 What is up guys? Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. If this is the first time you're watching one of my videos, hi, my name is Nasser and I'm now a third year medical student studying at King's College London. You can also follow me over on my Instagram page for more daily updates about my life at medical school. But for now, let's jump straight into the topic of this video, which is what my study strategy is at medical school and how I can consistently score well. Now throughout my academic life, I've managed to be not stressed or not worried for I'd say about 95% of the exams and tests that I've taken. I've also managed to score well on something like 95% of the tests that I've taken. And that's not because I'm a genius or I'm really smart and it's also not because I lock myself in my room and study for hours on end. It's because I study smart and efficiently and I think the mentality that I have around studying and exams and succeeding is a little bit different than most people. So today, what I want to share with you guys are some of the studying strategies that I use to be able to score well, so consistently over the four years of my undergraduate degree. All right, so let's start by talking about my mentality when it comes to exams and assignments and tests. Whether I have a final worth 40% or a midterm worth 20%, I will still work as hard as I possibly can to succeed in both of them. There's no point in me thinking, oh, this quiz is only worth 2% or oh, this assignment is only worth 10%. Let me not work as hard on it. And I'll have to make up for that extra loss when it comes to other parts of the course module. Another point about the mentality when it comes to exams, exams are hard. Exams take a lot of time to study for and it can be stressful. But the truth is, after I've spent a couple of weeks preparing for an exam, I've known that I've studied my best and I've put in the hours and I've put in the effort. If a bunch of questions come up that I've never seen the material for before, that's life. And if I don't do so well, that's OK. I've already done everything that I can in my power to put myself in the best position to do well. If I don't end up doing well, that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth it all the work that I put in and that doesn't mean that I didn't make the right decisions when I was studying. That mentality of knowing that you're doing what you can, you're putting in the effort, you're putting in the work is what helps me de-stress and not worry about upcoming exams. So when we have an exam at the end of the year or at the end of a semester, we'll usually have somewhere between one to three weeks off from school in order to study. During that time, of course, I study very, very hard and I do a lot of work. However, in reality, I've actually been working towards studying for this exam from the very beginning of that school year. And that's because I take my notes every single day, whether that's for lectures, tutorials, workshops, whatever it is, every day I put in a small amount of work. So for example, today I have five lectures scheduled and that means by either today or tomorrow, I will have written all of my notes for those five lectures. So when it comes exam time in December, all I have to do is read them, learn them, memorize them. And I don't have to start from scratch writing those notes or learning that material because I already did it a couple of months ago in September. I will have already seen all of the material that's going to be tested at least once. So when you're reading it again, it's almost like a second read through. It's like you're building on the foundation of knowledge that you already have. Secondly, around exam time in those one to three weeks that we have off in order to prepare for exams, I really do put in the work. Of course, I still maintain a balanced life by going to the gym, doing exercise, seeing my friends, etc. But here the priority is studying for my exams. And during this period, I always study for the exact same number of hours and I always study with the exact same routine. I set myself a goal of eight hours of studying in a day. I wake up at seven, I'm at the library and I start studying at nine. I study from nine till one, take a two hour lunch break and chill break from one till three. Study again from three till seven. Now following that timetable, I've already studied for eight hours in the day and it's only seven PM. And that's honestly already very good. If you can keep up eight hours of studying a day for one to three weeks, you're going to be able to cover a lot of material at seven PM. I can either take off the rest of the day, make sure that I can relax, enjoy myself and maintain a balanced life so that I can continue studying for eight hours a day for the coming weeks. Or if I'm still in the studying mood and I feel like I can do more, I'll take a one hour break from seven till eight and then study from eight till nine or eight till 10, depending on how I'm feeling or how close I am to the exam or how much material there is left, etc. So this structure that I have, this consistency that I have when it comes to studying for exams is something that's very, very beneficial. It's almost like a guaranteed fact of life that I know around exam time, this is the routine that I'm going to have and this is how much studying I'm going to do. And that really makes it simple for me. It takes out all of the stress about having to plan when I'm going to study, having to plan my revision timetable, etc. I know that it's always going to be the same and that's just how it's going to be. And before we move on to the next tip, I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of today's video, Skillshare. Skillshare, of course, is the online learning community with thousands of classes covering lots of different entrepreneurial and creative skills. The premium membership gives you unlimited access so you can find the perfect community and classes for you. I've personally used Skillshare in order to improve my editing techniques for videos like this and also teach me more about the YouTube algorithm, search engine optimization and everything like that. Whether you want to learn a new skill or you want to explore your own creativity, Skillshare is the perfect place to continue learning. Skillshare is also extremely affordable with their annual subscription being less than $10 a month. It's a service that I personally use, a service that I've actually found useful in improving my skill set. And because Skillshare is sponsoring this video, you guys can get a two month free trial by clicking on the links in the description down below and you can learn more about Skillshare over there. Anyways, on to the next tip. Now, let's talk about studying smart and studying efficiently for a second. On any given test, and I believe this is especially true if you're studying medicine, 80% of the marks that you're going to get are going to come from about 20% of the material that you have to study. These are the topics that come up over and over and over again. And that's because they're the ones that are most important because you're going to see them most commonly when you're working as a doctor, etc. I make it my goal to cover all of the material that could come up on a test. But my farm, most importantly, and especially if you're crunched for time, high yield material is where you have to focus. OK, now let's move on to talking about time management. You heard before that I have that very strict studying schedule. So obviously my time management skills are quite good and something that really helps me stick to this schedule and something that really helps me be OK with the amount of hours that I put in studying is very strongly differentiating my work time from my studying time. When it comes time to studying between those hours of nine to one and three to seven, I am only studying. I put my phone behind my laptops that it's not even in my field of view. I don't open Facebook. I don't open YouTube. I just sit down, I lock in and I focus on my work. Now, outside of those times, I can do whatever I want. If I want to binge Netflix shows on my bed, if I want to go for a run or go to the gym, if I want to go play video games with my friends or play video games on my PlayStation 4 here, I can do that. I make sure that I'm doing something that I actually enjoy. I don't think about work for a second. I try and relax. I enjoy myself because if I have so much fun during those times, when it comes time to study, it's fine. I've already chilled. I've already had fun. I've already binged four shows of the latest Netflix series. I don't feel the need to do that because I just did that. Now it's time to study. So that's sort of the relationship that I have with my work and that's how I separate my work from my chill or my fun time. Also hugely important to me is stress relief. Luckily, I think I'm a person that's able to sort of put different things in boxes, you know, if I'm working, but I'm also really stressed about some other life thing that I have to do. I can sort of put that in a box and put it in a side, focus on my work for the next two, three hours, whatever it is I need to do, and then I can worry about those other stressors. So that sort of compartmentalization or pushing things aside, putting things in boxes is something that if you can train yourself to do, I think would be very, very valuable because it allows you to focus on the task at hand and deal with other things later when you allocate time to them. Also speaking about stress, you know, naturally you're going to get stressed at university. There are going to be times when you have lots of different things to do and you're gonna feel overwhelmed. For me, whenever that happens, I just take a step back, write everything down on a piece of paper, allocate specific dates and times for when they're gonna get done. And that makes me feel good because I know that they're gonna be finished and done with at a certain period of time. But inevitably, and especially at medical school, there's always this sort of underlying baseline level of stress. So what I find very, very good for that, besides obviously chilling with friends and going out and having fun, is just the gym or physical exercise. Going for a run or going to the gym is something that I couldn't replace with anything else. So if you can do some sort of physical exercise, whatever that is, I would highly, highly recommend that. Now, after having taken all these things that I just talked about into account, when it comes to exams, when it comes to preparing for exams, I honestly can say that I feel almost zero stress. I know that I've either already put in the work or I'm going to put in the work to put myself in a position where I have the best chance of succeeding. If I don't succeed, that happens sometimes. And you know, you reflect on what happened, what went wrong and how you can change it in the future. And if you do succeed, you can think about what went well and what you're going to keep doing when moving forward. These are all the reassurances that I could possibly give myself that I know that I'm going to work hard, that I know I'm going to do my best. And that's all that I need to clear my conscience and not feel stressed about upcoming tests or exams. And finally, on an important note, studying is equally as important as enjoying yourself, going out, relaxing, chilling with friends, doing exercise, whatever it is that makes you happy. I think that balance is really the major key that helps me not be stressed before exams, tests or assignments. And with that, I think I'm going to sign off this video here. Thank you so much for watching. Please do leave a like on this video if you enjoyed it and also subscribe to my channel to see more videos from me in the future. And I will see you in the next one. Peace.