Hi Mackenzie! Great to hear from you – fantastic question. The best advice I can give without seeing the actual cards / information is that you should try and make connections. Things like, “TTP – use the pathophysiology and severity to explain the treatment,” the answer being “Fundamentally it is an autoantibody disease – and a relatively severe one – so it would make sense that you would use a technique to remove those antibodies asap to prevent further damage, like plasmapheresis”

You COULD make a card that just said, “TTP – what is the treatment?” but it’d be harder to remember, and less likely to help you with other topics.

Hope this helps!

Dr. P

Im only a few days into the program. I have to say its exhausting and even though I am very used to anki and doing questions, your strategy requires patience, recall, and focused work on weak areas which most of us tend to ignore while studying things we enjoy.

My Step1 exam was scheduled just over 2 weeks from today before I begin my first clinical rotation but I decided to postpone the date. Thankfully I have more time after this rotation because progress flatlined for 3 weeks and I did not know what to do. I can name a number of reasons why I knew it was the right thing to do as I am sure you probably already knew. What really made me stop and think was all of my extrinsic motivations that you mentioned in the videos. They were all wrong causing anxiety and zapping my confidence if a score wasn’t what I thought it should be or if I missed a question I knew the answer to. I started beating myself up instead of learning from my mistakes which is really what medical school is all about. On top of that I’m packing to move again and for the first time I will be away from my wife and 2 kids for 8 weeks during this clinical. The timing was completely wrong and I knew this because it was difficult to focus.

Ultimately I want to become a better student and a better doctor. I hope you can offer some advice as I transition into this rotation that will not only help me with new challenges and material but also with my Step 1 exam later this year.

Thank you for all the help.

Keith

I liked your Cardio Starter Deck so much that I bought the Step 1
Deck. I really wish I had known about these as a First Year!
Obviously, I already started on the Cardio Starter Deck. Should I
switch to the Cardio deck in Step 1? What is the difference between
the two?

Have a great rest of your day

Ideally both – I’d start by using the Yousmle.com Step 1 and Pharmacology cards, but then once you get the hang of how to use it, how to best make cards, then I’d make cards of your own, since you are starting so early and have the time to make/do more cards than are just in those two decks.

Good question. Typically, it doesn’t work to put so much information into one card, which I think you understand. I might try making double-sided cards, something like the following, for efficiency:

Front: Trust vs. mistrust – age?

Can I trust the world?

Back: 0-1 year

What Erikson Stage? What existential question?

Awesome – thanks for the info!!

Your website is very informative and I am in the process of trying to establish anki cards for MCAT. If you could give me your opinion, that would be great.

I know that I shouldn’t make lists for anki flashcards, but how would you use Anki to memorize stages of something? As of right now I am making one flashcard for the stages, and each individual one for the definition of the stage, for example:

Erikson’s ten stages??