No matter how driven you are as a student, there is no way you could keep your motivation to study throughout the entire year. If you do, its either from stress or anxiety, which would lead to burn out. Which, in my option, is far worse than just losing motivation. Here’s my tried and true medical student tips to keep a healthy motivation to study throughout the school year.

Importance of To-do Lists

At the end of every exam, I immediately write up a to-do list for the next exam. This helps me to not only keep track of which subjects to study but also how much I need to study. Especially when you’re in medical school, you have too many lectures, all long and dense, and you have got to keep track of what is going on for you to succeed. I usually like making week-long agendas for the week to keep track of what to study and how much I need to get done every day in order to be ready for the upcoming test.

I’ve talked about how planning is so important in keeping track of everything in medical school because there is always so much going on, and it’s not just lectures. I mentioned this in my How To Be Successful in Medical School blog post earlier, and I really believe that this is the key to being successful.

Develop Interest in the Subject

This method is honestly how I got through college, honestly. I didn’t like several subjects during my undergraduate career but I still had to deal with learning about it and doing well on exams. How did I approach this? I just pretended that I actually like the subject. Easier said than done, I know. But I would talk to people that actually enjoyed the topic and asked them why they liked it.

Usually, it’s a reason that I totally can’t comprehend but at least it’s not unreasonable. I would try to approach the subject from their positive perspective and think, “hmm…Sharon would’ve loved learning about this section. Maybe I can try to enjoy it too.” The same thing applies to medical school. Definitely less often because I thoroughly enjoy science and medicine, hence my pursuit of this career. But I can tell you, I absolutely despise Pharmacology. Respect to all the pharmacists out there because I can’t imagine memorizing all those drugs as a career. But I would try to learn to enjoy the parts that I do like, which is the Physiology behind the drugs. And then force me to enjoy Sketchy until I finish studying for Boards.

Group Studying With Friends

This was a surprise for me. I’m usually better at studying when I’m by myself. Like most people, I’ve been deterred from studying in groups since college, since nobody cared about the group projects and it usually resulted in one person doing most of the work. However, since this is medical school, I was so surprised to see so many driven people.

Group study is the most ideal way to review and study when everyone is contributing. When you have a good study group, you have the most efficient way of figuring what you know and what you don’t know. How much mastery do you actually have of the subject? Do you have enough knowledge to explain it to someone who doesn’t understand the concept? Everything is laid beautifully in front of you and you can clearly see what you need to work on.

Now, I do have to caution. Even though medical students are driven, you might not be able to form study groups with certain people. There will still be people who are able to pick up things fast, as well as people that take more time to learn certain things.

The key is to find people that have similar learning paces like you.

It’ll be even better if you have people who are better at certain topics than you and you have something that you have a solid grasp of. That way, both of you guys have something beneficial for each other and it makes the group study session much more useful and worthwhile. This was a method that I should’ve utilized early on because it was proven to be so effective in studying massive amounts of material.

What I would recommend would be either going through some hard, dense lectures together or what I do more frequently, do review questions together. That’ll be the real test to see your knowledge before the test.

Grades

This is the number one motivator for most medical students. It’s kind of a no brainer. But you would be surprised that grades really don’t matter that much, but even then, you have medical students that strive for perfect grades.

Whether it’s for personal pride or just simply trying to survive medical school, you need to have passable grades in order to continue onwards in medical school. Many medical students aim high in their grades and many just want to enjoy medical school life and get minimal grades for passing. Either way, you need to study a lot to even do any of these options.

Studygram vs Studyblr vs Social Media

See all those beautiful notes that many students all over the world post on social media? Yeah, that’s not possible to do in medical school because there is no way you will have time. But, it is very possible to scroll through and get motivated to study once you see how much effort others put into their beautiful notes. Hence, the reason why I had a Pinterest and Instagram account. Purely for motivation and appreciation of aesthetic artsy students with their notes.

I would caution that I don’t use these social media platforms to do anything more than trying to get back into the productive groove of studying, as well as help other students with their academic success.

YouTube Study-with-me Videos

This is actually something new that has blown up on YouTube and I love it. Basically, you have a virtual study buddy and you can study with them as they are studying. Usually, they have appropriate study music or even just white noise that is comfortable to study with, so you don’t have to feel like you are by yourself.

This was so helpful to me that I have actually started my own channel to help others that need a study buddy as well. Here’s a study with me video you could check out, as well many other YouTuber’s, depending on the style, setting, or music that you like. I personally like chill lofi hip-hop music with some fire crackling or rain sounds – which I think makes it very relaxing to study to. Some relaxing, soft piano music is great as well. Honestly a great idea especially during these COVID times.

Here are some examples.

If you can’t be motivated yourself, let other people help you with it. If you need more motivation or inspiration, feel free to contact me and I can help you with it!