Welcome to medical school, where almost everyone has a Type A personality, graduated in the top of their undergraduate class and is intelligent! The most important thing I learned my first year was this: failure happens.
Chances are good that you will fail a test! If you do, do not let it ruin your life. Failure doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough to be in medical school; all it means is that you didn’t quite get everything in the time allotted to study the material. Let’s face it: trying to cram roughly 10 lectures into your brain for an exam while all these other classes are going on is tough! My advice is to take every test in stride and realize that you may need to find a new way of studying if at first you are unsuccessful.
I’m not going to tell you “what works” because everyone is different. Things that work for my classmates don’t work for me, so don’t get worried if their way of studying test material isn’t the same as yours. Ask for help early from tutors, classmates or teachers, change your study techniques if necessary and do the best you can!
Congratulations on making it here and welcome to DMU!
This post was adapted from “Recipes for Success,” a guidebook put together by D.P.M. students for all incoming students in the hopes of getting them on the right track once they get to DMU.
