STUDY TIPS 🌻 from a straight A medical student!

1. Take good notes throughout the whole semester
At the end of every week, make sure you have perfect and well organized notes written down for everything you learned in that week. Add details to your notes from lecture slides, textbooks, and the internet. If you do so, you will have your notes already made once midterms or finals come up. So, you will only need to study from these already notes and nothing else! You won't have to find information last minute or try to cram a whole textbook into your head because you basically just have to study from your own notes! This will save you from so much unnecessary stress and make uni a lot more bearable (plus, you'll get better results!). 

2. Go prepared to every lecture
If your university has lecture slides uploaded prior to the lecture, download them so that you can take notes on them during the lecture. Same applies for if maybe for a subject there are notes from previous generations of students - they are so helpful and you can make them even more helpful by adding notes and markings on them throughout the semester. 
An app I like to use for this purpose is PDFelement which is an all-in-one PDF editor that is perfect for taking notes on electronics. In this generation, I myself like to promote protecting the environment yet also have a similar feeling to the traditional taking notes on paper. I feel like this app gives me this perfect balance. It is extremely versatile - in addition to the basic highlighting and writing on the text, you can also add text boxes, sticky notes, and a myriad other things to your PDFs making it perfect for taking notes during lectures and classes. At the end of the day, you can easily convert the PDF you made into a word or excel document which makes life a lot easier.


By the way, for those who are interested ... PDFelement is available on iOS and Android for free, while its desktop version on Windows and Mac is now on a limited 50% off sale!  

I'd definitely recommend y'all to try it out :) 

3. Study according to syllabus topic lists

The exams are based on those topic lists so its very helpful to use them as a guide to study throughout the semester. They are useful for when you fall behind and need a guide on how to catch up, and for when you want to study ahead! What I do before every semester is save the topic lists in a very easily accessible location (or even print them out) so I can come back to it a lot during the semester. 

 4. Work hard from day number 1 

 Don't leave the working hard til the week before an exam, 

that is just overloading yourself with unnecessary stress that could actually cause you to do worse on an exam. Cramming does you no good - plus, even if you do end up passing an exam, the knowledge won't stick into your head (if the exam was a semifinal, there will eventually be a final that includes this material - so its better to just spend time to absorb the information!) Study bit by bit every day from day number 1 of the semester - it is so so so worth it. On the left is a thumbnail of a video with all the notes that I made in my first month of medical school :)

5. Study with friends 

Find yourself a group of people to work together to get the best grades. It is always helpful to study with people because they may know something you don't and visa versa. I myself find it extremely beneficial when I get to explain a topic to someone because it imprints the topic even more into my brain. It is also so motivating to be in a group of people full of drive to do the best they possibly can in university. 
In addition, if you happen to have to miss a day of university it is so good to have a friend who took notes during that day! 

6. Make your surroundings motivating and put quotes all around to inspire you
Motivation - the key to success! If you are motivated, you study so much better and as a result you get a lot more stellar grades. Make studying fun, and fall in love with studying. If you love to draw, add drawings into your notes. If you love color, add a lot of color to your notes! Eat snacks that you love during studying (preferably healthy snacks) Surround yourself with people who love to study!


7. Always take breaks
Don't over study either, find that perfect balance between studying the bare minimum and over studying. Take breaks every once in a while to hang out with friends, go on a walk, or to have a self care time. These things will refresh you and make you able to study even more afterwards! Also, I would definitely recommend going to the gym if you don't yet - it energizes you so much and definitely recharges you after a long day of studying.

8. Never ever give up 
Failed a test or got a undesirable grade? Take a small break to be a little upset, then get up (or, well, sit down) and keep on studying! Never ever give up on your dream of becoming the best student you could possibly be - you can do it. 

Do you people have any study tips? Be sure to leave them down in the comments section! Good luck studying everyone! 
love, 
Kasey :) 

Link to my youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/user/yuhua98/featured
I've got quite a lot of study related videos on my channel along with lifestyle, self care, and vlogs!