Being a student also means that you get to enjoy the perks of anxiety, stress and overwhelm from time to time among others.
I know- because the whole medical curriculum is giving me i-won’t-be-able-to-do-this vibes.
And these vibes come from the fact that I have a ton of textbooks to read and study from, other works to do and I also happen to be a human being with a personal life (are you hearing this, NMC?) so most of the time i am overwhelmed by all of it.
And I found some ways to cope with it too- so I’m sharing some pointers in this post!
How to deal with a massively huge overwhelming medical syllabus
Break the whole syllabus down
Whatever you have to study or finish in this syllabus, make it a point to break it all down.
There is no definite way to do it, but divide your syllabus into little chunks according to your convinience.
Write it all down, or use Google Calendar or apps like TickTick.
Regroup the small chunks
Now it’s time to regroup these little chunks into more organized groups of tasks.
The wise way to do this is to group together the similar items.
For example, take a topic like lungs or kidneys.
If you are a first year medical student, then you are supposed to group together the gross anatomy, histology and physiology of it together.
If it’s second year, learn the microbiology, pathology and pharmacology of the same system together, rather than studying them separately.
This will help you connect things more easily and retain more information than you normally would have.
Make a schedule for yourself
As a medical student, you must have a schedule.
I’m not talking about the hour-by-hour breakdown of a single day, but rather an overall idea about all the things that you are going to do everyday.
Keep your wake time and bed time consistent- then fill up the time in between in such a manner that you have time to study, take care of yourself and so on.
Never make a schedule that’s too tight- adding buffer time can help you get done everything in your pace.
Make it a habit to study everyday
As a medical student, you have to learn to make studying a habit from the first day of MBBS itself.
This is one of the mistakes I was late to realize.
There is no better time to start studying other than right now.
I’m not telling you to study 6 hours everyday- even if it’s only 15 minutes, study everyday.
You’ll thank yourself in the coming years.
Note down all the important dates
And put it somewhere you’ll see it everyday- on the wall over your desk, phone or journal.
Be it submission day, due dates or exams, remembering them will keep you motivated to finish tasks.
It will also organize your life and you won’t ever have to pull off all-nighters for them.
Start early
This is a lesson learnt the hard way.
Starting early is the way to have everything done on time.
You might think that there is enough time to study for those sessional exams, or that surgery postings are 2 months later so you can read up on it next month, but the truth is, time flies.
And unexpected things happen all the time.
So it’s always wise to start early so that even if you put it off later, you’ll have a head start on things.
This will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed by anything, let alone the medical syllabus.
These are just a very few tips to stop being overwhelmed by the whole medical syllabus.
Being systematic and staying organized is the way to manage medical student life.
Thank you for reading!
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