Hey guys, I have decided to write about my revision month in preparation for third-year finals. Hopefully, I finish writing and publish this early enough that it would be of some help to those in first and second-years. Third-years, we survived and thrived. 🥳
I will attempt to write about my daily schedule during the month leading up to my third-year finals, especially during the last ten days. I will discuss what worked well for me, and what I wished I could have done better.
Also, I will mainly be covering the Systems' exams and will only briefly mention the OSCE and OSPE, for the sake of keeping it concise (hah, like that ever happens). However, I do intend to write about my OSCE and OSPE revision on another occasion as that was a unique experience in by itself, especially during the pandemic.
In order to make it easier to navigate my writing, I have listed down my key points that link to their corresponding sections.
Start your revision with the systems that you are most unfamiliar with & make up the highest proportion of questions in the exam
I did Year 1&2 formative quizes instead of studying my notes
I studied FoPC once at the start of the study break and once more on the day of paper 2
Be micro-ambitious and realistic with what you can achieve during the study break
So, let us start with some background information on the third-year exams.
Due to the pandemic, medical exams are now mostly online, except for OSCE. We use the MSCAA platform to sit for our exams and get invigilated with our cameras on & audio off on Blackboard Collaborate. The usual multiple choice and short answer questions have all been changed to single best answer questions. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I really, really, really dig the SBAs. Lord knows I suffered through the first-year SAQs.
From what I have been told, the SBAs are here to stay, and I genuinely believe that this is a step in the right direction. I mean, medical exams are inherently flawed anyway, but making students regurgitate facts in SAQs has always left a bitter taste in my mouth. Do not even get me started on the FoPC (foundations of primary care) exam. I hope they do not bring back that exam and that they continue incorporating FoPC into the systems' exam. This exam has never made any sense, and after decades of confusing the hell out of medical students, it took a pandemic to finally overhaul it. If you are wondering what I am rambling on about, feel free to look up the year 3 FoPC past-year exam paper on MyMBChB (student portal). It will instantly make you feel infinitely more thankful that you and I no longer have to sit this miserable exam.
Okay, moving on.
In terms of content to be tested, like a certain clinical lead loves to reiterate, anything in the syllabus is examinable. So, yeah. Everything from 1st to 3rd year. Sounds foreboding, right?
Except the medical school is not that cruel...yet.
Yes, you should endeavour to cover every system, but remember that there is a proportion of questions allocated to each system, some more than others. 1st and 2nd year content only made up 10-20% of the questions for one of the 2 systems' papers, so in terms of time allocated for revision, I only gave myself one day to revise the endocrine and urinary system from 2nd year, and I completely ignored first-year systems.
This might sound preposterous and daring. However, the reality is that many first and second-year systems are covered in third-year systems like paediatrics. In paediatrics, we learned about common cardio, respiratory, neuro, endocrine, derm, MSK, infectious, and gastro conditions found in children. Hence, by revising paediatrics, I kind of covered most of the common conditions of first and second-year systems.
In my opinion, endocrine and urinary systems form the backbone of medicine. If I had not revised endocrine, it would have been really difficult for me to make educated guesses in the exam because the names of hormones are not always dead giveaways. Hormones are stuff that pop up in every system because they are the real influencers out there.
Urinary is one of those systems that really should have been taught earlier on in medical school as it forms the solid foundation on which other systems like cardio are built upon. I revised it to consolidate my understanding of how renal function affects all other systems and vice versa. Also, it is worth revising basic renal physiology e.g counter-current multiplier system and acid-base balance.
On this note, I would like to say that in an ideal world, you would have the time to revise everything. Unfortunately, with a one-month study break, which equates to around thirty days, I knew from day one that it was unrealistic to try and revise all twenty systems. Of course, your revision should start a lot earlier than the one-month break. However, considering that we were still learning new content (paediatrics) up until then, it was reasonably difficult to squeeze out the extra hours in the day to revise previous systems. Unless- you are highly efficient in your learning and have been practicing active recall for months, which I did not. 🥲
Anyway, before I digress again off to another planet, let me share with you the proportion of questions allocated to each system for the third-year exam.
Bear in mind that this will vary from year to year.
As you can see, the systems with the highest proportion of questions are MSK and repro. Hence, I started my revision with those two systems first.
MSK, repro and paediatrics are arguably the most content-heavy systems to revise, in Aberdeen at least. As a rule of thumb, I would encourage you to start your revision with the heaviest systems because it is likely that you are least familiar with them and would want to "get them out of the way" earlier on. What you do NOT want is to stress about not having even looked at MSK when exams are literally knocking on your door. Obviously, you will have to revise these heavier systems again and again (spaced repetition), and watch as your level of competency gradually rises with each round of testing.
I revised MSK, repro and paediatrics at least four or five times during that month, with probably around five days between each round of revision. For example, if I revised MSK on Monday, I would schedule another round of revision on Saturday. Of course, this is not taking into account the number of days I took to revise that system. Initially, I took around two whole days to revise all my MSK ARQs (active recall questions- a term I use to refer to questions I make for myself), and then as I became slicker with them, it dropped to one day. On my first round, my paediatrics ARQs took about four whole days to cover. I felt so bloody anxious because I was spending four out of my thirty precious revision days to revise one system. However, it was the right decision for me. The subsequent rounds were a lot quicker.
After I was done with revising those three systems, I worked backwards and revised psychiatry, infection, law & ethics, etc until I covered all the third-year systems. I gave myself one day to revise "all" of year 1 & 2, which I ended up using to revise endocrine and urinary.
7 days before my first systems' paper, I sat down at my dining table and wrote out on a piece of paper what I would endeavour to accomplish on each of those days. This was the final countdown so every day was precious, like pearls on a string. I knew I had to be strategic with what I studied each day and arrange them in the most logical way.
I managed to dig out that piece of paper so I am transcribing the contents here.
16th - Haematology & immunology
17th- Year 2 systems
18th- MSK anatomy
19th- MSK systems
20th- Repro systems
21st- infection & psych & paeds (partially)
22nd- MSK, year 1&2 quizes, specialties
23rd- FIRST SYSTEMS' EXAM; afterwards: MSK, back & spine anatomy, OSCE practice
24th- OSCE EXAM; afterwards: repro, GI, Endocrine, urinary, neuro, head & neck, cardio & respiratory anatomy,
25th- OSPE EXAM; afterwards: repro & paeds
26th- SECOND SYSTEMS' EXAM; afterwards: CELEBRATE (!!), then crash and burn from the vaccine side effects
Not featured: I woke up at 5am every day during those ten days, did a Chloe Ting workout until 5.30am, then showered and finished breakfast by 6.30am. I then spent the next three or so hours before my 10am exam paper (they were scheduled at 10am every day, except for the OSCE) consolidating my knowledge or doing some last-minute revision that I could not finish the day before.
The reason why I am sharing my daily schedule during those final ten days is because I think that it is crucial to devise a strategy as to what what you are going to study each day.
To illustrate further, here is the exam breakdown again.
So, featured above is the breakdown. As you can see, the 20 systems are pretty evenly spread out between the two papers, which were three days apart.
At the start of the ten-day countdown, I made the decision to revise the systems that would be tested in paper 2 first, i.e haematology, immunology, repro, and a wee bit of paediatrics (law and ethics & FoPC I set aside for later, because I had already revised them once a few weeks before).
The reason why I studied paper 2 stuff first even though it was the last paper was because I knew that once the exam week started, I would be having back-to-back exams with less than 24 hours in between each paper. If I did not revise the systems that were going to be tested in paper 2 earlier, I would have inadequate time after my OSPE to revise them, not to mention I would have started to become somewhat unfamiliar with the content, due to the forgetting curve.
By making sure I covered all my ARQs for paper 2 systems once more before the exam week started, I was able to prioritise my paediatrics revision on the day before paper 2, after I had completed my OSPE. Paediatrics and repro were the heaviest systems in paper 2, hence I could not afford to spare too much time revising other systems in detail. Haematology and immunology were surprisingly taxing to revise, which is why I am glad I revised them before the exam week started. I had almost completely forgotten all about the different types of leukaemias, anaemia, and bleeding disorders. Word of advice: Do not leave haematology to the last minute even though it is a relatively short system.
I revised the MSK system on the 19th and then once more on the 22nd because it was the heaviest system in paper 1. I purposely revised infection & psych on the 21st and MSK on the 22nd because I wanted to make sure that MSK was the last thing I remembered. I also revised specialties on the 22nd because it was an easy system, and I could still cover it after having done my MSK revision.
As I had only revised endocrine and urinary for year 2, I also did as many Year 1 & 2 formative quizes on MyMBChB and Moodle as I could on the 22nd. I continued doing them until the morning of the 23rd, right before paper 1. This was really to satisfy myself that even though I did not have the time to revise Year 1 & 2 stuff, I still did some active recall by doing test questions. Yeah, I would have liked to revise Years 1 & 2, but it was just not worth it, and I would still have done the same if I had to do it all over again.
As it turned out, the Year 1 & 2 questions that came out were pretty doable even without having revised the whole lot, so yeah.
After my OSPE exam, I jumped right into paeds and then repro systems. Because I had revised repro on the 20th, the content was still somewhat fresh in my mind, so I could prioritise paeds. I spent the entire afternoon testing myself on paeds stuff, then repro. On the morning of paper 2, I made sure to do a final test of haem and immunology. After breakfast, I basically spent about one and a half hour's time before paper 2 intensely reading my FoPC notes out loud, as well as the year 3 FoPC past-year paper answers on MyMBChB. The reason why I left FoPC till the very last (and boy the timing could not be any more perfect) was because (i) I had already gone through FoPC once, albeit weeks ago, so there was some recollection, (ii) since FoPC was going to be in the form of SBAs, there was no need for me to regurgitate facts to write out- all I had to do was make educated guesses.
I think I finished revising FoPC with 5 minutes to spare before 9.45am, which was when we were all expected to log onto blackboard collaborate. Time for a final comfort break, a cup of Milo freshly brewed, and a raging desire to get that last paper 2 out of the way.
Alright, moving swiftly on.
Be micro and not macro-ambitious: I think I have demonstrated that I was pretty realistic with what I could and could not accomplish. I knew that revising all of years 1&2 was impossible for me, so I prioritised endo and urinary, and just did quizes for the rest. I also did not schedule more than what I could accomplish in a day. Some people like scheduling lots of goals for themselves in a day, just so they manage to get at least a few done. The thought of not being able to complete the tasks I set for myself for the day would really depress me, so that method does not work for me. At the beginning of the one-month study break, I did not write out in advance what I would be studying every single day for the whole month, and just wrote on the whiteboard in my living room what I wanted to study the next day. Admittedly, I was slightly fearful that no matter how I scheduled my time, it would be insufficient to revise everything. I could not entertain that thought. So, instead of spoiling myself the ending, I decided to be micro-ambitious and set goals for myself one day at a time, and pray really hard that at the end of it I would be able to cover everything I wanted before the exams
-and I did.
Avoid trying to learn new content & focus on consolidation: I did not attend any webinars or teaching events during the study break, except for an online mock OSCE and an AUMSA MSK OSCE teaching event. As you can see, the events I chose were active-recall types, not ones that involved me being spoon fed information. In my honest opinion, there is little point in attending any webinars of a passive sort during this month. It is too late. You are better off using that time to test yourself and consolidating than going off to learn new stuff. Just my two cents.
Exercise as often as possible: I used to hate Chloe Ting workouts- my sister could never convince me to complete even one of them. During the three months leading up to my exam, I did her 30-minute full body workout almost every day, usually in the morning but sometimes in the evening. I am definitely not one of those heathens who usually incorporates 6am runs into their daily routine. However, considering that I was spending a solid 12 hours daily studying, with my butt hardly leaving the dining chair, doing a thirty-minute workout every morning was just the thing I needed to keep me going for the rest of the day. It worked wonders.
On the days I did morning workouts, my mind was lucid clear until the evenings. Of course, there were days where I just could not convince myself to do a morning workout, so the evening ones were there to bring me back from the dead and let me hold on until nightfall. During exam week, I worked out at 5am every day, without fail. Rain or shine, no matter whether I had finished revising the stuff I needed for that morning's paper, even though I was obviously a bit tremulous about that. All I needed was to have faith the size of a mustard seed.
Eat properly and regularly: I made a point to eat well, three times a day. Do not get me wrong- I did not cook three times a day. My meals were bulk-cooked and unimaginative. However, they were filling and easy to put together. Do not neglect mealtimes during exam period. Take them as your much needed breaks. I did snack a lot, but I never turned them into a main meal. Nutritious food keeps your mind and body in good shape. You cannot afford to fall sick during this time period.
Sleep 6-8 hours every night: Now, before you scoff at me and leave this post, you know that I am right about this. A good night's sleep is truly healing, and it is what you need and deserve after a long day of studying. Your body needs rest. During those three months, I slept at 10pm and woke up at 6am. During the exam week, I slept at 9pm and woke up at 5am. Not once did I use an alarm clock, believe it or not. I just listened to my body and let myself rest, knowing I would naturally wake up once my body had rejuvenated itself. I also did not force myself to stay up beyond what my body was capable of. I slept early so I could wake up early and continue this cycle of study-sleep-repeat.
Throughout those three months, I did not fall sick once, which is great because I genuinely could not afford to be poorly. I attribute that to the fact that I took good care of my sleep, diet and fitness, as well as took my daily vitamins. This sounds super cliche, but if you have read this far, you should know that this is the best way to ensure that you are in tip-top condition for the exams. There is literally no point in jeopardising your health to squeeze out the extra time for revision. If you are tired, hungry and unfit, your productivity levels would plummet anyway. Do not be penny-wise, pound-foolish. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
Seriously, if you have made it this far, well done. I will conclude this post by reminding you that is perfectly okay to be overwhelmed and to cry. I cried after my first OSCE. I cried on the nights I had insomnia. I cried when I was just sick of living the same day over and over again. Feelings are valid, but after crying, we need to pick ourselves back up and soldier on. You will make it out in one piece! Hold on and have faith :)
As usual, any questions or commentary are welcomed.
Cheers,
Jie Fei