How Bad is it to Fail?

It's pretty ironic how I wrote an entire post on how to study anatomy just a few days ago. I'd written the post after my exam on the gastro-intestinal system, partly because I had finally figured out how I should be studying these things and partly because my exam hadn't gone very well and I decided to write everything I should have done down was a good way to ensure I didn't screw up an exam again.

Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for how badly I had screwed up.

You heard that right. Kanra Khan, second year med student, failed an important exam for the very first time in med school. Was I shocked? A little bet, yes. I'd realized my exam didn't go so well, so I had been expecting a borderline pass, like maybe 50.01% or just 50%. Results get emailed though so when I finally went home and opened the document, I didn't get past the bare minimum to pass. I had gotten a 48%.

So I was shocked, yeah? I study quite a bit, writing notes and drawing drawings, but it just didn't seem to be enough. I realized that when I saw the paper, and I realized it again when I saw my result. For real, guys, med school is tough. You put in so much effort and time and it all literally drains you and then you find out you weren't even up to the mark.

Does it hurt?

Yes.

But no pain, no gain, am I right?

Here are five reasons why failure isn't as bad as it sounds and feels.

1. It's a chance to evaluate yourself.
Where did you go wrong? Did you think this class, this subject was going to be easy peasy? Or maybe you decided to party out with your friends all weekend? Or maybe you did study, you really did, but you focused on the wrong things? Either way, you need to sit down and think about what you've done. We're so caught up with staying ahead in class, we never really stop to think about what we've been doing in the past. Here's your chance.

2. It's a wake up call
Whatever you've been doing, it's not working!! Just reading the text won't get you to pass this class- the way it may have helped you pass all the other classes. Do you need to change your study strategy? Switch from detailed reading to smart strategic learning? An F on your exam is the clearest sign you can possibly get that tells you "Hey, whatever you were doing, it's not going to work. For real, change your strategy".

3. It's your chance to ask for help
I'm a student so I know how there's a sort of facade us students hold up. Whenever it's that time of the school year where grades come in, people ask around "What did you get?" and if you got good, you'd announce your result. And if you didn't do good, you'd just try to play it casual, like "Mmh, yeah, I passed at least".
Well yeah, you didn't do good but in your attempt to look cool in front of everybody, you really missed out a chance to ask for advice. When you fail, there's no way you can continue this facade. You should just take a deep breath and admit that your failed. You'd be surprised at how nice people will be about it, giving advice and tips about studying and test-taking.

4. It proves you're a human
It's okay to fail every now and then. If you always passed with flying colors, wouldn't you stop working so hard? Wouldn't it give your efforts less meaning? That and, a lot of people would be pretty mad at you for being a know-it-all super genius. Failing means you're flawed and human. It's a perfectly normal thing to happen.

5. It tests you as a person
How are you going to react to this? Are you going to sit back and cry about it? Or get up and do something about it instead? What you're going to do after failing is what will decide if you are a winner or a loser.
So pick yourself up, get a plan running and get back into the game! I believe in you and you should believe in you too!

Have a nice day!

10 Tips on Studying Anatomy

I don't profess to be a good student, let alone a great student. I do try my best and while sometimes the best may be good enough, other times it's not. The important thing is to keep trying. There's no perfect way to do things, what works for one subject might not work for another subject. And what may work for me, might not work for you. So before I start this post, I just want to let you know a couple of essential things

It's okay to not know how to study. The important thing is to not give up heart and to keep trying out new styles.
Don't be harsh on yourself while you're adjusting. Yes, being harsh could get you to work harder, but save that study technique for when you can actually work hard and efficiently.
The study methods I've outlined here will not be the perfect or only way to study anatomy, and it also may or may not work out for you!

Glad we cleared this out! Now here's the big question: how can you study anatomy?

Anatomy is a subject that involves a lot of description. There are descriptions of the locations of organs, their insides, their outsides, their neighbors, their blood supply, their nerve supply, their lymphatics drainage, their supports and maybe even their development as well as their microstructure.

What I noticed about anatomy is that it needs constant revision. There's so much material to remember, it may seem trivial and confusing, but it's all really important. Here are 10 things you should focus on when you're studying anatomy.

1. Skim through the chapter first. Don't start studying from the first sentence, just go through the text and familiarize yourself with what's written. How much of this have you already studied? How much of this makes absolutely no sense? Skimming through the chapter will give you an overview of everything and it'll help keep you focused. If you start studying from the very sentence, you'll just end up tiring yourself out!

2. Always keep an atlas open. It's good to have a picture to help guide you through the long pages of text, whether it's the muscles of the limbs, the organs in the abdomen or the arteries around the heart.

3. When studying about a specific organ, always focus on it's relations. What's behind it? What's in front of it? What's beside it? Check it out on the atlas!

4. Similarly, it's important to know about a structure's blood supply, nerve supply, veinous drainage and lymphatic drainage. 

5. When studying about arterial supply, it can be really helpful to draw out an arterial map, starting from the aorta, all the way to the structures that your are reading about! The same can be done for veins.

6. Always go through the clinical conditions thoroughly. It would be a good idea to write them down in your atlas so you can go through it quickly to remind yourself.

7. In fact, write a bunch of quick facts (after you're done studying everything!) in your atlas next to what you've finished studying. I try to compact as much information as I can on my atlas so that when the time for the test comes, all I need is the pictures and the information scribbled next to it to remember all the important things!

8. Study developmental anatomy with gross anatomy. Sometimes, studying about development can help make things easier, like nerve supply and blood supply!

9. The same can be said for histology! Studying histology will help your understand the organ on a microscopic level and this can also really help you out when it comes to studying physiology too!

10. Go through the chapter over and over, whenever you get time! It's easy to forget what you've studied, but by going through it again and again, you can consolidate it in your memory :)

So here were ten little tips to help you study anatomy :) It's a great subject to study and it's satisfying to know everything, especially if you can see it on yourself, like the muscles in your limbs or the bones in your hands and feet. Have a nice day!

5 Essentials You Need For Efficient Studying

When this current module (maxillo-facial system) started, I was so sure I had gotten a grip on how to study anatomy. I thought I had learned my lessons from LMS (locomotor system) and that this second pure anatomy module would be a piece of cake. It has only been three days and I have realized how wrong I was.

Students like myself often forget about the essentials of studying. Sometimes we thing we have everything under control only to realize that we had lost touch with the basics of studying. What are the basics of studying? Well, I'm here to tell you that!

Efficient studying requires time. It's quite an obvious statement, but it is not to be taken lightly. Study time should not coincide with or involve social media, drowsiness or environmental distractions. Shut off your phone or put it away. If you're drowsy, just go to sleep to be honest. Find a quiet place to study if you have rowdy siblings.

Gather all of your study materials. Put everything in front of you, whether as a list or as a pile. This was another thing I often forget to do. When it comes to studying anatomy, the book is often not enough. You also have to consult the atlas as well as go through a couple of YouTube videos. If your course is also one where you are advised to consult different books, just do it. It really helps.

Give yourself small goals so you stay focused. Instead of scattered studying, make a list of things you have to complete. Five pages of chapter three? That's one goal for you to complete and having this concrete goal will remind you to stay on track so you get things done faster. I often end up studying in a scattered manner, flipping pages back and forth. While it helps me relate together concepts, I often end up with an incomplete chapter.

Use highlighters and colored pens. Write notes in the margins, or use stick notes. Make your book look pleasing, make it colorful enough to have it stick in your mind. I have started using colored highlighters on text heavy pages while annotating with colored pens in the margins and diagrams. It keeps me amused and helps me remember the pages and information more clearly than a simple reading would have done.

Go through the information again and again. Revise what you've learned at the end of the day, at the end of the week, whenever you get time! Don't let things pile up for the exams! Fortunately, I end up having tests every week or so, so I'm obliged to go through the material learned a few times. However, I'd still like to go through everything frequently enough that I have everything memorized and that's definitely one goal I need to set for myself.

These are five things that I realized I definitely needed to get my studying game back on track. Which of these do you practice? Do you find it hard to get in the right studying mood? What advice would you give? Have a nice day!