• Define your study goals/amounts/times before you start.
• Give yourself realistic targets – learn smarter. Time is limited (both for you and your swotty neighbour). If it won’t help you pass, then ignore! As Emerson said ‘Life is too short…!’.
• Define your break times. A count-down timer is useful and can be found on most digital watches, microwaves and kitchen appliances.
• Allow for 2 minutes’ overview at the beginning of each session and 5 minutes’ review at the end.
• Decide what you will learn now and what you will cover later – when and if you have the time. This is called prioritizing your resources and it is a skill that is especially important to doctors.
• Define goals for the session, the day, the term, the year – or even set lifelong targets. The use of goals and targets has permeated all walks of life, from fiscal to political, motivational and self-development for the simple reason that goal-setting works! Write down your goals, aims and objectives.
• However, if your dominant thoughts are about a football match, a movie, or going out – good news! It is still possible to ‘mnemonic’
these events by associating them with the facts you wish to learn.
• Fill your thoughts with images and visions of yourself making the exam suffer for using up so much of your time…. Aim for an elegantly detached matter-of-fact state whereby there is just enough adrenaline and sympathetic activity to keep you alert and interested.
• According to Edison, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Many of your colleagues are saying that they have not done any work.
What they really mean is that they have not done as much as they would like – and have actually done more than they realize, or are prepared to admit!
• This is a common phenomenon in the medical schools’ game because the selection process seems to pick out many pathological perfectionists…they could never have done enough work and rely on denial as a bizarre motivational strategy.
• This is fine because different people work in different ways. Your task is to recognize this and accept it. Nobody knows as much as you think they do – and you know more than you realize!
• Remember – nobody knows everything. Walter Mondale said ‘If you think you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused’. Make your learning efficient and ecological, and pay particular attention to your learning environment.
Environment
Learning is a process by which your brain makes certain neurological connections. Learning is a process by which your brain makes certain neurological connections. Everything happening to you at the time you learn adds a few sub-branches to that particular connection in your neural network (see your neurology texts).
So if you are doped up on caffeine while revising, your brain remembers that too. When you need to reproduce the information in your exam with no caffeine in your bloodstream, your brain will find it that much harder
S pecific and simple M easurable and meaningful A ll relevant areas
R ealistic and Responsible T imed toward what you want
The SMART goals are
to access the facts you need. This is why psychologists describe learning as being ‘state-specific’.
In other words, aim to match every aspect of your environment – including biochemical factors – to simulate as near as possible the exam conditions.
If possible, you can even revise the subject in the room you will be taking the exam in. If this is not possible, then you can use different rooms for different subjects (so that thinking of a specific room, what it looks and feels like, will act as a memory jogger). This also helps reduce confusion between different subjects.
(You may have heard about students who could only pass exams while having a raised blood ethanol level, who are useless while sober! Now you know why.)
Try to make sure your blood levels of caffeine and glucose are the same as what they will be during the exam. If certain music helps you to remember but you are then not allowed to wear personal stereos during the exam, beware! (If there is no other option, listen to your music on the morning of the exam). Take whatever sensible and logical steps you can – then go for it!
Go for it
What you can do, or dream you can…begin it Boldness has genius, power and magic in it
Goethe Make it so!
Captain Jean-Luc Picard (in Star Trek: The Next Generation) People wish to learn to swim
and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground Marcel Proust
Goodness
To the good, be good To the bad be good too In order to make them good as well
The He Zhizhang, Tang Dynasty The good is the beautiful
Lysis (Plato) If you cannot speak good of someone, be silent
Reported by Bukhari
173 MOTIVATIONAL BITS, QUIPS AND STUDY TIPS
Internet
The Internet is a huge resource of study tips, notes, mnemonics and other people’s PowerPoint™ presentations (ppt’s). Just beware of the validity of this information and also the fact that it may be out of date, or just plain wrong. Double-check and cross-reference the material unless you are very sure.