 Going to class. Should you do it? Well, what if I told you you actually didn't have to go to class? You could study faster and actually be done with your study day before most of your classmates are out of the lectures. Would you be interested? That's exactly what we'll talk about. Let's get into it. All right, guys, welcome to the channel. My name is Laksham, internal medicine physician, and this is the MD journey, a channel completely dedicated to helping students just like you succeed on their journey with less stress through study, test, productivity, and you name it. So if you're new here, definitely consider hitting that subscribe button, putting out two videos that are helpful just like this one. And if you enjoy the content, let me know by hitting that like button. It supports the channel that also tells me you enjoy this kinds of videos. Today, we are going to talk about going to class and honestly, the benefits of not going to class. I know a lot of you guys may have the option, you're not sure what to do. And if you do have the option, I'm going to give you a few things you should consider of why I'm going to class may not be the best thing for you. Let's get into it. You have to understand that a typical lecture format for 80 to 90% of most classes is very passive. It's the professor talking some slides, you did some reading before and you're hoping that them teaching you is going to help you retain the material doesn't unfortunately happen for most of us. In fact, if you just consider what you actively hear, even this video, you probably only remember about 30% of what you hear. That's you actually paying attention. So if you imagine going through three hours of lecture a day, you only remembered one of them. So two hours would basically waste it. And if you do that over a week, if you had 15 lectures, you may only have enough retention of about five of them. 10 of them you might as well not have gone to class in the first place. And so the beauty of not going to class is that if your lectures are recorded, you can use the concepts of things like speed listening, which I've made a video about before on the channel, you guys can check it out below. But most of us listened faster than most of us talk. In fact, you may be watching this video at an accelerated speed. I don't blame you, but make sure you hit that like button. Just tell me how many of you guys may be doing it. While the average person speaks at about 150 words per minute. Most of us probably listened to about 200 to 300 words per minute. So you can be twice as efficient. And if you're only going to remember 20 to 30% of it, you might as well get through that information quicker. So then you can do the study techniques that work better for you to remember the rest of the material. And the other beauty of speed listening to your lectures is not only would you be able to finish your lectures twice as fast, but you can use that extra bit of save time to now go back and refresh yourself on things in the lecture that didn't make sense, which you can't do in a natural class. You can't ask the professor to constantly go back and pause and reverse. But doing that on a recording obviously gives you that advantage. So using speed listening and not going to class and then being able to navigate to the parts of the material that didn't make sense to you is definitely going to be able to boost your grade in just a short bit of time. And as a quick example for me in the medical school, if you'd go through three hours of lectures, I could usually listen to most of them at about two and a half, if not three X. And that means that I could finish three hours of lecture in about an hour and a half-ish at least. So I had another hour and a half to either quickly go into my review, relax, go work out. But whatever it may be, I had an hour and a half that most of my medical school classmates did. And so that goes into benefit number two is that your day becomes so much more open and structured for you. One thing that's flawed about the educational system is that it's usually a nine to 12 break during lunchtime and then go back to it for lectures or more labs during the afternoon. But it basically assumes that all of us are the most optimal in terms of learning and our tension at the same times a day. Well, frankly, that's not true. You may learn better in the evenings doing your review materials or watching the lectures while I may be able to watch the lectures at five or six in the morning and be perfectly fine. All of us are a little bit different. And so instead, if you don't go to class, you can have a full day where you can structure where you work best. And in fact, one of the things that I love teaching about here on the MD journey as well as some of my study programs, which you guys can check out down below, is if you give yourself a full day or a more of a flexible day, you can find those open bits of time and ask yourself, well, where do I work best within these hours? And a quick kind of exercise that you can do is for two days straight, you know, throughout various ports of the day, go ahead and ask yourself on a scale of one to three, three being the most energized and most like enthusiastic and one being like, I'd rather go to sleep. Where do you find your energy levels to be at a three versus a one? A lot of us may find that are ones that are around like one to three p.m. in the afternoon where we just had a huge lunch and then like our energy level is just tanking anyways. And then you can go ahead and use step number two of trying to find your most optimal times, your most energized times to fit in your studying review. Now, but that's obviously going to become harder. If you go to class, you didn't have to and you realize that the nine to 12 is kind of your prime time to work. You could have used that to do a practice questions that require a lot of mental energy, but they would also be able to give you a lot of long term retention and help you on your final grade. And so as your day becomes more open and structured, you can personalize it to where you should study best. You can use extra bits of time where your energy may be lower to go do other more energetic things like working out or sleeping YouTube. And then your productivity goes up and your stress goes way. So those are definitely some benefits that I was able to use in medical school to help me study faster because I didn't have to feel like I had to drive back and forth to school. I was able to speed up my studying because I was able to use things like speed listening and then immediately get into my most desirable study techniques. And I will link down a few videos on how I study the medical school, start to finish in case you guys are interested. But the most important is I had so much more time for me to do things like the YouTube channel, the MD journey and just kind of chill. So if those things are attractive to you, definitely consider, you know, minimizing your class lecture attendance if it's not helping. But with that being said, I do want to mention a few benefits that do come with going to class. Number one is accountability. If you're somebody who struggles getting up and getting to your schedule and going to class forces you to learn the material, you know, going to class is obviously going to have a lot of benefits for you. Another benefit is you can get immediate feedback. So if you're confused about what the professor is teaching, you can definitely ask the question. If you're watching that lecture an hour later, unfortunately, you'll have to send an email and wait a little bit before that question could be answered. So interrupting the professor where appropriate is definitely going to be able to fill that gap of knowledge much quicker. So that way you're not confused later on. And other two is that you can obviously have a predictable schedule. So you kind of know what your day looks like. It kind of goes back to the element of accountability, but you also have that sensation of camaraderie. You see the same classmates and peers throughout the day. And I know definitely for me in medical school when I was a homebody and I would do a lot of my work from home, I may not see a lot of my classmates until test day. And it definitely becomes a degree of people who study at home and to how social their life may be with their classmates and their peers to the people who are obviously in the same class going to lunch together. So definitely keep that in mind. If you enjoy that social environment, then going to class intermittently or all the time may definitely help you out. But with that being said, understand that you can still navigate all of those things and still not go to class and still have the camaraderie with your peers. You can still become more disciplined and have a nice schedule without, you know, spending three hours that may not be effective. So if you guys want more videos on how to study better, how to stay focused, I'll link down a few down below. And then if you want to step by step study system on, you know, how to be able to take essentially what you're doing, but be able to use it and do it faster and get better grades, you can check out one of our programs that we have on the MD journey called level up your studying. A lot of students have gone through it. It's a three week program that's completely designed to take you to what's working, what's not working in your own study system and then learn ways to make it more perfect and personalized to use. So if you guys are interested in kind of transforming your study and your grades in a short amount of time, check that out down below. That's basically it for this video guys. Before you leave, make sure you comment down below. Do you go to class? Do you not go to class? Does it depend on the lecture or the professor that's teaching? I'm curious what you guys think. But before you leave this video, definitely consider hitting that like button. It supports the video and the YouTube channels. I appreciate the support there. It also tells me that you enjoy this kind of content. So make sure you hit that like button. If you're listening to this on the podcast for the TMJ show, make sure you hit that subscribe button as well as potentially leave an honest review. I appreciate all of you guys that have left review this far. So thank you. But thank you guys so much for watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on your journey. Thanks for being a part of mine. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.