 Today's video is brought to you by PicMonic. So getting a bad grade absolutely sucks, but today I'm gonna show you exactly how one bad grade completely changed the course of medical for me, where I went from Cs to As, and how you can use the same principles to help you do exactly the same. Let's get into it. All right, story time. So I did decently well in college, but decent, I mean, didn't have to really study very much, and by the time I graduated I got about 3.9 GPA, and I thought I had my studying figured out. And that was until I started medical school at that. You figured it out in college and how to study, well, probably you can do the same, totally wrong. My first few exams, I still remember the scores. 72, 70, 76, 73, 68, 75, 79, that was really exciting. And I remember seeing a big difference in the amount of hours I was spending because I would keep trying to do more and more and more and not getting the grades that I wanted. And if you're watching this video, you've probably been in my shoes and you've probably done the next few things that I also did, which is you find any resource and strategy, basically try to rehaul everything, and you think that that is going to be the solution. I remember specifically when I was studying for cell biology, there was a quiz coming up on Friday and it just had this like perfect study strategy or really some thought. And going into test day, I felt great. And even during the quiz, I felt amazing. I even got to the point where I was marking the amount of questions that I didn't feel 100% confident on so I could see the minimum grade I would get. And I came up to like, oh, actually I'll probably get an 85 worst. I walked to that test. It takes about two minutes for the test to process. It was multiple choice. And my grade flat out 73. And to say that I was just disappointed would be an understatement because just like many of you guys that are on the medical journey that are struggling, I thought I had figured it out. And then you get your results and you're like, what gives? Like what can I possibly do to fix this? But the biggest reason that I remember that quiz is not because of the disappointment or the grade because those are nothing to remember about. But because when I walked away, I completely rethought about how to think about fixing your study strategy. So if you're not getting the grades you want, these are the three steps that I followed after that one quiz that completely changed my career, my academic career and my grades and performance. So hopefully you guys are excited. Let's get into it. So step number one is to reflect on what worked and what did. Now, whenever I have a student who comes to me and says, Luxe, I got a bad grade on this test. The first question I ask him is like, okay, what are the main reasons that you didn't feel like you did well? And usually it's kind of a three core problem. The first one is a knowledge problem. Second one is a luck problem. And the third one is an approach problem. So let's break down each three. And so a knowledge problem is pretty self-explanatory. It's usually where you don't understand enough the small details, the small nuances. And so there's the question about multiple choice or something where you just either know it or you don't, you tend to miss more of those questions. Now, whenever I work with a student that likely has a knowledge problem, the easiest question I ask him is, could you find the answer to whatever you missed inside your slides? If they say yes, and that typically means the approach that they use to obtain that information was way too passive. Either they's passively skimmed their notes to outlines, the lectures, their PowerPoints, whatever it may have been. They just didn't use a technique that they could easily absorb it with. So that's when you know you have a knowledge problem. Now the second problem that you can have, and this is probably the worst one, is a luck problem. Now a luck problem is either usually too fast. The first one is that there's just too many questions related to things that you just tend to be weaker on. So just poor luck at the draw. And the second half of it is being asked something that is totally unrelated to whatever you expect to be testing, which we've all kind of had experience with. Now finally, the third and probably the most important issue is an approach problem. Now this typically ends up being a student who has no issues memorizing the small details. They just don't know how to put everything together. They don't know how to tell the forest from the trees. And this student is somebody who, if you're asked a multiple choice question in a vignette form or requires you to have second or third order level of thinking, typically doesn't know how to approach an actual question. But the first thing you have to do after you get past the disappointment of not getting a grade is to understand, okay, which of those three problems was it a knowledge problem, a luck problem, or an approach problem did I have? Because then we can get to step number two of actually how to solve it. So step number two, once you identify your biggest problem is to change your approach to be able to address it every single day. So the best people to understand how to do this, let's actually go down again through our three main problems. So if you're having a knowledge problem, the main question that I have with students that come with requiring coaching or helping on their setting, basically asking you, okay, how many repetitions of that material are you getting? For example, one of the students that recently worked with basically broke down her study strategy and basically said, she was going to class, highlighting her information. That was pretty much it until it came down to cram for the exam. A lot of us know what that feels like, but when we ask how many repetitions that individual or you may be doing on the material, answer is probably like one at best, maybe two, and really the question is, okay, if you're having a knowledge problem, you have to increase the amount of repetitions that you're having. And you may be asking, well, like, how do I actually do that? And the second part of a knowledge-based problem and to change your approach is to really ask yourself, okay, how much time actually spend doing active forms of learning? For example, in this scenario for the student, they're spending a majority of their time doing passive things such as going to lecture and highlighting material, and not really counting it as a pass because they would be able to walk out of lecture and really not remember anything they learned within that hour, hour and a half period. But on the flip side, you can ask yourself, okay, what kind of active type of learning do I like? Do I like flashcards? Do I like practice questions? Do I like putting things on a whiteboard, teaching my classmates or my roommates? Those are better things that could be well suited. So once you find out, okay, these are the things in the form of an active learning that I enjoy doing more, ask yourself how you can increase those frequencies and try to do it on a daily basis. So usually my minimum goal is if I go to lecture, I try to do some kind of active learning and recall of that material. Every single day. So that way, I at least get my first repetition, try to get a second repetition on the weekend and then ideally a third and fourth repetition going into test day. This is a very simple yet effective way of overcoming the knowledge-based problem. Now, if you're struggling with probably the most frustrating of them, which is a left problem where you take quiz after quiz and you're like, gosh, these just don't look like what I'm studying. It doesn't match with the PowerPoints, it doesn't match with what they're talking about. Typically one thing that I recommend doing is one, understanding that sometimes the output is not always in your control. So you can study a certain amount, even if you're studying great. Sometimes you will have quizzes with that ad where they told you something is not going to be on the test and lo and behold, it shows up. So it's easy to get frustrated, but also remember that that is not a reason you need to fix your study system. That is the main cause when you're evaluating what the biggest issue was for you getting the grade you wanted. Sometimes you don't really need to fix it and say, okay, just like take it on the chin and move forward. But if you are having an issue where it's your weaknesses are tending to show up more, the things that you're going to be most anxious about actually show up on the test. And the best thing you can do is what I like to call a weakness hit list. This is basically creating a list whether it's on a Word doc, an Excel sheet, a piece of paper of all the different topics that you're going through on a lecture material when you're reviewing, going to lecture, or doing practice questions, something that you miss, essentially creating a growing list of everything from various respective lectures that could show up on the test that would freak you out if they did. And then what I like to do is on the weekends when I'm reviewing the weeks material, I typically have an hour, hour and a half session where I do my weakness list. So I may go through my Excel sheet from my Word doc and say, okay, today you felt uncomfortable when you were reviewing on Tuesday about how to manage a patient with atrial fibrillation. Let's see, you have a whiteboard here. Let's see if you can go ahead and answer that question. If you can't, then you go back to the slides or go back to the lecture or whatever it is I taught you. But as you go through that list slowly, but surely as you go closer and closer to your quiz and test date, there is less that can show up on the test that is truly going to be a weakness because you force yourself to have time to focus on. And finally, probably my favorite to address because it is so simple and when students start to do it, they start to see their grade skyrocket is the approach problem, which is really you have issues of separating the forest from the trees, the details and the big picture and connecting all the dots and using my recommendation to deal with an approach problem to make sure that a student has both something that can help them with long-term repetitions, something like flashcards and practice questions, but also a way where they're forced to basically put all of the ideas together. So something like that whiteboard session that we just talked about earlier would be perfect where during the week, you could do your flashcards or your practice questions and during the weekend, you can say, okay, I know information that is fact and question one flashcard, one answer, but I wanna make sure I understand the entire lecture or create a whiteboard and saying, can you create lecture one from Monday from scratch and quickly scribble all of the information that you remember and then you'll have some instances where you're like, well, there used to be something there. I know there was a slide that focused on this, I just have no idea, actually go from topic A to topic C. That's a good way of saying I know the details, but this is how I know how the details connect. So if you have a question that is more a clinical vignette of combining things that are second and third order questions, then you know how to answer those. And if you have questions that are saying, do you know this answer, yes or no, you also have ways that you're starting to address that as well. And before we get into the last bit of how to improve your grades after you get a disappointing one, it's a good segue to talk about today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now, if you are looking for a resource to help you on your medical journey, whether you're pre-med in nursing school, in PA school, or in medical school, then you ideally want an all in one resource that can help you at every phase of the journey. Picmonic is by far one of my favorite resources to recommend to medical students because it doesn't matter what kind of learning style you have, there's likely a format to help you really retain the information, regardless of what you're currently learning for. As you can see, there's the full content library of hundreds and hundreds of videos, anything from anatomy to physiology to cardiology. And if you're studying for board exams like you assembly step one or step two, you can use Picmonic to follow along your favorite high yield resources like First Aid. So for example, if I was studying for step one and I wanted to use the 2021 edition of First Aid, then I could easily go into their content library and not only specifically choose the actual chapter but the individual page I'm covering and then Picmonic would recommend the videos from their library that are related to that specific page. So if I wanted to learn about chromosome and DNA, I could watch their videos which are not only high yield but are also super entertaining because they combine the combinations of interesting images and storytelling to be able to help you with long-term retention. So if we watch this video here on chromosome and DNA, you'd be able to see how each of these relevant images throughout their videos have a part of telling the story of chromosomes and DNA. So then you can remember that information for the longterm and definitely for your board exams. And as I mentioned, Picmonic does a great job of accommodating to a variety of learning styles. So not only can you read the text through transcription forms, we can actually use their quiz function to be able to be tested on the individual videos and essentially creates a growing library of quizzes and questions to make sure that you remember something that you learned today as well as a month ago. And so if you're on your medical journey and just not happy with your grades and you're looking for that all-in-one resource that can help you both learn as well as test you on the information that Picmonic may just be the resource for you. And if you're interested in learning more about Picmonic, then go ahead and check out the link down below and use the code theMDJourney at checkout to get a super sweet discount thanks to our friends at Picmonic. And as always, thank you for Picmonic for supporting and being the sponsor of today's video. And now step number three is to dedicate more time to your biggest problems. This is exactly how I created the Anki method, which is something that the channel has become more and more famous for of creating a method that basically took me from 10 hours to five hours of medical school and is completely rehauled about a free time I had as well as my performance. And if you're interested in learning more about the Anki method, I'll link down below our Anki video that we have here on YouTube. Highly recommend you guys can check it out. But the most important thing to remember is you're careless of how you study. Your strategy is only good, the more often you use it. And while it seems self-explanatory, I have a lot of students that will come to me that will do the first few steps of really evaluating, okay, this is what went wrong. But then I wanna ask them, okay, like, what did you do? Like, how did you fix it? Crickets, it's just absolute crickets. And that's simply sometimes because we're really good at finding the problems but not necessarily identifying how to use that solution more. And the biggest issue is because you typically have a set amount of time in your medical school day and not really sure how you are going to fit this new strategy or this new epiphany of how you should now be studying. And so it's gonna become more and more important to change your day to day to be able to give yourself one to two hours to incorporate this change in your study strategy that you ultimately came to in the prior steps. So for example, if you realize that you need to do more whiteboard sessions or more Anki cards and more practice questions, the real question is not, okay, like, how do I add more hours to my day? The real question is, okay, what am I doing currently that is actually giving me like zero results or negative results on my exam? How can I instead replace that with this new strategy that I need to do more of to really be able to avoid those first three problems that we talked about earlier in today's episode? And so if you guys are interested in learning how to rehaul your studying to where you're doing more of things that are effective and less of things that are not so, check out the study rehab course which will be linked down below. Now step number four is something that I really debated on whether I needed to include it in this video because it was too self-explanatory, but the more coaching students that I've worked with over the past few months, the more I realized it was actually a bigger problem than maybe about in the past. And that is really that you need to focus on tinkering versus a complete recall or in a different way, you need to focus on making small changes instead of like a hundred A degree U-turn at every decision or failure point. A lot of students that come to me initially saying, oh, I tried this technique, this technique and I tried these resources together, didn't work, just threw it out the window just like COVID it away from them. But that's not how this works. If you find something that doesn't work, that doesn't mean every element of that didn't work. That's why I ask you to go through the first three steps of this episode and truly identify, okay, this part of my study routine, like not too bad, these absolute crap, you should get rid of those and spend more time here and then continue to adapt and tinker. If you don't get a grade that you're not happy with, it doesn't mean that everything you did was wrong, it just means that maybe you just didn't do enough of the right things. So the first step like we talked about is to focus on both of that, what worked and what didn't and then to try to recall your system to where you're just making small changes and including a proportion of those correct strategies. And so I include this last step because it is super important to not have this mental desire to jump from strategy to strategy just because you see somebody else doing it. So if you've come to one of these videos and you're doing something that works, do not listen to anything I say and try to completely recall your study system. You can use small bits of advice and tips to help optimize and become more efficient, but you should by no means fix something that's already working. And on the flip side, I'm gonna say it again, just because it's not working doesn't mean everything is broken. Identify what is working and then capitalize on those, ideally try to increase the time and proportion you're spending there. But that guys is my full breakdown on how to go from a bad grade to using that to help you motivate and direct you on how to improve in the future. Hopefully this video helped you out. If it did, let me know in the comment section down below. Just comment super helpful, something along the lines of this is kind of useful. Please like that would really help me one understand if this video and this type of content is super useful for you. And if you don't wanna drop a comment just hit that like button that's super helpful. Or if you're listening to this on the podcast and go ahead and hit subscribe or follow on your favorite listening platform. So before we end today's episode, just remember that if you're interested in our free three step study program of learning how to completely rehaul your study strategy, essentially what we do for our coaching students, check out the study rehab course which is linked down below. If you are interested in one of our programs whether it be the group coaching programs or our one-on-one magnetic night program, those links will be down below as well as be able to see the results have passed as bad. With that being said guys, hopefully this video was helpful for you. Thank you as always for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was a little help to you guys and yours. If you did enjoy this video then check out this video on how you can use Anki like a pro in this video right here on how to learn how to study a medical school step by step. While you enjoy these, I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace my friends.