. I'm going to raise my score by knowing this, or you move on to something and saying, holy crap, I don't know this. And usually my approach is let's just shrug it off, make your best guess. And the best thing that can happen is you get it right. And otherwise you don't and that's okay. So just understand that. Just going to do a quick audio check. Is audio still working for you guys? Because YouTube has like this like audio reader and it's not moving as much as I would want. So is audio too high, too low? Just add it in your chat box. But you guys are saying that my voice is very soothing. So hopefully the audio is okay. And also, like I said, just go ahead and drop a like if any of these answers are helping. Awesome. Thanks for the feedback on the audio. So like and subscribe so far, but hopefully that helped in terms of the motivation and you guys can use that concept on any exam. So whether you're a medical student, whether you're sitting for step one, step two or any school exam at all, if you're going into a point and saying, holy crap, I need to memorize so much information and I'm getting demotivated by how much I'm forgetting, use this concept of saying my goal should not be to constantly learn and try to hold on to more things. My goal should be to try to hold on to the things that I've already missed in the past. And that's how you can increase your motivation over time and then understand that every time you take a test, it's not about the questions you get wrong. Sure, it may seem like those are the ones that cost you the good grade. It's about increasing the amount of cancer that you're going to get correctly. So every time you go into a new question, look at it as an opportunity to raise your score instead of saying if I missed this, my score is going to get worse. Those are kind of low mental techniques that I've used with myself with past students that I've worked with to kind of help increase their scores. So hopefully that kind of helps you guys. All right, where are we in questions? So Kurt Dard says, hey, I love your content. Thanks. IMG, how to get strong LORs from physicians. Yeah, so I really need to get better on the channel of giving more content by IMGs. It's just I'm a little bit kind of disadvantaged because I obviously didn't do it. I'm a US trained graduate, but I do need to like branch out. So that is coming in the future, I promise. But in terms of how I would do it, if it was me, I'm not sure exactly where you are in the country or in the world, excuse me, but look to the physicians that are in your area and branch out to them and then try to find opportunities. And there is a lot, our IMG community on this channel is pretty broad just because of the questions I get and asking where people are getting their opportunities in terms of especially in the United States. Maybe you can shadow somebody or work in kind of like a remote environment, and that's how you would get recommendations. So branch out to the people nearby you and then look into other international opportunities, ideally things that are not paid for because those come with a lot of other complications. And then ask of how you can get involved in getting those letters to recommendations. Unfortunately, I can only help you so much there. This because I haven't been in your shoes there, but hopefully it helps. I've been dropping some questions today. All right, man, let's get it. So would you advise me to get the level of your, okay, yeah, so this is asking me if you should get one of my courses is like a bias answer. So I'm not, I'm only going to tell you who it's for and who it's helped. So you guys can check out the links down below to any of the programs. I'm obviously biased because I created them. So I'm never pressuring you guys to check these out. But if you, you know, level up your studying courses and basically what I did for myself in over about a month span to say, this is how I'm studying and these are the grades I'm getting. And this is how I'm studying and this is the grades that I want. And basically kind of changing how I study based off of that. And I do it in the three week kind of step by step process with you guys. And lots of people have gotten benefits from it. So again, do you and should you check out the course, that's up to you. But check out the link down below, you guys can see what results other people have gotten in the past. And I can tell you if the course is for you or not. So never pressuring you guys to check out any of my things. Hopefully the YouTube content is helpful. But if you want kind of somebody to systematically walk you through and make things easier without like always having to come back with another question, then that is the course that I created for me when that situation. And so hopefully that can answer your question without saying yes, definitely go buy the course. If you think that would be helpful, absolutely check it out. Speaking of the before I forget, if you guys are in kind of the application phase, whether the residency, whether it is for medical school next week, at the same time next week, I won't be doing YouTube live just because I'll actually be doing a personal statement workshop. So one of the things that I really enjoyed is helping you know, actually my wife last year, I was actually helping her write personal statement for PA school. And you know, I've helped other people too. But I enjoy this process of saying people I'd say that are terrible writers and they can't write or have no more time. Or like when you're applying to medical school, for example, and you're saying, holy crap, I have like 50 art or 50 essays to write. How do I make this easy? I think writing personal statements became very nice and natural to me. You know, they were able to get a lot of compliments on them just because I had a very systematic way of using my experiences and then draft a very nice cohesive personal statement. Same very unique. And also kind of explained, you know, whatever I wanted to go into. So why I want to go to medicine, why I want to go into college. So if you're looking for help to, you know, boost up your personal statements and if you haven't started writing your essays, but they're coming up, then I'll link it down below. But you guys can also check it out if you guys are on the email group. Let me just add it to the links down below since some of you guys are in the chat. But it's only going to be $19. So this will just kind of help myself and my team just kind of create at this upcoming week for you guys. And it will include both the live session where you guys get to work with me to kind of follow my step by step process. But then you guys can also have access to any course I'll be creating after the live workshop. So you can use it at any time. But if you guys are interested in checking out how to improve your personal statements, how to make it more easy, but also how to write really effective ones, you guys can check it out. Again, no pressure. But if you're in that boat, I know it's kind of application season, I'm trying to create more content that's more kind of like time intensive. And I know writing personal statements is like the dread of most people's existence. So hopefully it helps you guys out. But back to the questions. Tilly said, do you ever get ever overwhelmed by the amount of flashcards to you do to, to learn if I get a bit scared about not knowing the little specific things before exams or stress me out a lot? Yeah, that's that's a very common occurrence. You're not in any unique shoes there happens to lots of people happens to me too. Usually when I'm learning things mentally, you have to get better at this kind of approach of saying the first time you learn something the approach is how can I grasp as much as possible and also identify what I don't know. So flashcards are really helpful because let's say you have four things on a flashcard for things you need to learn. The first time my goal is not to learn all four. My first time is to learn the first one and saying the next three are not going to be learned now because that's not advantageous. I'm going to focus on the first thing and I'm gonna have Anki show it to me again. But if you're learning through outlines or another technique, it's the same idea. You learn something and saying it is okay if I don't know everything. I'm going to learn this. I'm going to force myself to ask it again. So Anki does that for you. And then the the second time that flashcard shows up saying, okay, it's not a lot learning two, three and four, it's only learn about one, make sure I still know it and also learning number two. So conceptually when you are learning any content towards test day, you know, you may have a thousand topics before test day and saying this is super overwhelming of how much information I need to know and it's stressing me out. But your goal is not to learn all thousand things today. Your goal, I mean ideally unless the test is tomorrow, but your goal is to learn one thing at a time and scratch off your list and saying I don't need to focus on all 900 things I still don't know. I need to focus on one more thing, feeling confident about it and getting another thing nailed down today and today and today. That is how over time you build this kind of mental strength of saying I don't need to feel anxious going into a test because the whole idea is as I get closer to test day, that list should get smaller. So if you use that approach, it's almost like you run a marathon, you know, like I was training for a marathon last year, running 26 miles is stressful because once you run like five, you're like, holy crap, how do I do this for, you know, almost like six times more. But it's not about running five to 26 is about going to five and feeling comfortable more than six and then seven and eight. Fortunately, the marathon was canceled last year, but I got up to 17, but still feeling comfortable. So that's the same idea. Don't use the big test day as your stressor instead use this kind of finish line and focus on what you need to do daily to kind of make that list a little bit smaller. And it is easier said than done, but it comes with practice of saying, like it's okay if I don't know everything on this list because that's what daily studying and reviewing is for. So in terms of the amount of flashcards and making it overwhelming just do until you feel like that threshold of you getting stressed out. So if you do 100 flashcards and you feel great do 125 because those last 25 will force your mental fortitude to say, okay, this is not a big deal if I don't know this, but I'm going to use this as an advantage to make that less smaller. But doing 150 is not any more advantageous. Just give yourself like that little bit of extra stress as you're studying and reviewing to kind of help. So hopefully that helps. I'm glad the mug analogy was super helpful. I mean, that's kind of conceptually how I think about all forms of learning, but specifically give yourself one. I think that method and approach really helps. Medical responded, physio versus BNB because you're a visual learner if I don't know if I miss something. I don't think so. You know, I didn't use boards and beyond when I was a medical student and I did fine. I've reviewed physio, you know, I've worked with company have made videos on the YouTube channel. So there is a bill of kind of an affiliate interaction that I have with them, but just based off of the content that I've seen, I really like how they have a little bit of everything, which is why I recommend it on the channel. So if you're a visual learner through videos, they have that if you are a visual learner through the mnemonics and the kind of a sketchy kind of approach, they have that if you love flashcards, they have that. And then if you are like kind of short on time and you want to be able to just listen to the audio, they also have that. So that's the beauty of physio. That's why I recommended it on the channel is that they kind of have all the different elements that are recommended for active learning and they're constantly growing your content. So I would recommend checking them out. I mean, if you guys do, then definitely check out the link down below because there's a discount for you guys as well. But again, no pressure to do so. But if you love boards and beyond, there's no reason to jump to another resource. Stick to the resource. That's helping you get results. But if you're finding that one is not really working or you're finding some friction as you're reviewing and studying, then try it out. So hopefully that helps as well. But in terms of making this interactive, I asked earlier what you guys thought was going to be your future career. If you had a dream career, which one would you do? So add this in the comment section down below and add your other questions as well. If you guys have them, I'll kind of hang out for the next 10, 20 minutes, depending on how many questions we have. And then hopefully I'll be able to do this again in like the next two weeks. But again, if you guys want to join me in the personal statement workshop, it'll be super fun, super high yield to definitely help me out. And hopefully that helps you out. So let's see, more questions are coming. And all right, let's see. Do you recommend Dr. P? Awesome. Do you recommend U.S. M.A. Books? So I can't comment on the specific Indian medical entrance exam or the need just because I never took it. But I do get a lot of questions on it. But it looks like a lot of my IMG friends do use Ambos a lot because it just kind of helps it all conclusive. And I guess the nice thing about Ambos and Boards and Beyond is, for my knowledge, they just kind of combine a lot of high yield resources, first aid being one of them, on keeping another one and also their own to kind of create a nice one and all in one resource. So I'm actually kind of in the works of interacting with the company and potentially creating a YouTube review video on it in the future. But, you know, if the choice is between books and a resource that has videos and content and things of that sorts, you know, then the question becomes like, what's the most expensive option that you're able to pay for? As in like, what's your budget? So if you're able to pay for Ambos, I would use it and just kind of stick to that and then make sure that kind of helps you. So yeah. All right, Dylan says, do you recommend studying for step three before entering an orthopedic residency ticket? Yeah, that's a good question. Surprisingly, a lot of the step three videos on the channel are actually doing well. I didn't think so. I didn't think many people care about it, but obviously all we do. I would recommend taking it as soon as possible and as soon as possible mean within like the six first six months of your residency just and the caveat being make sure you have a kind of a nice smoother part in those first six months. So if your first six months are like you're in the OR from like seven in the morning to like seven in the night, you know, kind of thing, don't do it. But if you're on a lighter rotation, maybe if you're in a clinic part, I'm not sure how your ortho residency is set up. But if you're on a lighter part in your intern year, that's when I would like do it and as soon as possible. I didn't do it until my second year and I regarded it, but mainly it's because because COVID kind of canceled my my step three exam. But it's just nice to get out of your way. I mean, I don't think there's necessarily anything that I learned that in my second year of residency that suddenly helped me become more prepared. I simply think doing this questions and realizing, oh, crap, I don't remember all the information just because I haven't delivered a baby in like two years was was helpful as like this is what I need to study. So yeah, I would recommend doing it as quickly as possible just to kind of help you kind of get that out of the way. But that's my only caveat I give you is make sure that you actually have the time to do it. So best of luck on your your residency. Hopefully you're starting soon. Yes, yeah, a few more months. But if you're a fourth year Dylan, which I'm assuming you are, enjoy it. Enjoy it with a passion because those years and those months are nice. So he says, okay, we are answering specialties that she wants to go into. So I see general practice, geriatrics, but only your first years probably change. Yep. I mean, I change so often as a medical student. It's totally fine. Going in general practice, geriatrics are very field. It's definitely something where you will always be needed. Your patients will love you because you just take care of them. You're like their doctor. So hopefully it works out. Those are the ones you want to consider. Abed asks, what I enjoy most about I am residency? That's a good question. I think the difference between residency obviously in medical school is that you're actually the physician now taking care of people. And so there is kind of like this initial scary zone where you're like, I don't know anything. And so why am I suddenly like having an MD or a DO behind my name to like practice and take care of people? This is terrifying. And then you get past that because like eventually you start to see the same diagnosis a few times and you're saying, okay, like first time I had no idea what to do, second time I like a new one or two things to do and I still need to help. Third time you're like, I got this, maybe. And the fourth time I got this. And once you get more and more of those like last phase, like I got this kind of areas, then it's just beautiful. Like the residency becomes, and this is how everything is, right? Think about something that you sucked at to something that you eventually became good at, like whether it be playing the guitar, medicine, like the specific topic, there's a part that you hated and felt nervous. And then you're like, get to this part, like, yeah, I got this. So the, my favorite part about residency is when you build enough confidence in your kind of repertoire to say, I can take care of roughly most things as much as your patient got it, heart failure, I love it. Chest pain, got it. You know, pneumonia, ICU level care, I've done so much of that that now it's like fun because I've seen it enough times that I can like get into really love the critical knowledge. So yesterday I'll give you an example. I'm recently making a video on like a day in clinic. And so that'll be coming out soon. It'll be super fun. Hopefully a little humorous because it'll be a little bit different than my videos like here. I'll be like more of a nice like fun blogging style. So definitely look out for that. So make sure you subscribe if you guys happen. So already, but the end of that day in which I didn't record on camera, there was, you know, I sent one of my patients to the emergency room just because they had different things. Watch that video to know why. But the patient who was kind of checked in after me that one of my fellow residents was taking care of also looked like they needed to go to the ED. So it was like a busy Friday. And ultimately this person had like multiple things. They had like a, if you guys are interested in clinical case, basically like a young 40 year old person who ends up coming to the hospital with complaints of abdominal pain. They have blood clots everywhere. They suddenly can't feel through either of their hands. So they have neuropathy. They have pancreatitis and just a bunch of stuff going on. Like this guy's like, you know, 40 something like what's going on. And it's nice because I've seen enough of those cases and like, okay, that's a little odd. It's either a medication or this person may have like a vasculitis or something. And sure enough, they're like, oh yeah, after long discussions, that's what we're considering too. But it's cool as a second year, once you've done this enough to say, like you jump to those hyperdiagnosis first because you kind of assume what those initial diagnoses were. And they've already kind of been worked away. But when you're like brand new, you're like, I don't know which ones to consider. So that's a fun part. I'm residencies as you get better at things, you get more confident, you enjoy taking care of your patients, but then you also get really better at like clinical and critical thinking. So that's kind of the phase I'm in. Hopefully next year I'm even better and I'm like smarter. But right now I'm still trying to water of being an upper level supervisor and still getting better at taking care of my patients. But that's a long-awaited answer of saying that. Rohit says, does virtual electives worth, you know, are they worth it? I would say that they're probably more worth it now in the setting of COVID where you're just kind of limited on experiences. And so take advantage of them if you're able to. But it just depends on like what you're going to do your virtual elective in. And if you're in the United States versus like if you're an IMG, if you're an IMG, virtual electives may be worth it. If you're in the US, you know, probably not because the needs for electives for most things aren't needed at the moment. So I guess it depends on your context. But Yogesh says, how do you prefer for a test if you have more lessons to cover up the previous day before? I think I'm a little confused about the question. But I guess the question is like, how do you prefer for a test if you still have stuff that you need to know? So usually when I'm preparing for a test, when I'm going into class, like let's say I'm studying for a college class or a medical class, usually on my calendars I'll mark not only when tests in the quizzes are but also what day I plan on reviewing for that specific class. So let's just say it was like a Friday exam for biochem for medical school, then usually I would say start review a week before on like the Wednesday or the Monday. And that way I can like include like, okay, I know the week of the exam is still going to be learning new concepts. But on that week, I'm also going to set separate time to also do some old review by also reviewing the content for today. So that's kind of how I would do it. So as long as you give yourself enough time, ideally you have the ability to like go through one or two lectures that are old, as well as like your current content without really kind of like nipping yourself in the butt. All right, more questions coming in and I love it. If you guys are still joining in the one of the questions that I had today is tell me what career you guys are considering, because I'm super interested in like what fields are you're going into? So I've heard ortho, geriatrics, general medicine, family. So comment down below. Dr. P says, do you recommend any platforms to sum up keywords for last week, month's preparations? If not, is there a way to prepare in the last month? So I think this is another unfortunately, kind of IMG question that I'm not able to answer as well. But in terms of keywords, you know, I would say that, you know, if the question initially was about if you can use emboss or something, maybe use the content that you're reviewing on emboss, like create your own spreadsheet of keywords that you want to use. And as you're getting closer to that exam, then you can say like, okay, like a week before, let's make sure I know everything on this list. If I don't, then I can review it using emboss and also prepare for all my exams that need to take. Is it impossible for IMG to get into neurosurgery? So no, neurosurgery is obviously harder for everyone to get into. Here in the United States, obviously for IMG, it's a little bit difficult. It's all about your experiences that you do. So if you have a lot of research experience, or if you want to go into it, you haven't done so already, get into research. You know, get involved in your local neurosurgery opportunities, if there are any, or just start interacting with people. And the best thing is for you, you know, if you're, if you're talking about doing IMG and then going into residency in the United States or somewhere else around the country, and look at those programs that I've taken an international graduate and look at what that international graduate has done, like what research has they have they done, where do they get their training. And that gives you a rough sense of like, what you kind of need to make your application look like, and try to mimic that. So what Cubans do you suggest with your role for extra questions? You have some of the Rx. So I loved Rx. I usually used it first, before I use Uworld. I haven't used the amboss questions, I can't comment on those. I use Kaplan as a medical student as well. So if you're looking for like more high yield content, Rx is great. And then if you're using Uworld, you know, sometimes just repeating your role may just be like good enough too. So keep that in mind. Witchcube Inc. Let's question your thoughts on the Doctrine and Gives for step one. So I didn't use the Doctrine and Gives lectures, but I've heard good things about them. So a lot of our questions on this live and even the last one were about like, best resources for X. I don't think that there is, you know, a hierarchy of certain resources. So everyone will give you their recommendation because everyone learns differently and everyone will tell you like, this is the resource that you use. I try not to do this on the channel too much because I know that I may love physio, for example, and you may love emboss, you may love boards and beyond. But if you have used those lectures for step one, then use those again. Content that's very video heavy for step one is also not my favorite because it takes away from the most important part about step one, which is doing those questions and doing flashcards and reviews and things of that sort. So if you're able to study with those lectures for step one or step two and then give yourself enough time to do as many questions as possible, that's where the learning really happens. That's kind of the approach that I would do. All right, while we're waiting for more questions, if you're still on life, you just go ahead and hit that like button if you haven't done so already. It definitely helps me out. Let me see what questions I have. So one of the questions that I got in the comments before was kind of tackling this overloading work at the same time trying to get the best amount of sleep. So how do you balance that? I know a lot of you guys may be struggling with like how do I manage my best wellness, but also kind of manage this combination of trying to do the most. My kind of approach and also I guess there are other part of the questions like how do I have time for a great lifestyle with families and friends? And it seems like this kind of like this unicorn person, right? That person who has enough time for themselves to work out to hang out with their loved ones and still to do really well in medical school and nursing school, whatever you may be. But that's not true. It's just the concept that we are perceived to believe that everybody around us is working 24 hours a day, which is not true, and I need to work 25, which is not possible. But really the goal is you focus on what needs to be a part of your day for you to be happy. So like, you know, if you need to work out, if you need to sleep eight hours a day, schedule that in first and then ask yourself, okay, like now what time is left for me to schedule my study and to do my work. And what will happen is you'll force yourself to say, okay, instead of 10 hours a day, I only have five hours, that seems like super concerning. But how can I actually use that five hours? What would I use during that five hours to make it the most efficient as possible? And that's kind of the approach is then you get to this idea of saying, okay, like I was doing all of these things and I don't need to be doing this or this anymore with the last time I have. But the nice thing is, is that usually what you end up leaving leftover is going to be the most high yield thing for you to get the most results. So if you are, you know, studying for an exam or preparing for a project, if you said I had two weeks to do this, instead of saying I need to finish this project by this week, you're going to only force yourself to like really get into the flow zone so much faster. That's how I do everything for my personal life. So that's kind of like how I can speak to this. You know, a lot of people ask how I can run them, be journey, be a resident, be a medical student, etc. And literally, I asked myself, like, whenever I have a project that I want to do, whether it's creating a workshop or creating a new course or writing a book, it's like, how am I going to do this in two weeks? And it seems crazy for somebody who's never written a book to write in two weeks, but it's really like, what steps do I need to just like get passed? So that way I can just get to the part that's most important, which is actually writing the book. So if your goal is how can I enjoy myself, but still be able to get the most important kind of work done, then ask yourself what needs to be there and what doesn't. And it requires a little bit of fine tuning. But that question is going to be super important for you guys to really have this like, figure it out life to be that medical student that everyone wants to be. You can be it to just force yourself to enjoy yourself first without getting crazy. You don't need to enjoy yourself eight hours a day, but at least having that like evening kind of time for yourself that morning time for yourself that weekend time for you to work on other side projects or read books to go for a freaking walk. So if you feel like you're having to sacrifice things, it's really not true. It's just kind of a myth. But there is a part of you that gets in your way of saying, I need to study this many hours to get this results. That may not be true. So, but that's my obviously personal opinion. Can you tell me more about getting into the surgery residency? Like what should I do to get into a score research? So I think it will depend on what kind of surgery you want to get into. Obviously, we talked about neurosurgery. So if you go into the links down below, if you there should be a link for like the Step 1 Academy, you don't actually have to check out the course. But there is kind of a picture of saying what score every specialty needed. And I think for neurosurgery, it's like a 250 or above. And that score may be changing. Obviously, it's going to pass fail next year. So great assault. But that's kind of how I would do that. So yeah, so score would be kind of the 250 or higher research, you know, just do as many projects as you possibly can without getting overwhelmed. Start with one, when that project is like waiting for a publication or when you're waiting for the data to come through, then like work on another, you can work on projects with the same person, you can do multiple projects at the same time with that, you're getting overwhelmed because usually research doesn't work at the same pace. In my experience, I like start a project, and then I will find that, oh, okay, like I'm waiting for this person to finish their parts. In the meantime, I can like do this project more. And that's how I've been able to get multiple publications in residency in medical school and even college without like really getting overwhelmed by research. And like writing an abstract is also good enough. So just getting into projects and like working with people, they'll give you more opportunities and more output you could put for them. I talk about that in the medical school domination bundle too, like how you're able to do research as a medical student. So that'll be linked down below if you guys are interested. But just like how to make time and still get really effective. Oh, let's see. Here I said, there you go. Better strategy for, there you go. Better strategy for kind of prepping for information. So I guess she suggested doing high yield, previously asked topics, must know topics, or doing as much practice as possible. If your exam's in a month, you can honestly kind of hedge your vets a little bit. So you can do practice questions to really focus on what you don't understand, keep a list of those things and saying, I'm going to review this daily. So that list to get smaller and smaller and then I don't get tripped about the same things. And then you can do those previously asked topics or the must know topics. So if you have like an objective list, for example, before you go an exam, put that somewhere and then add to your list of topics that you miss on your exam every day saying, can I do five of these? Can I do 10 of these? And ideally that list gets smaller. So you can still do practice questions at it, grow that list as much as possible. And every day kind of knock it out bit by bit while still using learning objectives that are created by your instructors and then using the questions that you missed. So better strategy, they're both amazing. I would still recommend doing the practice questions first and highlighting what you're not good at to really get the most bang for your buck. I'm just looking around to find my own popular Kobe Kobe. He disappeared. He's actually just literally like right here. You guys want to say hi. He made an appearance early in the episode, but now he's saying hi again. He's like always tired after he eats. So he probably won't do very much except just sit here. So we can answer questions while he sits here. It looks really cute. If you want to see more Kobe in the future, make sure you subscribe to the channel because I'll show up more often. All right. So I've said, oh, I'll go back to other questions on this. So Rohit was asking going to start coming and probably graduating to do electives. Yeah. So if you're a final year medical student and you're starting your clerkships and you still have some time willing to do electives, you know, maybe do your clerkships first to even figure out if you really need more remote electives. But if you do, you know, that's totally fine. So okay, I'll go to the practice question and making them reviewing them. But the problem is that what's lots of questions? How would you advise should have a ratio gap to review those questions? So again, the whole idea of like when you review questions, people think that if you missed 50 questions, you need to review all 50 questions tomorrow. It's not true. And especially if you're finding stuff on the wall, you can say instead of doing X amount of questions tomorrow, I'm going to do 30 minutes of review. And you may get further and further behind. That's okay. The goal is really like if you've made 50 mistakes, you want to give yourself the most opportunity to minimize those mistakes in the future. So if you aren't able to get through all 50, that's okay, just get through as many as possible. So give yourself a time aspect instead of I need to do 20 questions tomorrow. Otherwise, I'm a failure. That's not true. So if you have a lot of questions that you need to review, just say I'm going to spend 30 minutes reviewing, that's not as bad. And maybe you'll give them a moment of flow and say, oh, I only have five more questions to do. Let me just finish this off. So that's kind of how I was approached that. All right. Okay. So I think we are starting to wrap up with questions. I may probably be able to answer like one or two more. Kobe is probably going to need a nap anyways. But thank you guys so much for joining this live call. Feel free to drop your questions. The link somewhere is posted about the personal statement workshop that we're doing next week. So it'll be live with me, but you don't have to actually do it live. It'll be recorded and you have access. So if you're writing your personal statements at all in the next like, you know, next few months or even if you're writing your personal statements in the next few years, it's just $19 to join. So I'm trying to make it like super no brainer, but the link will be down below in case you're just interested to just check out any of the courses that we kind of talked about down below. If you are interested in working one-on-one with me to kind of help you in your setting journey, let me know just because as I'm starting this kind of elective part of my phase, I can actually take on more students. So if you do want to work more one-on-one or if you want to work with us, learn how the different ways we can work together to improve your setting, improve your experience. And you kind of see the different results past students have done. Just let me know. I'd love to work with more and more students as much as possible. My schedule has been busy in the past. Thankfully it's kind of opening up. So I can take more students. If you guys are interested, I will drop the links that way you guys know how you can work. And as always, there is no no pressure. All of this is just as if it can help you, it helps you. And that's pretty much it. So that link will be added down below. If you are still on this live feed, if you haven't hit the like button, help over other out. Help Koby out. Hit that like button down below. Thank you guys as always for joining me on this live call. Since we're wrapping up on the hour, I am going to put this guy off for a nap. Give my voice a rest because I'm still recovering from the flu. But you guys are amazing. I really appreciate all your questions. Really appreciate all your kind comments. And if there's any other way I can help you, just let me know in the comments down below in emails. You guys should hopefully you guys know how to reach me. And I will see you guys in the next one. You want to say bye boss? Say bye. You want to say bye? Peace out. Peace out. Later guys. Take care.