I didn’t take anything at all with me when I started medical school. I said in one of my earlier posts that when I moved out to university I didn’t even take a single pen with me, in my first week the only pens I had with me were the free ones I picked up in Fresher’s Fair!
Okay, maybe I should have bought some pens, but this basically summarises my mindset when going in and how I didn’t make any decisions about how I was going to study/take notes until I actually got started. This was a conscious decision because I wanted to keep myself open to learn how to study as I went along and allow myself to be flexible. I don’t regret this approach in the slightest, it allowed me to learn how to learn again much more easily.
I didn’t know how I’d like to take notes, whether I wanted to store notes in files, use a certain type/size of notebook so I went in with an open mind and that was definitely the best way to go about it for me.
After about a week or two I realised I wouldn’t be making any handwritten notes and decided to word-process all my notes. I did keep 1 notebook that I’d make notes in during any additional lectures I attended (any on career exploration or other medical lectures that weren’t directly linked to the case).
As the year progressed I decided to make flashcards for Anatomy so went and bought a bunch of flashcards. I also decoded to create paper-based summaries for each case so I got a couple of B5 notebooks (which felt like the right size) to create these summaries.
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Life of a Medic 