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Med School Done Right
Med School Done Right: Practicing Residency Interviews Years In Advance
03 weeks ago
By Luke Murray
This post is part of a series called “Med School Done Right,” which will look at not just succeeding in medical school in the narrow terms of “getting good grades,” but at shaping the kind of experiences you want to have during these (usually) four very important years of your life.
“Doing medical school right” means something different to everyone. For some, it means expanding their depth of medical knowledge for a future yet unknown. For others, it’s the preparatory stages for a specialty they’ve been focused on since childhood. But, for others still, the path is unclear. Considering your remaining time in this unique period of your life/career and thinking about how you’d like it to play out – what, exactly, the “right” experience should be for you – can be a vague and consequently daunting exercise. As I’m wrapping up this time in my life, I’ve come across an experience that would have helped me greatly, had I used it as a thought experiment at the beginning of my journey: the residency interview.
Med School Done Right: Don’t Let Others Tell You What You Should Care About – Part 2
01 month ago
By Luke Murray
This post is part of a series called “Med School Done Right,” which will look at not just succeeding in medical school in the narrow terms of “getting good grades,” but at shaping the kind of experiences you want to have during these (usually) four very important years of your life.
Med School Done Right: Don’t Let Others Tell You What You Should Care About – Part 1
01 month ago
By Luke Murray
This post is part of a series called “Med School Done Right,” which will look at not just succeeding in medical school in the narrow terms of “getting good grades,” but at shaping the kind of experiences you want to have during these (usually) four very important years of your life.
Everyone told me that Step 2 CS was easy and didn’t matter, so I didn’t start studying until a couple days before the test. This was half way through my 4th year.
Med School Done Right: Avoiding Post-Exam Regret
13 months ago
By Luke Murray
This post is part of a series called “Med School Done Right,” which will look at not just succeeding in medical school in the narrow terms of “getting good grades,” but at shaping the kind of experiences you want to have during these (usually) four very important years of your life.
We all know the feeling. You get a test back, and the score is lower than you were expecting (or hoping) it would be. You go through the stages of mourning: fear, denial, anger, sadness, acceptance, etc. Sometimes these emotions happen in a flash. Other times, they may take weeks to get through. But we all spend at least some time feeling a bit of regret. The thought process is some version of “I could have done better” followed by a form of emotional or psychological self-flagellation.
Med School Done Right: What Bowling Can Teach You About Studying for USMLE Step 1
24 months ago
By Luke Murray
Allow me a bowling analogy to illustrate the importance of feedback in studying for Step 1 (or acquiring any knowledge or skill).
Imagine you care about being a really good bowler. You want to bowl strikes as often as possible and pick up spares no matter how awkwardly arranged the remaining pins are. So, you purchase the best shoes and the most expensive ball and head off to the bowling alley where you square yourself up a handful of steps away from the end of the bowling lane, ready to roll your first game. As you step towards the lane, swinging your ball arm back and bending over so that your release will be close to the ground, eyes focused on the head pin, a screen suddenly falls down from the ceiling, stopping just a couple feet from ground, exactly midway down the lane. It completely blocks your view of the pins and everything else beyond that midpoint screen.
Med School Done Right: You Only Have Room For Big Rocks – Part 3
05 months ago
By Luke Murray
This post is part of a series called “Med School Done Right,” which will look at not just succeeding in medical school in the narrow terms of “getting good grades,” but at shaping the kind of experiences you want to have during these (usually) four very important years of your life.
Check out part one and part two of this post….
Contrary to popular belief, you actually do NOT have a lot more time than you realize for all the random things you’d like to do. So while it may open your eyes to try to account for what you actually do in the 144 hours that exist in a week, trying to put into practice a life in which you DO account for all of them is not going to work.
What will fill up your life in medical school in a meaningful way are a small number of the right type of significant goals. What should they be? To find out how to do medical school right, let’s ask…the CEO of a metal company.
Med School Done Right: You Only Have Room For Big Rocks – Part 2
05 months ago
By Luke Murray
This post is part of a series called “Med School Done Right,” which will look at not just succeeding in medical school in the narrow terms of “getting good grades,” but at shaping the kind of experiences you want to have during these (usually) four very important years of your life.
In my last post, I wrote about a metaphor for time management posed by a professor who went on to explain that the lesson was: (1) if you don’t fit the big “rocks” in first, you never will (his explicit point) and (2) that you have more free time than you think (the implicit point, driven home by his demonstration). Here’s how and why I think his explicit message of “fit big rocks first, and then fit everything else later” doesn’t work, especially for medical students.
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