I'm smack dab in the middle of the Infectious Diseases. Up to this point, it's been the most intense sequence. We've got required small groups every morning (gasp!) about the lecture material from the morning, which starts at 8. What this translates to is that I'm once again going to class instead of watching the videos from the lecture. It's rather nice, seeing people and not staring at a screen all day.
Reflecting back on the year, it's interesting to think about how I've changed my studying habits. Up until this sequence I've "diagrammed" out the lectures, making elaborate webs of connections. With this sequence, the process became too inefficient. It took me around an hour to draw out the map on a piece of paper, which simply doesn't translate if there are four hours of lecture in the morning. To make a long story short, I've gotten on the flashcard train, and couldn't be happier.
I've been using a website called flashcardexchange.net which has been very handy. If you'd like to try your hand at learning some of the bugs and drugs, here are my flashcards: http://
Another way that my study habits have changed is I've forced to become creative in my memorizing. We've got many different kinds of drugs to learn and every single side effect of every single kind of drug is important - I'm going to be prescribing these drugs someday and don't want to harm someone. The volume of the material is too large to just use normal materials, so I've turned to the technique entitled "the memory palace": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci. What I've done is used the upstairs of my house in Zeeland as a location for memorizing the drugs and their side effects. For example, the boy's bathroom is used to memorize the antiviral drugs and the guest bedroom is used to memorize the Tb drugs. Within each room there is a person representing a particular class of drugs within the broader subdivision who is exhibiting all of the side effects of the drugs. In the Anti-Tb room there is my classmate, Isabel, who has is in a wheelchair, has a t-shirt that says P450 with a slash on it, and is clutching her upper right quadrant of her abdomen. She represents the ISoniazids, which can cause dose-dependent peripheral neuritis (often manifested in weakness of the legs and arms), inhibition of the P450 enzymes, and hepatotoxicity. I've done this for every single drug of this sequence; it's a full house.
But it's an exam week, so I've got to get to studying. It's the last week of infectious diseases; I'm ready for the break from the intense material.
On another note, I leave for Kenya in 27 days! WAHOO!
Cheers,
John
