 Being a doctor and going to medical school is not for everyone. But even if this was the career for you, it's 10 plus years long. You're thus likely going to make some dumb mistakes and develop some bad habits along the way. Here are the ones that I made that I definitely regret. Hey friends, welcome to the channel in case you're new. My name is Laksh. I'm a board certified internal medicine physician and currently a cardiology fellow. After going through the long medical journey myself, here are my biggest regrets for medical school. Number one is being obsessed with my grades. Now the common myth in medical school is that the grades are all that matter. So as soon as you start, you're focused on getting as many questions right on all the test and quizzes. Because you would think that the logic is that if you have higher grades, you would thus look more impressive, and thus will have more opportunities for your future training and programs and jobs. Now yes, there's some two to that, but here are the issues. Just like my classmates, I studied my butt off day and night. And just like me, they had done well to this point. So for some reason here I am studying 10 plus hours a day, thinking that I'm going to impress some future employer or program director to accept me based off my grades, when that's the strategy of literally thousands of other smart medical students around the country. Now I'll tell you the solution of this and regret number one, so stay tuned. I likely could have taken several hours a week that I studied out of the stress of getting a low grade, which I could have spent doing literally anything else. And thus I would have been happier, balanced and enjoyed the journey a lot more. And number two is failing to store the pearls. Now this is honestly one of my biggest regrets that I constantly have to work at. I actually share this in my weekly newsletter and our med school handbook, which you can access for free down below. Now during this amazing journey, you are going to learn a lot of nuggets and pearls, and most of them will be outside of the textbook. These lessons come from your attendings, your colleagues, your patients, and just simple bedside learning. If you've ever wondered how certain medical students, residents and attendings look so impressive by memorizing little bits of details that matter to the patient's care, they likely also got these from pearls from their attendings back when they were training. But for most students, including myself, we unfortunately don't have a great way to hold on to these nuggets. Like most students, I try to just listen and process. That didn't work. I then try to write them down on the paper that I had with me, which I likely threw away at some point during the day or week. I even try to collect them into a digital notebook, which currently, unfortunately, is too messy to find all those pearls when I need them. Bottom line, I'm still working on a system that works for me, but I do acknowledge the importance to storing these nuggets in a way that you can come back to later. This is honestly where your lifelong learning will happen as a physician as you hold on to these pearls and come back to them as they're applicable to the patients you take care of. I'm currently reading the book, Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte, which I'll link below. The goal here is to learn how to create a system currently as a doctor to hold on to these lessons, plus everything else that I'm learning. So regardless of what system you end up using, make sure you have a focus on gathering these nuggets and pearls along the journey. Now, before we get back into today's episode, let's take a quick second to talk about today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Picmonic and you're on your medical journey, they have hundreds and hundreds of videos for literally any class or material that you may need. And what makes Picmonic so unique is that in addition to having so many videos on literally any topic you need. So for example, here, where in microbiology, you can click on any videos of your staph aureus, and the videos themselves are very short. So this video is about one minute, 54 seconds, but essentially we'll break down the most high yield components that you have to know in this setting about staph aureus in this very nice story format. Using images of yours, a very nice Oreo cookie that essentially will link an image to your brain on an important concept about that. And the future videos, you may find that the same memorable images included in another related video. So then you can link together concepts. For example, here, this venom jar with green represents food poisoning. So any bacteria that may cause food poisoning may have this image in their overall picture and video. So you could say, OK, I know all different bacteria and then whenever you feel comfortable with a relatively short story, you can easily go into the review and quiz phase and actually quiz yourself on the various different high yield components. Now, in addition to having a very unique and easy way to remember information for your quizzes and tests, you can also add all of the videos you're watching into a relative playlist. So if you're studying for a microbiology class, you can go ahead and essentially click all the videos that you add and add it to this playlist. And then whenever it's time, you can come back to your individual playlist and either watch those individual videos again or ask for specific quiz questions related to the videos that you've now said that you've mastered or at least learned the first time. And that's just scratching the surface in terms of features that Picmonic has to help you on your medical journey. Other cool things include having a weakness guide so you can see which topics you're the weakest in as well as their study scheduler. So you can actually say these are the topics I need to know. And here's my test day and then it will essentially will give you a study schedule based off of that. So if you're looking for an all in one resource you're on your medical journey and you haven't quite found it, definitely recommend checking out Picmonic if you're interested. They'll be linked down below. And our friends at Picmonic have also been nice enough to include an extra 20% discount if you use the code to empty journey at checkout. And so if you're interested in learning more about Picmonic, that link will be down below. And as always, thanks to Picmonic for being today's sponsor. Now, regret number three is not creating an experienced CV. Now in medicine, again, you're so focused on the grades and the numbers that you again forget that that's not all that's needed to be competitive. Imagine that you're interviewing for your residency position after medical school. And you know that everyone else that was invited for that interview also had good grades and board scores just like you. Now, if the individuals who interviewed before and after you have similar scores but more impressive stories and experiences for the field you're applying for, do you really think that you'll be more impressive than them? Likely not. This is why I regret not focusing on building experiences earlier on in medical school. If I simply took on this approach of asking myself every two to four weeks, what's a new experience that I can have to discover more of my interest in medicine? This could have been a shadowing experience with a doctor in a field that I was interested in, maybe taking on a new research project, perhaps doing a new volunteer experience, maybe working at a free health clinic, or maybe just showing up to a lecture for learning sake that sounded interesting. Or perhaps maybe I just send out a few emails to possible mentors in the field of my interest. Now, not every experience will be a hit, but I'm giving myself one to two chances each month of having that wow experience that I'm looking for. And like anything, luck increases when you have more swings and opportunities. If I had simply taken this approach, maybe something big could have come from one of these experiences that would have changed the course of both my medical school journey and my medical career. Now, I wish I did this more versus trying to become a cookie cutter applicant with the grades, the generic research, and clinical experiences. Now, thankfully, I learned this lesson sooner than later in medical school, which is what led me to think about out of the box experiences that I was interested in, such as creating this YouTube channel and the podcast that were focused on education and making the journey a little bit easier for others. But definitely take this regret and lesson for me to understand that to be impressive, all you really have to do is just be interested in having more experiences that intrigue you and make sure you understand the takeaways. You'll just be more impressive by default this way. Regret number four is forgetting that outside progress is still key. Now, medical school is four years of your life. If you think that you can keep other things at bay until you're done, you'd be wrong. The latter phases of training only get busier. For me, during my internal medicine residency, the hours were longer and harder than medical school. And now my life as a cardiology fellow have their own challenges, plus I'm a new dad, which comes with its own set of responsibilities. And when no one told me earlier on in medical school is that the habits that you develop in medical school are likely the ones that you'll carry forward into your future medical journey. If you don't prioritize learning outside of medicine, you'll think you'll have no time for it when you're busier as a trainee. If you don't focus on the relationships that you care about in med school, it'll be harder to convince yourself that you have that time to do it when you're busy in training. I thankfully learned this lesson about a year into medical school, but I know that there are habits that I could have worked on even more as a medical student, which I still struggle to this day. So learn from my mistakes and understand start early versus thinking that you'll figure it out later. Now med school and the medical journey is an incredible experience, but there are pitfalls that we all fall out for. So if you found that this episode helped you out, then check out some of the programs that thousands of medical students have used to crush their medical school experience, including our med school domination bundle and our one-on-one studying coaching programs, which are linked down below. And if you enjoyed this episode and you're watching on YouTube, definitely hit that like button to support both this video as well as the channel, reach this mission of helping more individuals just like you succeed on their medical journey but doing it with less stress. If you haven't done so already, definitely hit that subscribe and notification bell to be notified when the next video comes live and definitely drop your comments down below on your thoughts on these regrets as well as future ideas on videos that you would like for us to make in the future. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, definitely hit that subscribe and follow on your favorite listening platform, as well as considering leaving an honors review on iTunes. And my friend, if you enjoyed this episode, then go ahead and check out this episode right here on how to remember everything that you read, as well as this episode on how I share my on-keep method that took me from 10 hours a day of studying to five hours a day as a medical student. Hopefully you guys enjoyed these and as always, thank you so much for joining me on my journey. Hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours, and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.