 Today's video is brought to you by Picmonic. Have you ever gone to lecture excited to do some learning, only to have a professor who makes you want to pull your hair out? Don't answer that. We all have. Well, in this episode, we're going to talk about exactly how to overcome a bad lecture and still get the grades you always wanted. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. And here at the MD journey, we make content to help people like you succeed on whatever journey you're on doing it with less stress. Now, one of the most stressful situations you can have in school, whether it's in medical school like myself or in any academic setting, is to have a professor that just flat out sucks. And so today we're going to break down exactly what you can do to overcome that bad lecture and still get the grades you always wanted. And just as a quick reminder, if you want better grades and not quite getting them just yet, click down below to check out our free study rehab course. Basically breaks down the three steps that you'll need to get more free time and better grades. Go ahead and click that below. Now, step number one is to essentially evaluate your options. And whenever I'm working with the student one-on-one and they tell me, like, the lectures are so bad and I don't know how to use them. The first question I ask them is, do you even have to go to lecture that a required part of your grade or your attendance? Or if you have online lectures, do you have to still show up and log in? If the answer is yes, later in the episode, we'll talk about a few strategies you can do to better prepare yourself for a bad lecture so you can still get all the information that you need from the actual material. Question number two that I ask students is how important is lecture to doing well on the quizzes and exams? Now, there is easily a spectrum to those answers where on one side a student may say that lecture is terrible, so are the slides, so are the syllabus. And we have to use external resources to even have a chance of doing well on our quizzes and tests. But on the other end, a student may say that the material is not comprehensive and thus they have to go to lecture because sometimes what the professor says actually ends up showing up on the quizzes and tests. So step number two is a high yield resource plus or minus the stacking technique. Now, once you decide on the spectrum of where you are, on one side you have somebody who doesn't have to go to class and the lecture material is not that useful for the final quizzes. On the other end, you have a student who has to go to class and or there's material covered in lecture that not really presented elsewhere. On one end, you can just use the high yield resources. On the other end, you can do a high yield resource plus the stacking technique. So let's break down each one by one. And one of the biggest issues with a bad lecture is just that baseline. Even with a good lecture, it's very hard to know what's important and what's not. And most of us have a tendency of trying to remember every single detail and high yield point at the same time or really just confuse at the end of it. And then once you throw in a terrible lecture to that equation, it's just a disaster. And that's why using a high yield resource can first help you delineate. OK, this is really what's important. If I hear it again in a lecture, even if it's from a bad lecture, I at least know that I need to pay attention to that. Now, to highlight how to effectively use a high yield resource, I'm going to focus specifically on those students who have to go to class and or there's material that is fair game from lecture and everyone else that has it a little bit nicer where you don't have to go to class or the material may not be fair game, you can just using the high yield resource and not have to do what we call a stacking technique. Now, to highlight how to effectively use a high yield resource, usually the first thing that I would recommend to a student is to keep in mind of what lectures they'll be covered the next day or ideally throughout a week by looking through the syllabus chapters or PowerPoints or whatever schedule your class or institution may give you. And then you can transition to multiple or ideally just one high yield resource that covers that material and cover it at least the night before so then you're ready for class the next day. So, for example, if you're using a video platform as a high yield resource, then you can essentially say, OK, tomorrow I'm going to cover these three topics over three hours of lecture. I'm going to try to see if I can find related videos in my online resource to help cover those. I'm going to try to watch them the evening before. And during this pre-reading or pre-watching session, your main goal is I'm going to try to absorb as much as possible without stressing myself out because my ultimate goal is to go to lecture tomorrow and say I've heard that before. And if you're wondering what high yield resource you possibly use, it's a great time to bring up today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now, if you're in any form of medical journey, whether it be medical school, nursing, pharmacy, et cetera, you can essentially use Picmonic and there are hundreds and hundreds of videos to help you do essentially what we're talking about in today's video, which is to help quickly prepare a lecture tomorrow, especially a bad lecture. And if you take a class, for example, that has a tendency of being very difficult, such as microbiology, you can use Picmonic's library and go to the microbiology section and find the relevant videos. So if I was going to have a lecture tomorrow about grand positive cocci, I can go in and say, OK, what type of videos are available? And then you'll be able to see the various high yield topics and videos that Picmonic has on that relevant topic. So for example, in tomorrow in class, if you're about to learn about staff or is which is a really common bug that you have to learn as a future medical professional, but you know, the lecture is terrible or the slides look super confusing, you can go into Picmonic and say, let's learn about staff or is and go ahead and watch the entertaining videos that has images and a story to help you learn stuff not only for tomorrow, but for the long term. And one of my favorite parts about Picmonic videos is that they're super, super time efficient. This video right here is only a minute 59. I can quickly watch it and also quickly just do a quiz to see how I retained it before I even go in to lecture the next day. And with literally hundreds and hundreds of videos on any topic you'll need on your medical journey, Picmonic is a great resource for any student who's struggling and still wants an all in one resource. So once again, if you're on your medical journey, if you're looking for that all in one resource to help you improve your studying, that's both time efficient and helps you both learn and quiz yourself. Definitely consider checking out Picmonic. And if you're interested in giving Picmonic a go, if you click the link down below in the description and use the code that MD journey at checkout, our friends at Picmonic have also nicely and included an extra 20% off for all of our listeners and readers. And so as always, thanks to Picmonic for being today's sponsor. Now, whatever resource you end up using is completely up to you, whether it's an all in one resource like Picmonic or other resources in the medical field or using free tools such as YouTube videos to essentially look up a specific topic, learn as much as you can and watch the video. Now, once you have your high old resource, let's talk about the stacking technique. Now, stacking technique is one of my favorite things that I recommend to students, especially my one-on-one students that tell me, here's a bad lecture, I still need to do well in this class, what do I do? Essentially what I'll say, okay, you found your high old resource or you found your go-to resources. First thing you do is figure out all your topics for the week so that way you can just expedite your learning and then find those topics on your high old resource. That way, if your high old resource doesn't have it, you know to already look elsewhere. So as a quick example, if I was taking microbiology and my lectures were terrible, I can quickly just go through my syllabus or course outline or the individual slides and saying, these are the different bugs I should be learning. Here's the different drugs I've been covered. I'm gonna see if I can find those relevant videos in my all-in-one resource or through YouTube videos. And then throughout the week, the night before the actual lecture, I'm gonna designate a specific time where I'm going to watch those videos over the span of ideally 20 to 30 minutes so it's not overwhelming. And again, during the session, my main goal is to try to obtain as much as I can without making overwhelming. So either I can passively listen or I can write notes down or you can use a tool like Picmonic to just do the quizzes afterward and saying, I overall get the gist and then go to lecture to mainly pay attention to what type of things were covered in the high old material that's also covered in the lecture. That tells you that even though this is a bad lecture or really confusing slides, that is something I should pay attention to. And the last part of the stacking technique is when you go home and you're actually getting ready to do your review of your notes or whatever techniques you're using is to go back to those videos or go back to the quizzes that come with your all-in-one resource and to do them again to essentially give yourself a sandwich approach. High yield, lecture material that's not so great and high yield. Using the strategy, you can easily identify one, what's important. Two, what is included in a lecture that it actually is high yield. And three, actually make sure that the end of your stacking which is going through the high yield resource again helps you actually solidify that knowledge. So now you remember free quizzes and your test. And yes, this does require a little bit of backward planning where you have to look ahead to make sure you have the material ready the night before. But I argue that it's much less stressful than going through three hours of lecture and saying that was utterly useless and I'm still confused and I still have to learn this for the quiz and test. Now, in addition to step one and step two, step three, to just wrap it on the bow, put a cherry on top on the ice cream sundae of how to prepare for a bad lecture is to include practice questions in your daily studying. Now, even if your lectures are amazing, I'm definitely a big proponent of doing some kind of questions on a daily or often basis throughout the week. But particularly if your lectures are bad, having practice questions from one high yield resource that you can be doing, it can be from your all-in-one resource like we talked about the Picmonic or any other resource that has questions, but doing them on a daily basis again helps you understand here are the connections of how high yield materials should be looked at and how they'll be asked. And so not only do you get practice answering those high yield material, you also start to get the interconnection, the web of how all this information is related. If you're a student who tends to struggle with, I can kind of remember facts, but once you ask how everything is interrelated, interconnected, I struggle, particularly like second order and third order questions. If that's your issue, definitely start including practice questions in addition to the stacking technique that we talked about earlier in the episode. And if you want my recommendations and my favorite sources for practice questions, I'll link down below a video I did on my favorite step one question banks, which tends to cover a majority of the initial material covered in medical school. And so after going through those three steps, if you can start to see the gears turning inside your head of like, okay, I can start to see how I can overcome a bad lecture and you're still not getting the grades you want, I do still recommend checking out our free course called the study rehab. It's absolutely free. It's three steps that all of our coaching students go through on how to not only improve their studying, but have more guaranteed free time. So if you're not getting the grades you want and you're still studying way more hours you want, that course is for you. It's essentially what I use to help myself go from 10 to five hours of medical school and still get Bs and As throughout the process. And if you're somebody who's saying I need results and I need them ASAP, definitely recommend checking out our level up your studying program. It's our six step program basically walks you through understanding what you're doing wrong, what top students are doing that you're not and how to put those together to ultimately have the most perfect but personalized study schedule for yourself. And if you click the link down below, you'll be able to see the results at hundreds and hundreds of students, just like you have gotten the span of just days to weeks after using those six steps. And so again, if you're wanting better grades but ideally doing it at last time, either check out their free study rehab course or the step-by-step six step program through our level up your studying program. And as always, my friends, if you have any questions to do something we covered in today's episode, go ahead and drop it in the comments section down below. If you're watching this on YouTube and you enjoy the content, all I really ask in the return is of a thank you is to hit that like button. It definitely supports the channel. As well as this video, get out in front of more people. If you're new to the channel or if you've just been lurking around, definitely recommend hitting that subscribe button and notification bell. Be notified when we put out two videos just like this one on a weekly basis. If you're listening to this as a podcast on our TMJ show, definitely consider hitting that subscribe or follow on your favorite listening platform as well as leaving an honest review on iTunes. But as always, my friends, thank you for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys on yours. If you enjoyed this video, definitely check out this video right here on how you can use Anki like a pro step-by-step as well as this video right here on how to study for step one. Now that it's past fail, I'm sure you'll guys will enjoy those videos and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.