Methods & Strategies for Getting Straight A's

The first thing to do is to work out exactly why you want to do medicine in your head. You can write down these reasons in huge font and pin them up on your wall, but I think most people want to keep something like that private, so you can just keep it somewhere safe. Whenever you feel lazy and you can’t be bothered to put in the work, remind yourself of these reasons. You are essentially putting yourself through hell for a year – having a clear mindset as to why you are putting yourself through hell helps you justify what would otherwise seem like a crazy thing to do. If you have solid reasons for having to do something, you are far more likely actually carry through with the act

For me, medicine is a challenging profession, something that's worth getting good at, it provides rewarding work, opens up many options, provides financial security, and is interesting to study.
“Because I want to make alot of money” is not a good reason – medicine is a stupid stupid choice if your goal is to make money. You work incredibly hard for a payoff that is so far away.
“I want to help people” isn’t a good solid reason either – there are many other ways to help people, why do you want to help people through medicine is what you should be asking yourself. Why don't you be a nurse instead? What is it about medicine that interests or draws you? You should develop a set of reasons that are strong and clear, either in your head or written down in paper.

You basically want to be as efficient as possible in everything you do, like knowing what to learn, figuring out what’s the fastest and best way to learn it and so on. Quality over quantity.

To be as efficient as possible, you need to constantly be doing self-assessment and evaluating the effectiveness of your note taking and study methods. Always be evaluating how you're taking notes and studying, and thinking "am I doing this efficiently?", "how could I improve on what I’m currently doing?" and "are there alternative ways of getting this done that might be better?"

Aspects of your study to consider are things like: how much sleep do you need? Does using colour in your notes help? Diagrams? Explaining to other people? Repetition? Writing things or saying things out loud? Where do you study? Do you study well with music? Should you even spending the time to make super pretty notes with diagrams and pretty colours? etc.

I ended up doing better than alot of those students who put in crazy amounts of hours of study even though I didn’t study near the number of hours they did. That’s because I was being as efficient as possible in everything I did and using my time wisely, so I didn’t need to put in that many hours. I had figured out what was the fastest way to learn for me during high school. Alot of students automatically assume from my marks that I must be putting in those crazy hours too. When I told them I was studying only x number of hours they'd be like "sure sure", which is not the correct mindset. More hours of work does not equal better marks if you are working poorly.

Another example is sudy groups. This is a really popular thing amongst students trying to get into med. I never study in groups, because I usually end up answering other people's questions. Others say you learn by teaching and explaining things to others, but I already know that I understand the concepts fully so I don't need to 'over-study' it. I'd be better off moving on to the next bit of stuff to learn on my own. Think carefully about what you're doing when you're studying and try and avoid thigns that may appear beneficial but are simply time wasters.

If you don't think you're studying as well as you could, then do some research on the internet, ask others etc. to try and get ideas to incorporate into your method of study.