 What is up guys karma medic here and welcome back to another dose I recently finished my final fourth year exams here in medical school And I managed to score the top mark in the oski exam or the practical exam and then the top 3% for the written exam I'm so incredibly happy that all of the hard work and studying actually paid off and in this video I want to talk to you about exactly how I was able to achieve those grades and how I've generally been able to score So well throughout medical school and throughout my time at university If you're new to the channel, then hi, my name is Nasser, and I'm now a final year medical student studying at King's College London And in today's video I want to talk to you about all the studying techniques and habits that I've personally used and built over eight years of higher Education right off the bat I want to make it clear that all of these grades have not been at the sacrifice of my social life of my Relationships my friendships and generally my enjoyment of life outside of medical school I hope that my own channel and others here on YouTube have been able to show that you can have a balanced life while at medical school And you can still pursue all of your passion projects outside of university First things first There's no cheating and no cramming when it comes to studying for these exams If you don't give yourself adequate time to study for these exams and cover all of the material Then it only makes sense that you won't be able to score in the highest possible range of grades for these exams I've been in university for over eight years now a four-year undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto and now four years of medical school I've probably written close to a hundred exams during that time And I can confidently say that I have never walked into an exam feeling unprepared The reason for that is that I always give myself enough time to cover all of the material and to study it thoroughly and study it Well, so that when it comes actual exam time, there's nothing left for me to do I've already studied all the material I've done tons of practice questions and now all I have to do is write the exam personally I usually give myself about six weeks from the day of my exam to start my dedicated studying This is gonna vary for everyone, but I'd say give yourself what you think you need plus a little bit extra just in case In these six weeks of dedicated studying having a solid studying schedule is so so so important I honestly don't know how I would even begin to organize the vast amount of material and knowledge that I need to know without having a Dedicated study schedule. I make a studying timetable before every single exam no matter how big or how small and I follow it to A team and that's the entire point of making a studying timetable You tell yourself what you're going to be studying in advance so that when it comes time to sit down on your desk and begin Studying there's no thinking to do there's no decisions to be made You already know exactly what you need to cover on that day at that time and for me that helps relieve so much of the pressure or the Onus of studying because I don't need to think about it I literally just need to sit down and do what I've already told myself that I need to do Of course You should build some flexibility into your timetable in order to cover topics that you're finding more difficult or to cover things That have come up out of nowhere and you just definitely need to know I've actually made an entire video on how I make my studying timetables I'll link it somewhere up over here if you want to check it out One key point that I want to make about timetables is that they don't need to be neat These are examples of some of the timetables I've been using this year to study for my exams and the point of a timetable is to just do it quick Do it dirty get it out of the way so that you can move on to the actual studying You shouldn't spend forever on it procrastinating it and you know, I'll explain all of this in my video Just go check it out. Trust me So point number three is don't focus on how other people are studying I see my friends and other students making this mistake all the damn time people are so hyper focused and hyper aware of You know how much are you studying? What question banks are you using? How many questions have you done? Which pass papers have you done blah blah blah blah blah guys It doesn't matter you study how you want to study What is useful is having discussions with your friends about what the high yield topics are what studying techniques are working for them that you might Want to try yourself etc, but this hyper focus and hyper Comparability between yourself and other students I think is so so unhealthy if you love reading and highlighting and taking notes over and over again Then no matter how much somebody tells you that's a terrible studying technique you should do anky and active recall doesn't matter. You do you. You do what works for you and what you are enjoying with studying because at the end of the day, whatever you enjoy doing and how you enjoy studying is what's going to get you to study more, which is going to get you to perform better on these exams. Point number four is to make sure that you study with your friends. I can honestly say that there's no way I would have gotten through all of my examination periods both in Toronto and here in medical school if it wasn't for the support and studying network of my friends. You know, when you're at your lowest studying late in the library, when you have no motivation, when you're completely done, it just helps so much to have other people there with you going through the exact same thing. One of the best things about being in university are these communities that you build with other people and the fact that you're all going through the same experience at the same time and that you can help each other and bring each other up in the best ways possible. You guys are a team. You can share your resources. You can share your studying techniques. You can explain things to each other. You can teach each other. You can all learn together in order to all perform better and do very well together. This makes studying, being at a library and just grinding out all of those terrible, terrible memorization, mnemonics and diagrams that you need to know so much more enjoyable. So yeah, text those friends and go study in the library together. Point number five is that past paper exams and question banks are everything and I mean everything. Think about it. Your final exam is going to be written by the same people who have written the past paper exams, those that your colleagues wrote the year before you or the semester before you, et cetera. And so if you can do those exams, if you can do those questions, they are the closest possible thing to the actual exam that you are going to write. So it is absolutely imperative. It is very, very key that you do those exams and you've seen them and you've worked through the answers and you understand what is going on. I see a lot of people who just study from their lectures, from their tutorials, from their textbooks, from YouTube videos, et cetera, without looking at the past paper exams, without doing practice paper questions and I'm like, what are you doing after you've done all of your studying from a textbook or from online resources or whatever? You have to put that knowledge and that learning into practice. And the only way to do that is to use past paper exams or question banks in medical school. I think we're really lucky and we have a lot of different options when it comes to question bank resources for medical school questions. The question bank I personally use is called Quesmed. I'll leave a link to a code that you can use for 10% off of that if you want. So for me here in medical school, I use question banks extensively. And in fact, ever since I got into fourth year, I've pretty much only used question banks in order to learn and test my knowledge while studying. And the reason for that is those questions are going to be in the exact same style and manner and will require the exact same thinking techniques and knowledge that I'm going to have on my actual written exam. And if my recent test scores are proof of anything, it's that, you know, question banks are really, really important. Number six is that when you're studying for an exam, you should always be generating a do not know list. What this is is a list of topics or theories or things that you just don't understand that you don't know as well as both other things that you've studied. Now it's really, really important to identify these topics and to write them down somewhere, because those are the things that you need to study again that you need to dedicate more time to in order to make sure that you do know them and understand them should a question come up on those topics. A big mistake that I would make in my earlier years of studying is that I would study all of the material exactly equally. I wouldn't give stronger weighting to one topic or another. And I would sort of cover everything the exact same amount. And what I came to realize is that, you know, exams are 80% high yield material and then 20% everything else. And so when I'm studying, I should be focusing on that 80% of high yield material on top of that. When I'm studying the things that I don't know, if I don't put extra focus on them and look at them again and study them even more, then I'm just going to continue to not know them that well. Whilst everything else, I still do know the exact same that I used to know it before. So generating this need to know list or do not know list is really, really important for helping you focus down and revisit those topics that you need a little bit more time on. And the great thing about that is, is that questions that I tend to get wrong on an exam probably originate from one of those topics. And so as I study those topics more and more, when those questions come up, I tend to get them right and my scores go up overall. Point number seven is something that you're probably going to hate to hear, but it's so, so, so true, which is that you need to be working throughout the entire year. You can't just start studying at the very, very end in those six weeks or four weeks or whatever. In fact, the only reason that I can give myself six weeks to study before an exam whilst also being on clinical placement whilst also going to the gym, keeping up a social life, et cetera, et cetera is because throughout the entire year, I've been generating all of the notes and all of the knowledge that I need to now just study and learn hardcore for my exam. I currently do this on notion using a conditions list. I've made all kinds of videos about this before you guys can check them out somewhere up over here or watch them in previous vlogs. But this conditions list is like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. So I didn't make this in six weeks. I've been generating all of this information over the entire year. A little bit of work every single day is going to save you the biggest headache and stress of your life when it comes to actual exam season. Similarly to have never shown up to an exam feeling unprepared, I can confidently say I've never shown up to an exam feeling any kind of stress or worry or uncertainty. Again, the reason for that is because I give myself enough time to generate all these notes and then I give myself enough time to study those notes well enough and cover all the material. So when the exam day comes, there's nothing else to do. I just need to sit down and write the exam that I've already practiced so much using my practice questions and reading the notes, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the great thing about building out this conditions list throughout the whole year is that anytime that I'm on clinical placement or I'm studying for an exam, I can quickly reference it and search for any disease or pathology that I want. And I'll have all of the information there that is specific to what I need to know for clinical practice and for my exam. So you know, if I pull out any disease or pathology in this massive, massive, massive book, you're probably going to find tons of paragraphs and pages and diagrams about it. But really what I want to know is how does the patient present in the hospital when they have this thing? What are the investigations that I need to do to confirm it or rule it out? What is the treatment and management? What are the complications? These are the things that I need to know. These endless pages and paragraphs, I do not need to know for that. And so the conditions list that I'm building on my computer has that focus, the most important information that I need. And I can just reference that when I need it. That was a heavy, heavy book. Point number eight is making sure that you have enough time for exercise and relaxation. This is a non-negotiable thing. Okay. No one is going to get very, very good grades. If they don't also give themselves enough time to have fun, do things that they enjoy outside of medical school, outside of studying. You just have to have both. You can't be sitting at your desk for 10 hours a day doing absolutely nothing but reading books. You're just, you're going to go crazy. Your mental health is going to suffer. You're not going to be happy. You need to have a balance of both. Now personally for me, exercise plays a huge, huge, huge role in my balance between my studying and just staying sane. And it's something that I never, never sacrifice even when it comes to exam periods. In fact, I'm often running or going to the gym in the days leading up to my exam, because honestly, the amount of studying that I do sitting on my desk is equally as important as the amount of time that I spend running or going to the gym. I honestly can't do the studying if I don't have that rest and relaxation as well. Now, depending on the exam that you're studying for, or the exam season that you're in, you're going to be able to take more time off to socialize and do your exercise, et cetera, or less time. When I was studying for the USM least step one exam here over the summer for four to five months, I literally would study 10 hours a day and I would do my exercise slash relaxation from 10, 30 PM until 12, 30 PM. So, you know, times were tough back then, but generally for most exam periods, you know, I still go out with my friends, I still socialize, still have my relationship, I still do exercise, I still have fun and relax, play video games here, chat with my sister, go out, whatever. The point that I'm trying to make is that both are honestly really, really important. In fact, when I make those studying timetables that I showed you guys before, I build into those timetables, time to relax, time to do something fun, just to take time off to clear my head, play some video games, go see some friends, whatever, because I really, I just need both. Don't neglect this part of your life because balance is everything, you know, if you're going to be studying really, really hard, you need to be relaxing and enjoying yourself as well. Just my two cents. Point number nine is about mind state and mentality. So as I've said previously in this video, I can honestly say touching wood. I've never walked into an exam feeling unprepared. I've never walked into an exam feeling stressed. And the reason for that is because of everything that I've talked about in this video, you know, I give myself enough time to study, I give myself enough time to prepare to the point that I feel like I've done everything that I possibly can. And then once I've done that within that scope, if I go into the exam and I perform really poorly, well, I did everything that I could have. I put in all of the hours I studied as much as I can, and I still performed poorly. So somewhere along the line, I must have gone wrong. So what I would do in that situation is reflect on how I studied, what it is that I did and why it might not have worked and what I can change moving forward. If I go into the exam and I perform really well, as I did in my final fourth year exams here at medical school, well, then I know that what I did worked very well. And so I can make note of that and next time when it comes to writing my finals in a couple of months from now, I can say, okay, this is what works very well in the past. Let me do that again and continue that for the future. The point is that I do enough studying and I give myself enough time such that I'm as prepared as I can possibly be. Once I've reached that point, and I know that that is the case, anything that happens after that is kind of irrelevant. I put myself in the best possible position that I could be before I wrote the exam, whatever happens after that, it's, I don't know, it's up to luck. It's up to chance. It's up to, you know, some factor that happened on the day. It's out of my control. I did everything that I possibly could have. And so I always say this to my friends and students in university. I always say, you know, prepare to the point where you feel comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable and you're scared about the upcoming exam, well, then chances are you probably need to study more or look over certain topics again, because you don't feel as prepared as you could be. So yeah, generally speaking, I try to be as calm as I possibly can before an exam, as relaxed as I possibly can. And I tell myself and I put myself in this sort of mental state where no matter what happens, it's going to be okay. Worst case scenario, I fail. I realize what I did wrong and I can work on that moving forward. Best case scenario, I score very well and I can take what I've learned and take it on to the next exam. Finally, something very important that I've learned throughout all of my years at university is that we are all on our own path and we are all doing our own thing. There is no space and there is no time for competition and bringing other people down and comparing yourself to others in a negative way. Everyone has different situations at home. Everyone has different commitments outside of medical school. Everyone has different backgrounds and upbringings and everyone is on their own path. Keep the vibes positive, bring each other up, help each other out, share your resources, share your learning, share your knowledge. That's how you're going to do better and that's how everyone is going to do better all together. I've said this before in a Q&A with Ali somewhere up over here that I've never felt the need to compare myself and compare my grades to other students that are in the class. And the reason for this is that no matter what their grade is, whether it's zero percent or a hundred percent, it literally has absolutely no bearing and no effect on me. The only thing that is going to have an effect on me is how much studying that I do, how much effort I put into this and how I prepare for the upcoming exam. All I care about is looking at my own performance, how I did compared to my previous exam, how I did compared to the one before that, et cetera, and how I can improve moving forward. Okay, and that is it. That brings me to the end of this video. I can't believe that I'm in fifth year. I'm in final year of medical school and it feels like I've been on this path for absolutely forever. Touch wood. Everything has gone well so far, and I hope that it continues to go well in my final year here too. If you did enjoy this video, please don't forget to leave a like on it and also subscribe to my channel to see more content like this from me in the future. I have got a ton of videos here on the channel about studying time management, things I wish I had known in my first year of medical school, et cetera. So feel free to check those out somewhere here on the screen if you'd like. Otherwise, I will catch you in the next one. Peace. Oh, that's the bell. Gotta go. Peace. And that's my phone falling. Okay, bye. See you later.