 Imagine if you could have a life in the medical school, imagine in addition to all the studying hours, the long hours of commitment, the long years of training, you can also have time for your hobbies, free time, Netflix, and your loved ones. Well, obviously in this video guys, we're going to show you how you can do it and promise you you can. All right guys, what is going on, Alex here from the MD journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. If you're new to this channel, I have an internal medicine resident that's been making videos and blog posts for the MD journey for the last three years and helping students just like you with topics just like this. So if you guys are interested and you enjoy this video, make sure you smash that like button, hit that subscribe button as well to get videos on a weekly, if not a bi-weekly basis helping you out. So today we're going to be talking about whether or not you can have a life in medical school and if so how you can do it. Now the obvious answer is yes, you can do it, but you need to have the right steps as well as the right understanding on how to get there. And I promise you my four years of medical school, I just finished three months ago, we're probably one of the best experiences in my life that includes college. It's crazy as that sounds. So if you take the right steps, I promise you, you guys can also remember medical school as not just a stepping stone to becoming a resident or a physician, but also four years you can truly remember. So the first thing you need to understand is that you need to schedule medical school into your life and not your life into medical school. It's one of my favorite sayings, but basically don't be a 24 seven medical student. It's very easy to do that where you wake up, go to class, do all your obligations, come home, feel like you're studying and then the first thing and the last thing you want to do is sleep. So it doesn't feel like you really have time for anything else. And I get it, you know, your first month, your first couple of months of medical school, it doesn't feel like you can balance other things, but really the students who figure out how they can do that really succeed. So here's how you do it. You look at your calendar, you find out all the times that medical school doesn't have to necessarily be there. That includes time that's not dedicated to classes, labs, tests and things of that sort. And before you add in your study, ask yourself, where can I give myself an hour every single day and maybe early in the morning and maybe a time in the evening for you to watch your shows or spend dinner with the loved ones, whatever it may be, find that hour. And in addition, once you have that time slot, let's just say you have six to seven PM on a Monday booked off for you. Instead of just saying, I'm going to do something for me, go ahead and get really specific. Say today I'm going to get a workout and go to the gym from the six to seven PM, or I'm going to watch and binge an inflict show from six to seven while I eat my dinner. Being very specific this way helps you understand that you are prioritizing you before med school kind of takes a share on your time. So to give you an example of what I did, one of the things that I really prioritized in med school was making sure my health was taken care of. So every morning I would make sure I had a scheduled workout in before class started. Now I am an early morning person, so that may not work for all of you guys. But in the evening, something that you guys can do is that there'd be specific days of the week where my favorite shows would be coming out, Game of Thrones, suits, the flash. And so I knew what days of the week those would be. So I would go ahead and book off an hour or an hour and a half during those times. But then I knew that since this time was booked, I had to use the other time efficiently for my med school study. Now the second thing that you need to remember to help you have a life in medical school is when you start, or if you're already into the journey of making sure you have one or two hobbies that you can always kind of lean on. You can obviously have more of their students that do a good job balancing this. But if you're a new med student watching this, make sure at least one or two things that you had before starting med school are still a part of your life. And maybe running and maybe working out, cooking, spending time with a loved one, reading, whatever it may be. Find one thing, maybe two things and say, okay, are these things scheduled into my week? And that goes into tip number three, which is at the end of each week, have a little weekly check-in with yourself. I can be just two minute conversation in your head saying, okay, did I do something for me this week? And hopefully the answer is not no, but they're obviously going to be very busy weeks and it's understandable. But if you're going week through week to week and understand, man, like none of this time was dedicated to me. I didn't do anything just for me. Everything was in med school. But if you realize that you're going week to week to week without having time for you, that means you're going to have to go back to your schedule and just reevaluate how you can structure time first for you before you get into medical school. Now, tip number four is something that I was inspired by Mattia Vella. If you guys don't know who he is, he's a brilliant YouTuber. I think he's almost narrowing two million subscribers. I'll link his channel down below. But one of the things in the videos they made was something called a two day rule. That was basically a video that he used to help him stay with a habit longer. And essentially the two day rule is that you can skip a day, but you can't skip two days in a habit like working out. You can skip one day, but the next day you have to make sure you go for your workout. You can use the two day rule for your own wellness and making sure you still have a life. So while you can say, okay, maybe today I don't have time for something that's fun for me, I have a test coming up, but tomorrow I have to do something for me. And if you look at that way, that means a majority of the time four out of the seven days of the week, you're going to be doing something specifically for you. You're going to feel like there's a part of you that are still there and med school is not taking over. And the last tip that I use, and I'm actually using this today is to make plans far and advanced with ideally people and not in medical school, but you can also do this with your med school classmates and saying, Hey, in two weeks, there's an event going on, or we should really try out this new place. Let's go ahead and book ourselves to go to dinner here on the specific day. Obviously don't do it for the day before an exam. But if you know that something is in your calendar, I'm about to have a dinner with a friend this evening, I know, okay, I have to structure the rest of my studying the rest of my responsibilities around that time. So if you guys feel like you're always telling your friends, especially those out of med school, and I'm not sure my schedule is kind of busy, I would honestly recommend go ahead and just book yourself for an afternoon or an evening, and then ask yourself to reverse plan on what time you could use to be efficient elsewhere. Alright guys, those were my tips to help you better have a life in medical school. Hopefully you guys enjoyed before you leave, I have three things for you. One is for me to are going to help you out. So let's get to the selfish one first. Make sure you hit that like button if you haven't done so already, essentially any kind of engagement where there's comments or likes really helps a YouTube channel as well as the channel grow and get in front of more people. So hit the subscribe button if you also haven't done so already. So the other two things one consider following me on Instagram. This is not to increase the number of followers I have instead. I'm putting out basically tips that I do like in this video, but a nice Instagram post that way you can just go ahead and get the tips and move on and try to apply them. So if you enjoyed this video and you wanted a shorter bit of time, then check out Instagram and I'll link it down below as well. And the last thing, if you guys do think that the main reason you're not having a life in medical school is because studying is taking so much of your time and you want to see how I studied in medical school then in the description down below, I'll basically show you a nine step process on walking you through in my computer how I study from getting the information that started to preparing for the exam. So if you guys want to see how I studied a lot of students have enjoyed my method, you guys can also see that description down below. That's basically it for this video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed and if you haven't make sure you hit that like button and subscribe to show your boy and the channel some love. But thank you guys so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.