 Boom finally finally hit another milestone 50,000 subscribers on YouTube Thank you guys so much for the support in today's episode I want to answer some of your biggest burning questions sent out a quick message on email and through our Instagram followers on the questions That you guys wanted me to answer the most and in honor of a 50k I want to make sure that I'm just here providing value to you guys. Let's get into the questions Let's get into it by no means to everything that the MD journey would become as big as it has within the medical community So all I have to say is thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for the support that you've had in all of our videos and our Content and just giving more ideas and more videos that we make for you But in case you're relatively new here to the MD journey My name is Laksham used to be an internal medicine physician And now I am a brand new cardiology fellow as just a few weeks ago and here We try to make content to help people like you succeed on whatever their journey They're on particularly the medical journey But doing it with last dress by sharing things that worked for me that didn't work for me And hopefully you could use those to propel yourself to even more success So over the past few weeks I asked you guys on YouTube on Instagram on email questions that you guys had in honor of us Reaching that 50k mark here are some of the biggest questions you guys asked. Let's get into it So number one is where did I do my medical training now? There's a lot of assumptions that because I'm Indian I did a lot of my medical training in India Which is not true. I was born in India But I came here when I was four years old and since then I've done all my training throughout the US systems I include high school college and medical school and all of those have been within central Texas or within the surrounding cities I did three years of college graduated a year early took a gap here Which was awesome working with pediatric kids and then I went straight to medical school at one of the top medical schools in the state And in the country that's where I stayed for my internal medicine residency for three years Then I decided to go ahead and take a year as working as a hospitalist which absolutely loved But I made the choice to go back to training and that's where I am now I'm officially a full-time cardiology fellow learning to be Cardiologist for the next three years before I become an independent cardiologist That's the brief synopsis of my training and pretty much US training. So if you have IMG related questions I may not be the best person for you all they will try my best to help you out Now the second most common question that would get on Instagram surrounded around my demographics How old am I am I married if so how long do I have kids where I live so to break those down currently? I am 29 years old I'm about to have my 30th birthday in just about a week as I'm making of this episode I am happily married for the past four years to my lifelong best friend And we just had our very first little baby girl about a week and a half ago So this past few weeks have been full with success at milestones and a little bit of sleep deprivation Those are the big kind of demographic things that usually people ask. I'm about six feet tall What else? That's usually what I ask brown eyes or glasses all the time Let's get into the questions that you guys really care about which questions regarding your medical journey in ways that we can help you out So question number one says congrats on 50k. Thank you starting med school in two weeks What is your best advice for somebody about to start the empty journey or the medical journey? Honestly, the biggest thing that I remember is that there is no finish line Every step along this journey you feel like you have to accomplish the next thing and then things get easier In fact, they just get busier and if you forget the fact that there really is no finish line You're always moving towards another milestone Then you tend to set yourself up where you're just not enjoying the journey when I started medical school I told the person interviewing me that I wanted to make sure that I enjoyed medical school as four years I truly remembered versus the stepping stone into residency or my future career. I meant that and that's exactly how it turned out I loved my medical school experience I love my classmates don't necessarily want to do medical school again It was definitely four years that are truly cherished and it just made all of it seem not so bad things for stressful That's kind of what I expected to be the case. I was studying for a boarding exam. It was hard It's kind of meant to be hard Understanding that there's not a finish line allowed me to say you know what I'm going through a tough time in my life Whether it's studying for a difficult test going through a difficult rotation But I still need to make sure that I'm focused on the people around me that are important things around me They're important and the other growths and aspects of my life that I want to develop in addition to becoming a future Physician by doing all of those things. I was able to make those good habits of how do I make time for my workouts? How do I make time for good sleep? How do I make time for other projects and things that I care about like creating videos and content for other people by doing? So those habits continued when I was a second-year medical student third year fourth year fifth year even though I got busier I still have the good habits of saying this is how you make time for things that are important to you by doing So I say it is a happy doctor But also was able to be successful within the aspects of medicine as well as outside question Two is what degree would have chosen if I had gone through this entire process of college and going to the medical journey again The biggest thing to remember is that if you're applying within the US system whatever degree you have in college doesn't really matter So if you're going towards biology just because you think that's going to give you a leg up in terms of doing well in medical school Probably not most people have biology degrees that they never use I for one decided to major in neuroscience because it was really Interesting learning about the brain and having classes all throughout the semesters learning just about how the brain and the nervous system work Versus doing a typical traditional biology degree where I'm learning about plants and animals and then humans at the same time Just didn't seem like the best fit and in all honesty if I was going to go through the entire college process again I may choose to go ahead and major in something that just gave me more skills So maybe something in computer science, maybe something in engineering Maybe something in accounting or finance just so I have another skill set in my background besides just science But the biggest takeaway is that doesn't really matter what you get to your degree in But a good way to think about it is what would be your plan be if medicine didn't work out Would you want that biology degree? Could you do what you wanted with it if the answer is no It's probably a good time to think about what options could you be doing in terms of changing your major That we always have a backup career that you still enjoy have a degree You're happy with and if you get into medical school even more better But a great question to think about degree of choice is if I didn't get into medical school Is this degree going to be able to help me and satisfy me and for the life career that I would want If you're applying for medical school and you're doing biology Most people don't want to do something with their biology degree that's they're going to be unhappy Unfulfilled you may not find the job of their liking so ask yourself that medical school didn't work out Which route would I consider and use that to tailor into your journey into medicine? If you get into medical school perfect cherry on top You don't you at least have a degree in four years of experience Through your undergrad degree that you can actually use for something else question number three says How would you take notes from videos that tend to copy word by word? Now this is a great question for any type of content that I'm listening to I am usually trying to think about What sections are they talking about? So let's say we're learning about a disease and the lecturer is talking about a heart condition because I'm a cardiologist They may tell me about what that disease is how it works how it's treated how it's worked up And those are kind of mini sections within the lecture now with each section I'm thinking about what questions would I have to be able to answer to thus duplicate the answers or the topics they're talking about So if they're teaching me about high blood pressure and how it happens I may think of three to four questions that may represent the slide that they're covering in that video In that case I may write down a list of those questions and it grows to a list of 20 or 30 Depending on how long that lecture is if I can answer those questions I could essentially go ahead and answer what that lecture was talking about in that video I can't I can easily say I don't understand these 10 questions that I listed out But I knew were somehow pertinent to whatever they were talking about now I can just go back to the video pause to that portion Write out that answer below my question in my word document or whatever in my flashcard And now I basically have a big document of questions that are corresponding to the video in whole But if I can answer the questions that I don't have to come back to the video And I force myself to have better repetition over time Hope that helps Next question is can you make a video on how you make a flashcard during medical school? And actually our most popular video here is a strategy that I use using flashcards Which you guys can check out right here on how I use on key using a very kind of specific and unique way Of making flashcards through screenshots if you guys are interested again I'll link it up there as well as down below in description Next is a degree in health information management worth it as a pre-med kind of going back to what we talked about before Absolutely If it's something you're interested in and is a job that you could see yourself taking if medical school didn't work out Or you chose not to go down that route Absolutely great feel definitely a lot of job opportunities people definitely are needing people within that kind of the layer area of expertise That interests you go for it. Next question My study strategy was reading the entire material then doing practice questions But my problem is that it's taking too long like 10 plus hours and then only having two hours for practice question Should I skip the reading material in total knowing that I may be worried about missing things before doing the flashcards? And maybe I won't understand the lecture It's a great question often when you have to ask yourself if something is taking extensive amount of time Is really just trying to alter an option which is in this person doing more questions for flashcards and trying to see Does that actually help their retention? So an option for here is this student is taking super long of reading their handouts and not having so much time to do The practice test for me. It may be more beneficial to go into that and saying Let's go ahead and quickly skim through this handout or the syllabus and get an idea of what they'll talk about Maybe looking at the learning objectives to see what my big takeaways need to be Looking at the headings of the chapter to really understand What are the things they're going to talk about and then using my flashcards of saying Let me just being quizzed on all the things that are going to be important And thus i'm kind of learning the syllabus document over and over again If i'm learning a practice question or if i'm studying something and it still doesn't make sense At least that directs me to saying go to that part of the chapter or the reading to understand it better But now if I have more time Ideally your split should have how much active material you're learning should be about 70 or 80 percent So if you're taking in this case the student is studying 10 hours And then only two hours of active material their ratio is completely off And so ideally they can go ahead and direct more of their time by reading less doing pre-reading Spending more of that middle time doing repetition coming back to that reading to fill in the gaps And then ideally ending it with more practice questions and flashcards next question How many hours do you sleep per day now? This obviously varies depending on the part of my journey you're talking about talking about me as a Hospitalist I easily slept eight nine hours a night if you're talking about me now as a cardiology fellow with a Brand new newborn that gets closer to about five or four now I tend to be at least ambitious and trying to be an early bird I made a kind of a routine in medical school to wake up anywhere from 4 30 to 5 30 a.m Just to kind of get some productive work done before anyone really bothered me And so sometimes that means that I do sacrifice on my sleep in the ambition of trying to get more done Usually that includes an afternoon nap or some kind of sleep or catch up later on but on average I would say my average is from six to seven hours Usually going to bed around 10 10 30 trying to wake up anywhere from 4 to 5 or 6 if I'm really tired next question This one's fun. What is your routine on how you balance being a doctor plus being a content creator? Now my biggest thing is being a physician being a family man being a dad Those are all priorities of we're making videos for you guys I love you guys, but obviously those kind of take priority for me And now being a dad as well as being a new trainee and learning the field of cardiology All of those take priorities despite that if I know that there's going to be chunks of time They're protected for example if I wake up at 4 30 usually my daughter's sleeping My wife is sleeping fellowship is not asking for my attention Those are great times for me to think about what's my next video going to be and then ideally on my next day off I can make two or three videos for you guys and then myself and my team go ahead and take an edit And then we'll be the content that you guys are watching like this one here So by no means do you have to be a content creator? But replacing doctor plus whatever it may be fill in the blank the same structure applies finding those chunks of time They're protected for you and then making it very easy to just get into it So for me the process of making videos includes just adding a list of all the topics that I would like to talk about At some point scripting one or two of them and then another point in the week going ahead and recording those And then this is what the final product would be next question is super important because I know most people have most students struggle with this And I definitely did which is how do I overcome not giving up because of academic struggles when I don't get the grades I want and didn't do so great. I tend to question myself of the field is for me And how would you approach this here's the biggest thing you should remember pretty much every physician Every medical practitioner sucked at some phase or multiple phases along their journey They just don't talk about it We don't like talking about the tests or the board exams that don't go away or the rotations that didn't go our way And we feel like incompetent or like an imposter along the journey multiple times I definitely did I speak highly on this channel about at least my first semester in medical school Studying so many hours just to get C's or barely a B and wondering like how could it be that I studied and did so Well, my first X amount of years in school just to now be below average in medical school Maybe I wasn't going to be a good enough doctor That wasn't true if you understand that everyone struggles then it's easier to accept the next part Which is what is the biggest thing that I need to work on to try to fix that ideally can lead to some improvement So if you're not getting the grades you want that doesn't make you stupid or you a failure This means whatever structure or system you're using is just not working And if you can accept that it's part of the system and not the person Now you can go into what what part of the system is going to need the biggest adjustment And may give me the biggest bang for my buck So that student we talked about before they were spending 10 hours reading and only two hours of actually studying Their biggest issue is that they're spending too much time on actually learning or absorbing the information If they could figure out a system where they can get into that review phase a lot quicker Again, that flashcard video would be a great way to help you out doing so if you have that problem And now they can see does their quizzes to their grades to their retention to their test scores Do they just go up if it does beautiful? They start to ask that question more and more if it doesn't they go back to the drawing board and ask What's the next thing they should try to fix if you understand that's part of the process versus the person that is going to The process that is the problem then it's much easier to face So understand and remember that I have those struggles even though i'm full fledged now cardiology fellow I have those successes and degrees behind me that people all want doesn't mean that it's easy It doesn't mean I'm straightforward and it's not going to be for you And anyone that tells you that they had an easy journey or their journey was lacking of any failures is lying to you So if you feel like you're struggling understand you're not alone It's just kind of part of the process ask yourself what you need to fix versus wondering if you are the problem in the first place Next question How did you know this was their right career for you kind of story time going into medicine was something that I intended Not doing at all coming from an Indian household It was actually the part in the field that was motivated and pursued and influenced on top of me by my parents Because it seemed like a great career especially coming from immigrant families that wanted to make sure that their son had a great career Knowing and being rebellious. I didn't want to go into that field for that same reason just because you're telling me to do So i'm going to find something else to do instead But over time I learned that the parts of any career that I care for is having some kind of interaction And relationships with people where I could use my skill set whatever it may be and help the person that's in front of me But also by helping that person I could help the other people that are reliant on that one person Medicine does that in my opinion better than anything I can help one individual overcome a disease overcome a diagnosis that I have overcome a symptom mythology of that leads them into the hospital for the cardiology if someone comes with chest pain heart attack I can lead them into overcoming whatever disease is causing that then allow them to return to their home So they can be the parent the sibling the employee the community service or whatever it may be to other people I'm impacting essentially causing a ripple effect by helping one patient at a time and having that opportunity of doing that Patient to patient to patient you get to have a much more impact and you'll ever be aware of it's very easy to go to work And I wanted to have a job where it was easy to go to work I can feel like i'm always learning because i'm there's so much that I've left to learn and having that ability Using the knowledge that I gain over time to help those people and this causes ripple effect and be more and more profound Super motivating go to work. Thus. I know it's the right career path for me biggest disclaimer I haven't done many other career paths So I don't know if there could have been another career path that could have been a better fit for me Frankly, I don't care. I enjoy where I'm at and I'm going to go and continue this journey the way that I want to Which is I feel like this is the right fit for me or to go forward next question What advice would you give to pre-med students? So this is something that I feel like people don't hear enough Is that every decision that you make tends to be for the application that you want to stuff So you look impressive for the people that are going to be reading your application for medical school A better way to think about every experience that you choose to take on is that if I sat in a chair In front of an interviewer and that was the only thing that I had to do to get into medical school How different would my experiences be from the person who's going to sit in that chair before after me? If you think about the degree now, you don't think about just doing a biology degree Just because everyone else does you do it just because you think that's what you should do So will attend other people if you do the same clubs the same community services the same research projects that everyone else is Doing because you feel like that's what somebody getting into medical school should do You're going to look like every other applicant that wants to get into medical school Instead of you start asking why do I want to go into medicine in the first place? And what experiences can I look for explore shadow research courses things that I learned online etc That are going to tell me actually that is not something that I enjoy about medicine like the or I hate the surgery But this is something I enjoy such as working with people internal medicine and cardiology Over time you start to find more and more experiences saying this is why I want to do this field And you can sit comfortably in front of somebody on the other side of a table and saying like I know what I want based off of these experiences that pointed me away from this And towards this you are much more of an attractive applicant when your experiences are based off of your reasons of going into medicine versus What looks nice on a piece of paper try to build your story and it will be easier for you to once say truly medicine is something I want to do never want to apply to medical school just because you think that's what you want to do Ideally you have enough reasons of why and then use your experiences to keep building on why that's going to be Even when you're in medical school even when your residency even when you're in my position as a fellow Or and as attending you're always finding more and more reasons of growing your career of growing your little niche and focus within medicine And that's my biggest kind of tip for pre-med students is that start worrying about the grades start worrying about the m cat Those are important ask yourself What's going to differentiate you from the person who's going to sit in that chair before and after you and if you can comfortably come Up with an answer of this is how i'm different then it's much easier to get through the journey without feeling Stress about all the grades and ups and downs that you have along the journey next question Can you please be my mentor appreciate it? So first of all all the content that I make here is just free and the idea is to be through a mentor But if you do want to work with myself and my team we do have other avenues Which I'll link down below of either working with us in like a group coaching session You can come up and join me in calls and ask the most personalized questions of how would I do this here? My notes give me a tips. Um, that's the medallion academy. I'll link it down below There's no pressure of joining if you don't want to but if you would like to work with myself and my team And get more one-on-one direct help there are tons of benefits and tons of students We've impacted over the past seven years of doing this I'll link those down below in case you're interested As well as everything else that we have for here both free as well as paid at the empty journey In a similar boat next question is how do you find good mentors while in medical school? It's actually a great question Mentorship and medical journey is very vague people feel like it's a very kind of formal process of emailing somebody or asking them Like can you be my mentor? It's really about just having a relationship that builds over time So for example, let's say you're interested in the field of surgery and you want to do some shadowing So you find three or four surgeons that may say yes to letting you shadow them out of those three to four Maybe two of them are okay with you coming back the next time the next time after out of those two Maybe one of them offers you a research project to join in on and you kind of work with them That person over time is ideally somebody you can come back to and ask questions saying I'm considering doing trauma over General surgery who would be somebody I would go to or what would you recommend? Or do you mind looking at my letters or do you mind telling me what rotations I should do or what Resource that you should use that person naturally becomes a mentor to you because they are already giving you guidance And have kind of given you a little bit of door of opportunities of getting into their life and using their time You don't necessarily have to send an email saying can you be my mentor? That's how you find good mentors is you find people who are allowing you to Join their projects who are going to allow you to ask them questions Maybe you had a great lecture and you're saying hey, I had some questions about your field abnc Do you mind letting me know and if they answer you can always continue to stay in touch Ask follow up questions and if they're responsive that would be somebody to be a good mentor And again ideally you can increase the ask of what you're asking them So instead of just an individual question that you can say can I chat about you? Can I help you on a research project without being abrasive if they're saying yes? They may be somebody who would be a great mentor for you. All right, so the last few questions We're going to go ahead and just do rapid fire next question is basically how do you read something faster? So reading quickly has to have some kind of system system I use in medical school was go through a few paragraphs of a whole section and mark the parts that I would consider being important Then either after my reading was all done Usually with case or during that section of paragraphs I would come back and write questions on the margin or convert those into a word doc Then that means I have my questions for the part that I read and this way each time I wasn't going from note taking to writing it on my word doc I was getting to the reading I indicate what's important and come back and convert those either into notes or questions I could use later next question How can I study faster with increased retention? You really have to increase the amount of repetitions that you do So don't spend too much time acquiring information through syllabus and lectures and videos Those feel important but ask yourself how can you get to those flashcards those practice questions Kind of writing things out on a whiteboard as many times as possible over and over again That's how you study faster if you had four hours to do repetition You'd learn so much better if you have four hours of watching videos and you tend to remember more That's you need to increase how often you do those next question is medicine worth all the hard work and cons that come with it That's a personal question So there are tons of cons things that you won't even know are cons of medicine that you will find out when you have your full-time job But if it's long as a career that you can look positively on in a good way of asking yourself Is could you see yourself doing the things that you are getting annoyed by in 20 years? The answer is yes, it's a great field Some of the biggest pros that I get to work with individuals one-on-one impacting their health and again having that ripple effect Number two you make a good salary and definitely can financially support your family number three I feel like i'm always learning and that's i'm not going to have a career that's going to become stagnant There's always new information and medicine there to learn next question What are your top three tips for someone who's starting medical school this year? So we already talked about understanding the finish line so having that balance number two is really just having tunnel vision So once you understand that this is the way i'm going to try things stopping attention to what your classmates are doing Usually they're just there to distract you things work differently for different people Once you find that this isn't working for me Then you can start asking your classmates what they're doing Otherwise having tunnel vision and number three is really be reflective constantly on the journey If you want to be somebody who just says they look put together They know what they want that comes with just understanding how things are being reflected So if you have grip patient experiences write those down drop those in the same place You have amazing learning experiences through your attendings write those down on ideally a digital version of something like notion evernote Google notes whatever may be on your phone And they'll grow over time and then when you're writing your applications your personal statements You just take from there and it just adds up over years You don't have to worry about is this experience worthy or memorable or not You just literally have a list of your memories next question How would you write your mitts glad mission essay so any type of essay here's no basic structure I kind of create a list of all my experiences that I think to be important for that journey So applying to medical school applying to cardiology both things that pointed me towards it things that Made me want to do it more things that were interesting patients and then I add my reflection So that's why it's so important to be reflective Now if you have your list of all of those important experiences plus your takeaways now You can start to see like what's the common theme between some of these experiences? It's very easy to say here's why I want to do cardiology Here's an experience that taught me about this and then directing that to the next experience That's kind of related but talks about something else within there So if you talk about and think about your experiences first then you can write your essay versus trying to write an essay And fill up your experiences remember that every sentence matters So if that sentence could have been written by somebody else to take it out and then last question How do you study without getting distracted? This is definitely a big bundled up question and that we've made an episode in a video about how to stay focused while you're setting So I'll link that down below the biggest thing to remember is understanding What is the easiest to get into so a lot of distraction comes from not even wanting to do work in the first place So when you're getting into it, you want to think of something that's really easy to say yes to Flashcards are much easier for me than like watching a video or reading a syllabus So I may start my study session by doing flashcards and then as I build a momentum I may then stack it with something that was harder to say yes to so maybe doing a video And watching a recording and then when i'm getting tired again stack it with something That's easy to say yes to you like writing something on a whiteboard versus having to read a syllabus chapter Focusing on where your energy is is very easy and then obviously the basic things putting your phone in a different room If that's the thing that distracts you most you can install apps on your browsers to prevent you from going to youtube Or social media pages while you're studying and then just having study blocks and thinking of those as appointments to yourself You understand that you have to show up for those for the betterment of your version tomorrow It's very easy or at least easier to try to get the work done as best as possible But those guys are just my answers to some of the great questions that you guys ask There's tons more and apologies and not being able to get all of them without making this episode and video Extra long again the biggest takeaway is that I am super grateful for all of you for supporting me It's supporting us of getting past 50k Hopefully you'll continue to follow along as we work on getting to that next milestone of 100 000 If you do feel like this content has been supportive and helpful for you on your journey All we really ask is one hit that like button and the easiest thing you can do of helping this video And all of our episodes get in front of more people that you may feel like it would benefit Like students like you or share this with somebody who is on their journey Just like you are and saying maybe you'll like this if there's anything that we can do for you Go ahead and drop it in the comment section down below. I'll try to answer them as best as possible Again, if you would like to work with myself or my team on more of a one-on-one capacity Through our coaching and get access to all of our programs that we've created over the past seven years The medallion academy is a great place to go ahead and check out more I'll just let the results of our students speak for themselves. If you're interested, they'll be linked down below But again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can't say thank you enough for getting to this milestone Super appreciative really excited to see what the MD journey continues to do over the next few years Now if you enjoy this episode, go ahead and definitely check out that episode on how you can use onki like a pro And how I basically stay as a happy and successful physician using this episode right here Enjoy those. I'll link those down below. As always my friends. Thank you for being a part of my journey Hopefully we were a little help to you guys on yours. I'll catch you guys the next one. Peace