 What is up guys karma medic here and welcome back to another dose if you're new to the channel Hi, my name is Nasser and I'm now a fourth year medical student studying at Kings College London now I know my hair. It is a bit ridiculous I don't trust anyone who isn't a licensed barber or hairdresser and since none of those are available You're gonna have to deal with this I feel like my hair is taking me full circle back to some of the earlier videos that I've uploaded onto this channel anyways All of that aside. I'm making this video because I have finally done it I finished the first pass of my first aid book the bathoma book boards and beyond online video lectures and then sketchy farm and micro Damn, it's been a long journey It's been a difficult one But I'm so happy that the first pass is over with and in this video I want to walk you guys through my experience of what it's been like studying for the step one exam so far what it Actually took and what was needed in order to complete that first pass and everything else in between Okay, so I started studying for step one towards the end of my third year of medical school right in the middle of my clinical rotations And this was my schedule at the time you guys can see it on screen somewhere over here Basically on Mondays Thursdays and Fridays Those are the days that I had clinical placement And so I finished at around 5 p.m. And head straight to the library at the hospital that I happened to be at that day And I'd study for somewhere between three and four hours And this basically depended on how tired I was after that day of clinical placement And at what time my clinical placement finished since I had my full medical school curriculum at the same time as studying for the U.S. Emily exam I dedicated my Tuesdays to doing anything that needed to be done for medical school So this included things like assignments working on the research project that I'm a part of or preparing and studying for my upcoming Oski exams if I had any time left over I'd study between one to four hours for the U.S. Emily step one And then finally Wednesdays and Saturdays were entire days that I could dedicate towards studying for step one and on each of those days I was studying for eight hours I took one day off which was every Sunday and that's because you need to take a little bit of time off You need a day off to sort of reset and relax in order to then go back and repeat the Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Etc that you're gonna have to do at 9 p.m. On any one of these days is when I would stop studying and dedicate the rest of the time in that night Towards relaxing and also exercise on top of that I was of course filming and editing YouTube videos to upload onto this YouTube channel once a week and as you can see I made this timetable on the 10th of February now I'm not gonna lie this schedule was quite tough especially after a long day of clinical placement The last thing that I wanted to do is go to the library all by myself with no friends in sight Sit down and just have to study from this big fat textbook since I'm an international medical student No one in my class is taking the U.S. Emily step one at the same time as me And so all the studying I'm doing is unfortunately by myself now keep in mind back in February I was so scared of the U.S. Emily step one exam I didn't really know how big it was and how much content there was to learn It was just sort of this huge mountain in front of me that I felt like had to climb and that I knew was gonna Take so much effort and motivation and time to get through and that's why I feel so good now that I've done my first Pass because I've actually seen all of the material once I now know how much material there actually is and in my head I have some context as to how big different chapters are how much material there is for different sections etc And that really helps you work through studying for this exam anyways It didn't take long before a global pandemic kicked in and all of us medical students were told to stop going on our clinical placements So after about one month of following that U.S. Emily study schedule that I showed you before my schedule Basically completely freed up because as you can see most of my time was being taken up by clinical placements And now that clinical placements were canceled I had a lot more free time and so it was at that point that I entered the dedicated period for my step one studying Which was studying for about nine hours a day And that's what I've been doing for the last two and a half months If you guys are interested in what my nine-hour study day looks like I just made a video on that and you can click over here Or over there and you can watch it All right So that's my general update about what I've been doing to study for the U.S. Emily step one so far and I want to Take a deeper dive into the specific resources I've been using the ones that I've completed my first pass on and tell you guys about my experience using them what I wish I had done differently and what I've learned from doing my first pass So this part of my studying where I complete the first pass of all of my resources is what I like to call phase one I have phases one two and three I'll get into phase two and three later on in the video But let me focus on phase one for now phase one is simply going through all of the material This is why I just collect collect collect all of the information I don't particularly spend a lot of time on any one topic and I don't try and understand everything fully or commit everything to memory So I've been learning the step one curriculum by going through the boards and beyonds online video lectures and annotating the first aid book at The same time one thing that really surprised me is just how much Annotating I did in this book. I mean if I open to any one page You'll see that I've written so much on the sidelines and in the bottom white spaces and everything like that and yeah I just surprised me how much additional information I wanted to add from the boards and beyonds lectures on top of the writing that's already included in this book now The reason that I did this is because when I'm studying It's so important for me to have the context that's surrounding the piece of information or the fact that I'm trying to learn And since this book is largely a collection of high yield facts I felt that it was necessary to write down all that context for when I go through it a second time during phase two of My studying this lack of context is why I'm not the biggest fan of Anki And that's why I haven't been incorporating it as much in my studying techniques But I'll get into that later on in the video See I annotated the hell out of this book and now everything that I need from the boards and beyonds video lectures is on these pieces of paper So I never have to watch them or look at them again The only thing I'm going to return to boards and beyonds for is to redo some of the quizzes that I found particularly difficult the first time Pathoma is a very similar story I've also gone through the online video lectures and done quite a bit of annotating But not as much as the first aid book this pathoma book is much more concise It's much more focused on just the high yield facts I'm very happy that I bought it and I'm very happy I've gone through it because it's going to be a great companion when going through the first aid book. All right now Let's talk about sketchy Oh sketchy, you know what guys I've now done over 200 sketches between sketchy farm and sketchy micro And if you're wondering what 200 sketches looks like I'll put up a screen recording on the video right now But as you can see there's so many different drawings so many different characters and scenarios that need to be learned and memorized There's actually no way that I would learn all of this information about the drugs and the microbes that we need to know If it wasn't for sketchy for every single one of those sketches that I showed you I've copy pasted them into notability I've put them on the left and then written down all my notes on the right hand side I think the hardest thing about sketchy is going to be learning which of the microbes or drugs is associated with Which sketch because once you figure that out and you have even the slightest image of that sketch in your head You can quite easily recall so many different facts about that micro or that drug So yeah, there's absolutely no way I would learn all of those facts and details without sketchy So I'm very thankful for it and I highly recommend it now besides those resources I've been doing practice questions using the usm the rx question bank I definitely haven't done as many questions as I would like to have done by this point in my studying So that's something that i'm definitely going to focus on in phase two Okay, so now having completed my first pass of all of these resources and having been in my dedicated studying period for two and a half months Studying about nine hours a day I can honestly say it has been a challenge as motivated as I am and as much as I Genuinely enjoy the medicine that i'm learning about two and a half months of studying nine hours a day is really really difficult And i'm so thankful that I have my twin sister living with me in this house Because if I was living alone and having studied for this exam, I honestly think that I couldn't do it I really need that social interaction on a daily basis with another human I need to see and talk to other humans every single day. Otherwise, I will go crazy I've also been going for runs as much as I can to keep up with my exercise and my fitness I've actually run 70 kilometers this month, which is the most I've ever run in a single month And i'm really really happy with that at the same time as all this intense studying Of course, I've continued to upload weekly onto this youtube channel That's something that I focus on in my evenings and then on my day off on fridays I love having this amazing hobby where each and every week I can produce something that's almost physically tangible And I can say hey look I made this now Don't get me wrong It has been quite difficult and quite challenging to study for the step one exam and make these weekly videos at the same time But it's something that brings me a lot of happiness and it's something that I enjoy doing So I just make sure that it gets done during the study period my standing desk has actually been really really helpful I alternate between standing and sitting while studying at my desk either within the same day or between Different days and that really helps relieve the pressure on my lower back from sitting down and studying for nine hours a day And yeah, other than that, I'm just trying to stay focused on my end goal. I'm trying to keep everything in perspective I'm writing this exam in order to keep my doors and my options open for the future Which is something that my dad has really instilled into me into my nature and into my character Ever since I was in high school when you have lots of doors open You can choose which one you want to go through But if that door isn't open in the first place then you never get to make that choice That was pretty deep So yeah, overall my motivation fluctuates from day to day and I have better days and worse days But I just try and stay as consistent as I can and make sure that I do good and hard work every single day And yeah, just take it one step at a time All right, so now that the first pass is done and it is complete I can move on to phase two of my studying So phase two of my studying is where I actually take my time to go through all of the material And I make sure that I fully understand what it is that I'm reading or memorize the information If that's the type of information that it is The reason that I don't do this at the beginning of my studying and that I have a phase one Is because if I try to do this at the beginning then I get very worried overwhelmed and anxious about how much material There still is ahead of me and how much I still have to do that I don't really focus enough and learn what's in front of me All right, so here's my timetable for phase two of studying for the usmle step one exam As you can see, it's very appropriately titled the plan For phase two. So as you can see, I've broken it down into the different resources that I'm using first aid, Pathoma, sketchy, usmle, rx and new world question banks And as you can see ticked in pink is that I've completed the first pass of each of these sections Speaking of which sketchy should be ticked over here So how I'm going to complete my second pass of all this material is written down here I like to write it out visually like this because it helps me see things from sort of a bird's eye view Or from a macro perspective So the big picture is that I have 48 days of studying left and I have a total of 708 pages of the first aid book to read through 212 pages of pathoma, 104 micro sketches, etc, etc, etc So if I divide those totals across the 48 days, I get this over here And then I've altered those numbers slightly into what I think I can personally do in a day And that's what you see on the far right column So generally speaking for the next two months or so I'm going to be reading my first aid and pathoma book from 9 to 11 a.m I'm going to be doing my sketchy medical sketches from 12 p.m to 1 p.m Then I'm going to do and review 40 practice questions from 3 to 7 p.m And then do an extra 10 questions or so from 9 to 10 p.m Now obviously the schedule is prone to changes And I will make adjustments depending on how I feel and how things are going as I go along But generally this is what I'm going to try and stick to You might have also noticed that I wrote days of holiday 8 over here I'm going to try and take 7 or 8 days off in the coming weeks Simply because I just honestly feel like I'm burning out I've been doing about 8 hours of studying a day for 3 months And I have the same if not more for the next 2 months So I feel that slowly slowly I'm approaching the law of diminishing returns when it's coming to my studying I'll be able to completely take my head off of the USMLE Step 1 exam And then come back with a fresh mind and just grind grind grind away for the last 2 months You'll have noticed that I haven't included Anki anywhere on this page And the reason for that is what I said before in this video Which is that I personally feel like it's not providing me with enough context in order to learn the information that it's showing me I'm still going to use Anki to memorize all of those high yield facts and all of those sketchy little details that come up in biochemistry But I just don't want to use it as an underlying foundation for how I'm going to learn the content of these 2 books So in conclusion that is it that is my big life update surrounding studying for the USMLE Step 1 exam I'm pretty Gutted as the English would say that I'm not going to have a full-on summer holiday And I'm not going to be able to enjoy this time with my friends and family and everything like that But I'm hoping that a mini holiday at some point over the next couple of weeks And then maybe a little one as well after this exam is over will be enough to get me refreshed and re-energized for fourth year of medical school I can't wait to start my fourth year of medical school It's going to be so much fun And I know that I have a lot to learn but I'm really excited for it And I also can't wait to make all kinds of videos about my experiences during my fourth year of medical school It's going to be great. Anyways, I hope you've enjoyed this video and that it's been somewhat useful for you If you're preparing for the step one exam if you've enjoyed this video and want to see more from me Don't forget to leave a like on this video and subscribe to my channel to see more content from me in the future That is it for now, and I will see you guys in the next one. Peace