How I Take 0 Notes in Medical School (don't waste your time)

what is going on guys my name is kenji and welcome back to my channel i hope it's not the first time you're watching one of my videos but just in case it is i'm a fourth year medical student and biomedical science graduate studying kings college london and in this video i'll be talking to you guys about exactly why i stopped taking notes medical school let's go ahead and get started so taking notes is something that we all do in medical school and university and don't get me wrong it has this place i used to take notes for probably the last five six years of university i love it so much but it becomes a point where taking lots doesn't necessarily add to you know your productivity and your memorization and learning of your work so first off you know what is notes why do we take notes for me personally writing down notes is taking a concept i've learned in a lecture or somewhere in university and translating it into something that i personally understand myself not just for myself today but also for my future self and i mainly use writing notes for learning new concepts and understanding new concepts and the key word there being understanding making notes is absolutely amazing when you want to understand the concepts to really break it down step by step write it in you know words that you understand and for your future self will understand what your future self does come back to actually trying to revise for that exam and it'll be a lot easier when you have you know a written document containing all of the information that you need to learn right now in a way that you understand it so making my own notes and writing my own notes by hand or on my laptop is something that i did for my whole entire biomedical science degree and also for the last three years medical school and if you want to check out all of my notes that i made to get through my exams go ahead over to my website and check that out but actually starting my fourth year medical school all of that has changed and in the majority of cases now i've completely stopped taking notes and i've moved over to making flashcards which has really increased my knowledge retention and my memory retention of everything i need to learn for my final exams in medical school and the reason for that is in my fourth and fifth year medical school the majority of what we learn is purely now based on memorization there is little to no kind of understanding by now having done my first three years my pre-clinical years of medicine which took a lot of understanding of the physiology and pathophysiology of the human body that was mainly you know understanding concepts but now my fourth and fifth year i should really have a good grasp of all of the you know kind of understanding the big broad concepts of human body and disease whereas now we're moving more on to treatment investigations and also kind of examinations of the human body and because all i'm learning really now is you know mainly treatments and managements of diseases the majority of all of that is all based on memorizing the facts that you need to know for example my pre-clinical years we had to learn things like asthma we had to learn how the body normally works with breathing and what goes wrong in asthma you know what is the pathophysiology of asthma what receptors you know line your your trachea all of those things so i'd personally make these beautiful notes with you know loads of pictures on them they'll really break down the concept of asthma and help my future self to understand asthma very very quickly because it's in a format and you know it's in words that i personally understand and i can understand in the future when i do come back to reviewing my notes for the actual exam whereas now in my clinical years of course we still have asthma you know everywhere in our lectures and also in our exams but it's not really about understanding the you know physiology and the pathophysiology of asthma it's more about understanding you know what investigations do we need to do to make a diagnosis what examinations we need to do and finally how do we treat it in a step-wise approach so before i learn maybe you know one or two methods about how to treat asthma whereas now i need to know the exact you know step-by-step process of how we treat asthma you know starting off with the very basic things all the way down to the final more difficult things if a patient doesn't respond to therapy and as you can tell all of that is unfortunately unfortunately um based on a pure memorization that's why i'm making notes right now would not really help my future self to understand concept all i have to do in the future when i want to revise for and study that final exam will be to read a list and i can just you know put down my memory rather than actually needing to translate it in a way that i understand and also now you know almost becoming a doctor it's not really about understanding the broad concepts and of course you know having a good you know scientific basis and knowledge of all of the pathophysiology of human body's importance but what's really more important now is knowing the detail knowing the specifics so what drug would i you know give a patient in this condition what contraindications are there to providing this patient with these medications there's so much detail that i now need to make sure that i know it's not just understanding you know broad concepts which is quite easy if you have a good set of notes that you understand it's more about specifics and again to do the memorization and that's another reason that i've now moved towards flashcards because of that there is so much information that always needs to be you know on my mind even if i'm in pediatrics i still need to know some general medicine to know some gastroenterology you know there's so many different concepts i need to know all times no matter the specialty that i'm currently in hospital so if i were to try and learn all of these specific facts keeping in my memory every single day would require me to go through literally reading all of my notes every single day testing myself on my notes every single day which will literally be i'll probably have to go through a whole entire folder of notes to make sure that it's always constantly on my mind whereas if i use flashcards the great thing about flashcards like anki flashcards is that it will constantly remind me of the things that i need to know you know the really impressive algorithm system that um anki flash cards has means that the things that you're more likely to get the things that you mark you know more difficult to remember will come up more often and we'll make sure that every single day if i go through my anki flash cards i will theoretically be able to retain all this information you know at any given time throughout my career as a doctor and that's why i've now moved towards flash cards if you guys want to learn more about how to write notes in university and also how to study for your exams and i highly recommend you check out my mate alibdal's course on how to study for exams on skillshare who are also kindly sponsoring this video if you guys haven't heard it yet skillshare is an online learning platform and community for learning new skills they have thousands of videos on you know not just how to study for exams but also you know arts videography cinematography literally anything you can imagine any sort of skill you want to learn skillshare definitely has it i've actually been using skillshare for about one year now and i've loaded so much the point where i've actually made my own skillshare class which you can access for free with the trial down below the class i made at skillshare is all about how to write a first class essay so if you're in university and you're going to learn more about how to score those top marks in your essays and i highly recommend you go check out my class on skillshare as i mentioned my mate alibdal has a really good course on there as well on how to study for exams i spent a lot of time watching that and also the class on how to be more productive so if you'd like to check out his class as well and my class on skillshare i definitely recommend you at least sign up for the trial and the first 1000 people to click on the link down below will get free trial access to skillshare and my recommendation will be to at least sign up for trial check out i leave classes on there check out my class as well watch them all for free of the trial and if you decide the skill share adds enough value to your life as it definitely has done for me then the monthly cost of skills shares less than ten dollars a month on the annual subscription which for me is absolutely worth it but enough of our skillshare let's head back to video if you guys want more information on how i use anki flash cards to actually learn my work learn all the theory of medicine go ahead and check out that video on that concept but i will probably stop here guys i just want to talk to you guys briefly about why you know starting fourth year in the last couple of months i found making notes completely redundant completely you know useless at this stage in my medical career i hope this has given you some food for thought about maybe how you may want to adapt your learning style one day if you're you know your early years medical school or maybe if you're already in your final year's medical school i hope it's helped you guys out if it has please make sure you're subscribed make sure to turn notifications on to stay updated whenever i'm posting drop the video like and comment down below and i'll see you guys on the next one

Channel: Kenji Tomita

Views: 16,462

Rating: 4.9140811 out of 5

Keywords: study with me, how to make notes in university, how to take notes, medical student study with me, medical school, king's college london, medicine, medical school in the uk, med school vlog, how i got into medical school, king's college london medicine, medical school uk, medical school life, medical school vlog, medical school london, a day in the life of a medical student, notion, anki

Id: 9vuixzBujFA

Length: 7min 15sec (435 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021