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Snippets of Professional (Medical) Student Life
Like every other M2 student at USCSOM Greenville right now, I’m studying for Step 1. Preparations began months ago when I started working through Q-bank questions and reviewing notes from my first and second medical school years. Often people think of medical students as “pre-doctors.” Presently, I identify more strongly with the title “professional student.” I collected a few photos of my notes to give you an idea of what I’ve been sifting through. The first nine photos are first-year medical student notes. Photos 10 through 15 are some of my notes from this year.
Thoughts for professional student and recreational student friends out there: Don’t be afraid to invest what it takes to learn material. Don’t be afraid of being a dork. Just be dorky, if that’s who you are. Sometimes, it takes a lot of time and repetition to learn something. Sometimes, it takes a silly story or a mnemonic. Most of the time, a mixture of both is best. Pay attention to what works for you and your memory. Pay attention to yourself, then support yourself as long as you continue learning and moving towards your goals. Maybe some of these photos will give you some cool ideas for your own notes. If nothing else, maybe they can give you a tiny glimpse into medical student life — with an emphasis on the studying part!
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- photo 1: The drawing started when I wanted to learn more about muscles. It was difficult to wrap my mind around their layering and functions, so I started drawing them segment by segment.
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- photo 2: Progressing through the year, I grew to understand how much easier diagrams could be in learning some kinds of information.
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- photo 3: Scattered throughout my notes are random quotes and jokes that inspire me and/or make me smile. I also occasionally find grocery lists and/or to-do lists.
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- photo 4: I started tracing forgotten items in pen and adding color to make my notes better hold my attention.
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- photo 5: Sometimes my notes were color coded.
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- photo 6: I can tell when it was a more gloomy or rainy day of studying. My notes from those days can look like a color vomit.
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- photo 7: I started using color more for organization when lists found their way into my notes more frequently.
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- photo 8: Frightened by spatial challenges of learning skull anatomy, I returned to anatomic drawing attempts.
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- photo 9: When unable to find an image conveying multiple components of anatomic detail (usually those details I forgot or confused), I made composites based off of multiple images from various textbooks.
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- photo 10: Second year left me making far more lists and charts.
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- photo 11: Much of the material from this year was better left or screen-clipped into my electronic notes.
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- photo 12: For several units, I condensed review material into a tiny notebook. (Despite appearing normal size, this is actually a 1/2 page notebook). This is also around the time I discovered printing multiple pages per sheet meant I could make half-sheet study resources akin to flash cards.
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- photo 13: More often this year, I printed and annotated notes with images (rather than starting from scratch drawing my own).
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- photo 14: I also discovered the magic of colored legal pads this year.
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- photo 15: The grand majority of my (non-electronic) notes from this year were annotated 2013 First Aid pages. I still write motivational quotes to myself on occasion, but household lists and itineraries have been replaced by annotations from Q bank explanations to questions.
Jennifer Reinovsky
I am a nontraditional student from neighboring Pickens County. I fully realized my passion for medicine after graduating from Furman University in Greenville, SC, and exploring other career options. I hope for gracious clarity and surplus autotelic activity. I love tea, cooking, writing, reading, swimming, and hiking. I am not certain what kind of physician I should be, but I look forward to the process of discovery here at USC School of Medicine Greenville.
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