 In our lives, there are hundreds of things that can stress us out. Things like trying to keep up with the speed of those weird revolving doors. When you're out and about and your phone battery gets below 20%, you're not quite sure if you can make it as well as public speaking. But none of those things can compare it to the stress that comes with studying for an exam. So in today's episode, I'm going to show you the exact same strategies I used as a medical student that helped me get a 3.9 GPA to really just know exactly what's going to be on the test and go into test Dave with confidence. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician here on the MD journey. We make content and videos and podcasts to help people like you succeed on their medical journey, whatever journey you're on, but doing it with less stress. Now, like I mentioned, one of the biggest things that stressed me out in school, particularly in a medical school is just knowing what the hell it's going to be on this test. How do I know it? What are the best ways that can like just have a list of like saying, if you knew this, you're going to do really well on the test. And so in today's episode, I'm going to break down the strategies of how I collected that information. So again, I can go into test day with confidence. And if at any point during that episode, you're like, it's got to actually give some decent advice. Definitely consider hitting that subscribe notification bell as well as checking out some of the links down below to some of our free programs that I created over the past six years, including our study rehab course. So you can really understand how to improve your studying, as well as some of our paid programs, which I'll link down below. So step number one is you have to have some kind of collection system. It's very easy going to test day and having your slides, your syllabus, review slides, other material from external sources and thinking that if you learn all of them, you'll be OK. It was also very stressful because not everything is conglomerated into one area. And so during my later years of college, as well as my years in medical school, one of the things I would do is I would pick a collection system. I like Google Sheets because it's digital. I can move it on my phone. And essentially each of the tabs would be all the classes I would be having a test for. And if I had a cardiology block, then I would have all of the lectures and any fair topic that I would need to know. Essentially, it would just be a list of everything I should feel comfortable with going to the test. So again, the first step is committing to some kind of collection system. Now, I like to use Excel. Some people like to use Notions. Some people use Evernote. Some people even use a more physical kind of notebook fashion. It doesn't really matter. As long as you say, this is where I'm going to try to collect as much information for each and every single lecture that is fair game for the test, then you're good to go for step number two. A step number two is actually collecting the high yield information that will probably show up on the exam. Now, there are a few different avenues I like to look at. And then I bring those back and put them into my collection system. Now, the very first place that I go to has to be the learning objectives for each individual lecture. And usually you can find your learning objectives, whether it be in the start of your syllabus for each and every lecture or even presented before your slides. And usually what I would do is I would get each individual bullet and I would just put them into my collection system Excel because I said, I know this topic will go into test day for this individual lecture. Then I feel a little bit more comfortable and I'm good to go. So now after I've collected all my learning objectives for all the lectures that will be fair game for the test, the next thing that I do is go through the practice exams and practice questions that I may be given by my institution. This is usually something I'm doing along with the lecture during the weekend. So then I know, okay, like this is a question they consider to be fair game from lecture one's material. I'm going to make sure I know how to manage this specific topic and then I add it to my Excel sheet. Particularly if I missed it, then I'm definitely going to make sure that I put it into my collection system. Again, I have a growing list of the learning objectives, missed practice questions as well as other questions that they may want to relate different topics and connections to. And while every institution in class and lecture may not provided, if you do have access to past exams, that's one of the best ways that you can go about making sure you feel prepared for the exam, because if you can take an old exam and say, I understand what's going to be on here, then again, add it to your collection system of saying, oh, here's a question about utero fibrillation or a pharmaceutical, how to manage hypertension or the side effects of a specific med. Anyone make sure that I knew that before test day, add it to your list and then again, we'll go into step number three on how you prep for. And then to finish off step number two, there's two more ways that I like to collect information of saying, that's probably fair game for the exam. The first one has to be having any access to review slides. So if you have a TA session that is going to do review slides or appear a professor or a lecture, creates a review material before a quiz or a test, make sure you go through those and saying, oh, these are the high yield information as they hope that I'm getting away from all of the lectures that I have thus far. And let me make sure I put those in my collection system. So then when it's time to actually study for each individual lecture, I make sure I remind myself about that one individual topic. And then finally to round out step number two, remember one of the biggest issues about studying for exams is that, you're gonna have things that you're really great at, things that you're really weak at, but sometimes we just don't give enough attention to the weaknesses of anything. We try to give equal amount of time to both and then we're concerned and get really anxious when we have a weak topic and a good topic that shows up on the exam. Usually we are caught up by how much attention was done by our weaknesses. So one of the things that I love to do and recommend to any student I work with one-on-one or through some other programs down below is essentially as you go through each individual lecture, whether it's through the first time of reviewing it or during the weekends, is to keep in mind, okay, what topics are giving you discomfort? So for example, in biochem, I would hate learning about the Krebs cycle. Super confusing. And every time I would do it, it'd give me some anxiety and usually it would be a topic where it's like, you can probably like ignore it for now. Usually that's a good sign for me to say, if you're trying to ignore it, that means it's a hard topic for you. Make sure you add it to your system for the exam. That way you don't ignore it going into test day. So I may ignore it now, but I have to learn it before the test or the quiz. And so essentially you're adding topics to your collection system that you admit that you're weak at right now or you're saying, I kind of get it now, but I can't bank on knowing it before the quiz or test. Let me add it to my collection system to make sure I remind myself of it before test day. And just to show you an example of what a collection system may look like. Now, obviously I'm not studying for an exam per se as a physician, but let's say you have an exam for a heart failure. This is my Notion dashboard, which I shared in a video of how I study for medicine topics as a full-time doctor. You guys can check that down below. But if you go into heart failure, for example, you will see that I have a list of topics that I've created over time. These would be topics that you may be obtaining from learning objectives, from teaching points or missed questions. And essentially if I had a test for a heart failure, the first thing I wanna make sure is I know all of this information. Now, obviously the way I did this is to remember information really quickly as a doctor. But as you're doing your collection system, you may find yourself kind of doing something like I did at the bottom, where I'm just kind of listing out all the things that I wanna make sure that I may know for this proverbial exam in heart failure. So like cardiac amyloid, I may like look at this in step number three, which we'll talk about in a second and saying, do you know enough about it or not? And if I do, great, if I don't, then I can at least refer to the slide or the lecture that came with it. So now that you can see what a collection system looks like with all your learning objectives, all your review slide materials, your practice questions, and your weak points that you feel uncomfortable with, now let's actually talk about how to prepare for those exams. Now I made full videos on YouTube on how to prepare for an exam effectively. I'll link those down below. I don't wanna make this video really long. But in step number three, you're essentially gonna use one of two approaches to study for exam. Approach number one is saying, I have this many lectures and this many days to cover them before the quiz or test and then divide them appropriately. So for example, if we go back into my heart failure lecture, then you can see that I've now split them up by proverbial lectures that they may have come from. If I say, oh, I have 10 lectures and I have to cover them in five days, that means I roughly have to do two to three lectures each day. So you can say, I'm gonna do all of my learning objectives, all those practice questions, everything that came fair game from lecture one on Monday and I also have to do lecture two on the same day. And then on Tuesday I'm gonna do lecture three and lecture four's material and then Wednesday, so on and so forth. And that approach works for most people usually requires some backward planning where you have to essentially look at your calendar and saying, when am I gonna start reviewing? Again, if you wanna see how to study for tests appropriately, you guys can check out those videos down below. But approach number two is something that works for a lot of students, particularly if you wanna use a weakness first approach. So nice thing about having a collection system, particularly some of this digital is you can start scoring things based off of how good or bad you're on. Now I like to use numbers, but some people like to color code their topic. So if you imagine this is your Excel sheet, and again, I'm using this in notion, you can look at every topic or every learning objective and saying, how well do I know it? You can essentially give it a score. So difficulty, I can give the score from a one to a five, three being roughly easy, five being super hard or being really hard, two being like something I'm pretty good at and saying, well, it doesn't really make sense for me to do lecture one and lecture two. I wanna make sure I do the hardest material first and are the hardest learning objectives. So then all my weaknesses are taken care of and latter half of the week I can do the things that I'm really good at. If so, you can then go ahead and actually sort your table according to the things that are hardest to you. So for example, here in notion, I can actually just go into sort and I can say, I wanna do the difficulty and I wanna do it based off of descending or ascending or we'll do descending. So now on the first day of my prep, which is gonna be Monday, I'm gonna do a few of the learning objectives or topics from lecture one, but there's gonna be topics from lecture two that I also wanna make sure I know because there were things that can serve to be really hard. Now if again, if you're somebody who's like, oh, I'm really anxious, there's just so many things I just don't know, start with a weakness approach possibly and saying like now all of my weak topics are out of the way on Monday and Tuesday gives me more time to make sure I understand them versus what we typically do, which is like it's Thursday night, quiz or test is on Friday morning and there's still a bunch of hard things you don't know how well to do. Now you can use this approach to really just hammer those in at the start of your prep. Now to do this effectively, you still have to know how to schedule it. Remember where on approach number one, you're able to say I'm gonna do lecture one, two and three on Monday. It was nice to know what your goals were. Usually I recommend students have kind of a time aspect of how much time they're gonna be doing. So Monday, maybe like I'm gonna do two hours and Tuesday I'm gonna spend two and a half hours and you're just gonna move to the next thing and be some days where you may get done through 10 of these and some days where you may be gonna done only seven. Not just gonna depend on your difficulty. Usually the start of your week you may only be able to get through a few items because they tend to be the weakest and on the latter half of your weeks you may be able to just drill through things because they're things that you're really good at. It doesn't really matter which of the two approaches you choose to use. As long as you can say, I know everything on my collection system whether it's again, it's a notebook or an Excel sheet or something that you have a notion. You can say I feel pretty good that I'm gonna know most of the things going to test day and then again, you need to go into the test day with confidence. But that guys is my three step method on how to prep for an exam and essentially know exactly what should be on there as well as the things that are most likely in a trip you up because they tend to be the things that you are going to avoid early on during your prep. Now, if you enjoy the step by step approach you may also enjoy my eight step process of how I studied in the medical school where I was able to cut my hours from 10 to five hours I'll leave the down below, it's absolutely free. And if you're interested in getting a full recall on exactly how you study and make sure you have the perfect method design for you definitely consider checking out the level of your studying program to lots of students have been through over the past two to three years. If you guys have any questions at all make sure you comment them down below. If you did enjoy the video you feel like you got some value out of it and you wanna say a quick thank you all I really ask you to hit the like button helps get the video out to more and more people that way we can help more people that are stressed out on their journey doing it with less stress. And if you're new to our videos or haven't joined quite yet consider hitting that subscribe notification bell to be notified when new videos go live. If you listen to this on a podcast forum then definitely consider hitting that follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast listening platform. But with that being said friends hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. As always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours. If you did enjoy this video check out this video right here on how to use on feel like a pro as well as this video on how I study medicine as a full-time physician. I'm sure you guys will enjoy that one. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.