Many students find that they need to adjust their study habits when it comes time to tackle the information overload of PA school. I was certainly in that camp. My study skills up until that point were effective, but I knew both the time commitment and complexity of material was going to be a challenge.
If you're starting PA school and freaking out about your study habits, don't panic! Take a deep breath and consider what has worked well for you in the past. For me, I'm old school and I like writing things out by hand. Plus, I've found that digital flashcards are a great way to practice topics that require a lot of repetition.
My study habits may not work for you. But, I still wanted to share so you have some ideas as you build your own studying framework.
1. Use OneNote to take notes on PowerPoints during class.
My laptop is an HP Envy x360, so it flips into a tablet. I import any provided materials, like PowerPoints, into OneNote and use my tablet pen to jot down notes and highlight important things during the lecture. Also, writing things down during lecture helps to keep me focused and engaged during online lectures, when it seems to be especially easy to zone out or get distracted!
2. Review these notes and use PANCE Prep Pearls to create hand-written study sheets.
I am someone who learns by writing things down. Not typing. Not highlighting in a book. Writing with a pen and paper. So, I embraced that. Now, this can be a time consuming process if you're not careful. I regularly reminded myself to focus on the most important or most challenging concepts, and tried not to waste my time on stuff that was easier to understand. I didn't always do a good job of this, but keeping that top of mind helped me to stay focused and efficient.
I used PANCE Prep Pearls if I was unclear about something from the lecture and wanted another resource to concisely answer my question. I found that even though I wanted to read the whole chapter and highlight important stuff as I read it, I often didn't have time for that.
3. Use Quizlet to make pharmacology flashcards.
Pharmacology was challenging for me, so repetition was key. Initially, I tried to make hand-written flashcards but there just isn't enough time in the day. So, I typed these out and rather than noting everything about each drug, I tried to focus on the most important and unique features. I created these flashcards to be used with the "matching" game on Quizlet, and sometimes my classmates would play along with me and we'd get some good competition going to see who could be the fastest!
4. Do practice questions!
My university would provide a practice test for each exam, and this was an excellent way to review as the exam got closer. Plus, sometimes the questions would be repeated on the actual test! I almost always supplemented this with questions from Lange Q&A. Sometimes this didn't work out perfectly (for example, my university would split Endocrine into two separate exams), but it was still pretty easy to use the Lange book as practice (ie., yes I should know the answer to this question!).
In my opinion, it's one thing to know the content, and it can be entirely another to apply what you know to a test question or scenario. This forced my to exercise my knowledge in a new way to really make sure I understood the content.
5. Review additional materials, time permitting.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm not a big objectives person. But, my classmates were amazing at sharing resources with each other (I shared my pharmacology Quizlets, they shared completed objectives!). If I had time before an exam, I found that reading through the objectives was a great way to just look everything over one last time and make sure there wasn't anything I had missed via my own methods of studying.
Again, think about what methods have worked for you in the past, and start there. You may need to make some minor adjustments along the way to optimize your strategies, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to change your ways and have it backfire. You know your learning style best.
Thanks for reading and happy studying,
Olivia
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