 Here are the 10 lessons I learned in medical school that absolutely change my life. Number one, more hours does not equal better results. The typical notion for any student that if you're studying an x amount, you're not quite getting the grades you want, then adding x plus 2 or 3 hours a day is going to get you the results you ultimately want. But as I've learned the hard way in medical school, if I find 10 hours, I'm going to find 10 hours of things to do to try to study for whatever exam or quiz is coming up. But if I gave myself 8 hours, I'd still find 8 hours of material to do, but there's not that much big of a difference in terms of quality between those x or 2 hours. So regardless of what journey you're on, if you're not quite getting the grades that you want, instead of asking yourself whether can I find more hours to study, ask yourself how can I better use the hours I already have dedicated and study more efficiently during those. If you want more resources, I'll link some down below that you guys can check out. Lesson number two is that comparisons are a great servant but a terrible master. Now, especially when you're in a competitive and high cheating environment like medicine and every phase of the journey, there are more and more people who are smarter than you. That's just the nature of the beast. You start to realize that how you use comparisons from yourself to your peers is really determines your entire journey. On one side is what most students do, which is to look at themselves and another student and find the biggest discrepancies, the biggest reasons why that student is amazing, and they not so much, and essentially exaggerate the difference in terms of quality and intelligence between themselves and their peers. But on the other side, and this is really the aspect that I found to be the most helpful, is to look at your peers as a source of motivation saying that person is better at talking to patients. I mean that person is better at interacting with absolute strangers. That person is better at picking your random bits of information and then using it to take care of their patients. How can then I use those little bits of lessons and improve myself? That way the difference between us decreases and I can imbibe more of their strong values and do that with each and every one of their peers. So again, comparison, amazing servant, awful master. Lesson number three is that you have to work hard in the dark to shine in the light. Again, going back to comparison, whenever we look at ourselves and we look at a peer or somebody just a few steps above or below as in saying, man, that person is incredible. Again, there is no such thing as an overnight success in medicine. All of the knowledge is required, requires months and years of repetition and hard work and dedication. So if it's your goal to become one of the top med students or to be like one of the tendings or physicians that you work with and and buy some of their values and you also have to understand that you have to put in the same amount of work. If not more, that person had to do back then because everybody around you is probably more competitive than things used to be 10 to 20 years ago. So you have to study harder, you have to remember more, you have to focus on your weaknesses and strengths and remember that the hard work is still required, especially when it was looking. Less number four is that the best way to love the process is by collecting nuggets. Now, this is probably one of my favorite principles that I love to share with anyone that's on their medical journey. If you're struggling finding a way to stay motivated, one of the first things that I do is to focus on all of the reasons that I've been motivated to come this far in the first place. Whether it was a great patient experience and amazing grade where I worked hard and then the grade actually reflected it or something else. And then asking yourself, was the hard work and that patient interaction for that test for that studying for that quiz, was it worth it to get the results? And usually the answer is going to be yes. Then it's going to motivate you to love the process and being okay with, again, working hard in the dark so you can shine the light. Then you're going to start to look at every situation. You're going to look at every patient experience and saying, how can I replicate that golden moment that I had with that other patient several years back? How can I study and prepare and put the hard work in for this quiz so I can feel amazing just like I did when I aced that test a few months ago. And as you start to ask those kinds of questions, you're going to be able to identify patterns where you do a certain set of actions and it's going to lead to a certain result more often than not. So you may for example, say I want to have an amazing patient experience. So when I do these four things with most of my patients, some of them end up being experiences I remember for the rest of my life. That's how you learn to love the process and journey of medicine because it's not all easy. But once you find those golden nuggets, you can always rely on them to continue to motivate you to do even more. Lesson number five is that simple is often better, especially when it comes to things like studying, the typical notion is for most of us to find as many resources or things that we should do because idea of FOMO fear of missing out. If I don't use this resource, all my classmates are doing it, maybe they'll get points that I won't. All these perseverating thoughts often leads you to create a system, whether it be for studying, productivity, your personal life rotations, that just happened to be so much more complicated than they have to be. So when it comes to studying, some of the easy questions you can ask is that if the test was tomorrow, what would I do? Or if I got a good grade on the quiz, which of the strategies that I use really gave me the most benefit? Which of them didn't really make a difference. And as you begin to decipher the answers to these questions, you find that you're able to find that simplicity within that complex system that most of us have a tendency of doing in medical school. Lesson number six is that you ultimately learned the repetition. Now this is a two-part lesson. One, it's a reminder that just because you learned something the first time, you are not dumb because it doesn't make sense. Often the things that I have learned over this past seven years of being in medicine and now being a physician, there are still things that I should have known as a first year medical student. That's still hard for me simply because I've not given myself the opportunity of one, accepting, it takes repetition and two that you actually have to incorporate repetition into your day to day and your month to month. And so if you're learning a new piece of information and lecture and your classmates get something but you just quite can't grasp it, that doesn't mean that they're smart and you're not. Simply means that either you need more repetition or a new piece of information or methodology to teach it to you to finally make sense. And so understand that for a majority of topics you likely won't master it on the first time and that is okay. And two, because you can, you need that repetition into your daily and weekly schedule to schedule it in predictably and do it consistently. Lesson number seven is that growing your CV is super underrated and often the biggest regret. One of the most unfortunate observations I had in my later years in medical school is that for the students who have spent so much of their time focusing on getting the best grades, the best board scores, they realize that even though they have a great application in terms of numbers, they haven't been able to separate why they want to become an internal medicine doctor or why they want to go into orthopedic surgery. And then just like every phase in medicine, you realize that there are students who have crushed it but also have made an amazing CV by having a story that tells like, yeah, I want to go into orthopedic surgery and here are the reasons why, oh, and by the way, my grades are also good. And so for the majority of the students that find themselves saying grades, grades, grades, they have themselves being super stressed and anxious despite doing so amazingly well, even if the grades worked in their favor. So if you're early on your medical journey, remember it is okay to get an A minus and have a bomb application that says, I want to be a surgeon. Here are the 10 reasons why here are the six experience that I've done that says like, this is for me. And oh, by the way, my grades are pretty good too. Compared to somebody who says I have A plus, but I have no reason to no experience to prove to you that I want to be a surgeon and understand that the story does matter. Grades do too. Make sure you give equal focus on building that CV and the grades. And so regardless of where you are on the journey, always consistently ask yourself, have I built a story that can convince myself as well as complete stranger that I want to do the specific field. And if you guys are interested on how to get into your dream residency and specialty without all the stress, and I'll link down below a video and episode that we made on just that. Lesson number seven is that non-medical knowledge is just as important. Now, thankfully, this was a lesson I learned early on in college and in medical school, but you have to know about things that are just important for adult life and particularly for life as a physician when it's time, things like personal finance, relationships, emotional intelligence, cooking, fitness, how to take care of yourself, how to have hobbies and interests outside of just, you know, how a certain medication works. And so if you just say I'm going to focus on medicine for four years and then residency, I'm going to give myself more balance, it never comes. And if you find yourself saying someday or one day I will learn something, it usually means never because you've considered it not to be important enough to learn now. So, and so while it's still important to learn your class material, remember their life skills you'll need to know in your 30s that unfortunately medical school doesn't teach you and adding those to your list and slowly just going through those, whether it's through books or learning through adults in your own life. Hey, how do I do my own taxes? How do I take care of my personal finance? How do I save? How do I invest? How do I buy insurance? All those little skills you'll have to know while still being an excellent student. Less number nine is to be happy being average. One of the best decisions that I made in medical school is that I made the decision that the first thing that's important is to have happiness and balance. And so if that means that I'm happier at an average grade of 85 or 90 that I am at a high grade of like a 95 or 100, then go for those. If that means that I have to accept you're going to study a few hours less knowing you're not going to get the highest grade on the exam, you're not going to be the top student in your medical class, but you're going to be happy in your own definition of it and that's completely okay. So if you're finding yourself in a situation where desired outcome you want conflicts with the optimum style of life that you want as a student, then ask yourself, am I okay sacrificing a little bit of intensity to get that less of a grade, but being happy for the duration of it that can be worth it? The answer is absolutely. Less number 10 is that you're paying every day and make the most of it. This was a lesson that was actually taught to me by a fellow that was on my neurology rotation. Basically says he's like, based on your tuition here, you're paying the school about $200 to be here with me today. So it's my job to teach you and no one ever put it that way, but it really told me, okay, fine. That means every day I show up my rotations, I show up for a vacation day, I show up for a study day. That's $200. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to waste it counting the hours until I can go home or am I going to make the most of it where I try to learn whatever my attending and my fellow may teach me, learn from my patient experiences, and then also realize it on those days where I still give it my all, there are going to be days of various values, but each day I am focused of making the most of it. And so then I'm always getting my money's worth. Now, if you enjoyed those lessons and you want more lessons and tactics to help you succeed on your medical journey, click down below to check out Med School Success Handbook. It is a document that I'm constantly updating. It's about 6,000 words at the moment with 18 to 19 lessons. I'm updating on a weekly basis, but there are strategies and lessons that I've learned through my own experience, through successes and failures that ideally want to help you be able to increase your chances of succeeding. So if you're interested, that'll be linked down below, absolutely free. And if you feel like you got any value out of today's episode, all I ask is that you quickly hit that like button down below as well as consider hitting that subscribe and notification bell to be notified when new episodes go out on a weekly basis. And if you're listening to this on a podcast form, definitely consider hitting that follow and subscribe on your favorite listening platform, as well as leaving it on its review on iTunes. But as always, my friends, make sure if you have any questions, if you have any thoughts, if you want to let me know your best lessons on your medical journey, go ahead and drop them in the comment section down below. Also, let me know what your thoughts are, the lessons that I've shared in today's episode. And as always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully, I was a little up to you guys on yours. If you did enjoy today's episode, then you'll probably enjoy this one on how to remember everything you read in medical school, step by step, as well as this episode right here on my exact morning routine as a full-time position. Hopefully, you guys enjoy these. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace, my friends.