Medical School Fun

Getting enough sleep, exercising or working out and eating healthy or all essential things to helping you strike a balance and find time to decompress. Each will certainly boost your mood too. Enabling you to look at things with a healthier sense of perspective then perhaps you did before.

is medical school fun? (8 Ways to Improve your Med School Experience)

Medical school, for most of us, is stressful rather than fun. But this is entirely subjective; depending on the habits, opinions, study strategy and hobbies of your average med student. Mindset, most importantly, is what determines the real answer to this question. As well as overall outlook.

Ask most students however and they’ll often tell you the experience was fun in retrospect. Especially now they find themselves in the arguably more stressful position of actually being a doctor! Those days of experimentation, struggle and working with a tight-knit group of colleagues? Suddenly missed.

This is why, personally, I try not to take med school too much for granted. Making it “fun” or not is dependent on my own efforts. Not those of the school or colleagues around me. But maybe that’s got a lot to do with my story and position as a mature student. And isn’t your typical response.

That said, if you’re someone in med school (or about to go in), you might be looking for ways to increase the fun factor. So here are some suggestions.

Make Free Time For Yourself

Fun, for most people, includes doing the things you want to do in the time available. The schedule of a med student, for the most part, is at odds with this. But, as I’ve said before, you do get free time in medical school, despite the intimidating rumours.

Shore more up for yourself by studying smartly. Don’t just pour in aimless hours thinking success is only dependent on the grind. That’s not how it works.

Then explore your hobbies, past-times, interests outside medicine etc, in that leisure time.

Work With Systems

Systems and processes, although they appear rigid, can actually be freeing and fun. Study techniques like the Pomodoro Method actively schedule in breaks. Encouraging you do to enjoyable things in the gaps between focused bursts of study.

Don’t Break the Chain, an alternative study technique, is similar too. A lot of satisfaction can be gained from charting your progress. Effectively ‘gamifying’ your study sessions and injecting a small dose of fun into the proceedings.

The more disciplined you are, the more you’ll get done too. Giving you even more time to explore your interests.

Call on Colleagues

One of the more enjoyable aspects of med school is the camaraderie of coming through it as a team. You start off as an individual. But soon after you find yourself as part of a smaller team (your classroom or lab group).

Being as open and friendly as possible toward everyone in your little group makes things so much easier in med school as a result. Making classes seem fun, rather than a grind.

Short Term Focus

I think one of the main obstacles that prevents med school from appearing fun is the way most students approach it. Constantly reminding yourself of how long, how expensive and how much work you have in front of you? Only adds to the overwhelm and anxiety.

Instead it’s more sensible to adjust your focus to the now. And learn to love the process instead of the outcome.

Doing so puts everything else at the back of your mind.

Learn Different Skills

Being stuck with your head in a book, glued to your laptop or fixed to your flashcards definitely gets tiring. A good way to break the monotony is to have something else fresh to focus on. Preferably something outside of medicine altogether.

I’ve talked a lot about how med students might consider starting a business, blog or whatever. But there’s also lots they can do outside of those activities. Like taking up new sports. Or participating in community projects with locals outside of medical school.

Taking them out the bubble and exposing them to new, fun environments.

Choose Better Resources

Sometimes picking a better resource can make all the difference when it comes to making the mounds of material you’re expected to learn in medicine appear more entertaining or interesting. This is at least true in my case, foregoing lectures and finding better alternatives (like those listed on my recommendations page) instead.

Find a good video series or review book with nice mnemonics and analogies and suddenly that boring class gets turned on its head.

Cultivate Good Habits

This is similar to my suggestion that outlook and mindset changes everything when it comes to how ‘fun’ you perceived med school. The more energised you are however, the better position you’ll be in to judge. The tired, over-worked and stressed student in you is only likely to descend into misery.

Go to School Later in Life

This is a bit of a contentious one but taking time out to enjoy your life before med school might actually help you out when it comes to appreciating the experience all the more. Of course I don’t mean you have to work the best part of a decade first (like I did), but studying something else for undergrad or taking time out to travel, can help. Especially when it comes to alleviating any fear of missing out.

One of the benefits of going into medicine later is that you’ll have done (and exhausted) some of the desires for freedom other, typically younger students, struggle with. Things like staying up late drinking with friends, travelling to wherever or just taking some serious time out to explore completely different interests.

Of course it’s easiest to apply this before going to med school! But there is still the option of deferring and taking time out.

Summary

Med school doesn’t have to be the brutal grind many students (or memes) report it to be. Making it fun really comes down to the individual. And your own desire to live and study on your own terms.

Hopefully the ideas above can give some pause for thought.

Image credit: Buro Millennial at Pexels.

Finding Fun Ways to Study in Med School

Let’s face it, studying isn’t the most exciting task. Even if you do find studying fun, the amount of studying in med school will make pretty much anyone tired of it. In this article, we’re going to go through a few tips and tricks that may help you and give you a few ideas along the way. But first, let’s look into what makes medicine so hard to study.

Why is Studying Medicine so Hard?

You’ve probably heard that med students study for hours and hours with no breaks. That is partly true. One study found that medical students experience more distress due to their heavy workload compared with other students. In another study, spanning several years, by the time the students had become residents, 60% of them met the criteria for burnout. The human body is complicated, and everything that can go wrong with it is even more complicated. Because med students have so much to study in a very limited time, studying can be exhausting.

But there are efficient ways to study without burning out. You just have to find a style that works for you. But first, let’s get to the bottom of why it might be hard for you.

Why Can’t I Remember Anything I Study?

We’ve all been there: We’re sitting in front of the exam paper and suddenly we can’t recall the answer to a question even though we studied it the night before. It can be frustrating, and most of the time, we don’t know what we did wrong.

Actually, there are many mistakes students make (especially in medical school). Note that many of these “mistakes” may work for others. Some of you may be thinking, “I’m a great crammer and it works for me.” However, if you are having trouble studying, it might be best to change your tactics:

Burning the midnight oil

This is when you sit yourself down for a long night of studying and take hardly any breaks. You won’t learn much from cramming like this, because you’re not giving your brain time and space to process and store information.

Highlighting your book

Just because you highlight something doesn’t mean you’ll remember it. Passively rereading information, even with a highlighter, is not really effective. Without active reading, highlighting won’t help information stick.

Multitasking

Your books or notes are open, you have loud music in the background, several tabs are open on your laptop, and your phone is opened to your favorite social media app. You think you’re multitasking, but you’re actually distracting yourself. When you switch quickly between activities, you’re not giving your brain time to adjust in between, and it negatively affects your memory.

Panicking

Maybe you procrastinated and then realized that you still have a lot of work to do, or maybe your 30-minute nap turned into 4 hours of sleep, so now you are studying in a mad panic. Sometimes the panic even sets in during the exam. Anxiety can actually block your memory, concentration, and other brain resources needed for studying and recall.

How to Study Well for Exams

There are many ways to study that work for different people. In medical school, you will find a good mix of different kinds of study methods that students use. But the only way to know if a particular method works for you is to try it out! Here are a few tips and tricks that will hopefully help you along the way:

Review regularly: You need repetition and practice to absorb information over time. It’s hard to keep reviewing the same things you learned while learning new things every day, but with a bit of discipline and determination, it’ll become routine over time.
Study in an environment you enjoy: Pick a nice chair or study on the floor! As long as you’re comfortable and ready to learn, studying will be a lot easier. Do not study in the same place you sleep! You might close your eyes for a moment, only to find it’s morning again.
Test yourself: Studying is part of the battle. Testmanship is another. You need to get used to thinking around questions to train yourself for exams. It’s also really helpful to see which subjects you have difficulty in.
Take breaks: Self-care is one of the most important things in med school. It’s easy to burn out, and if you’re not careful, it’ll reflect in your work and studies. Know when you need to rest, and give yourself time to do the things you like.

Fun Ways to Study in Med School

Now we can talk about ways to spice up your study sessions. Yes, some subjects in medicine can be boring. But studies have shown that students learn more and are less stressed when they try to add an element of fun to their learning. Here are a few activities you can try to turn your study sessions into more stimulating ones:

Use mnemonics and share with your friends

Mnemonics are easier to remember when they’re funny. They’re even funnier and stick better when you use mnemonics with your friends’ names or an inside joke. Giving your associations a hint of emotion helps you recall things better.

Wake yourself up with something other than coffee

I’ve found that when I get sleepy, it’s not because I’m tired. It’s usually because I don’t feel stimulated. So, when you take a break, do something you like. Walk around, watch fun videos, eat something, or even dance!

Get help from your friends and family

Studying medicine is not only theoretical. A lot of it is practical, too. Practice physical exams and special maneuvers on your family, your friends, or even your pet! Using your hands and other senses will help you recall a lot better.

Use a study app

There are tons of study apps out there, and many of them cater to medicine with videos, flashcards, and even simulations! From an overwhelming wall of words in your book, using a new platform can be stimulating. You can also use time management apps to help balance your studying and leisure time.

Study with friends

You don’t have to study alone. Go out to a library or café, or go online with friends and study together. The change in environment, plus seeing your peers working hard, can motivate you to work harder. I’ve found even having studying/working sessions with my friends who aren’t studying medicine helpful because I get to talk about what I’m learning with them.

There are many ways that may or may not work for you as you go through your journey. Some people study with music; some prefer complete silence. Some prefer studying weeks before an exam; some study hours before.

Just continue trying different kinds of study styles until you finally get it right.

You might even change your style from time to time. It’s all about practice and discipline, but it’s also about the fun of it. Cherish your time in med school, and you’ll be graduating before you know it!