How I scored 96% on my final exam

I received my final exam marks Tuesday night… en route to a wedding. First, I saw an email notification pop up. I wondered if it was about our marks, but it felt too soon. Our last exam was just the day before. Then I started seeing text messages from friends – and I knew! Our results were posted.

I was driving on the highway so I couldn’t pull over to check. I had to wait an excruciating 30 minutes to arrive at my destination to finally open up my gradebook. It was worth the wait because I scored 96% on my final big exam. Here’s what worked well for me in the final weeks of medical school.

Self-learning the physiology ahead of time

In the weeks leading up to medical school, I taught myself the physiology for the organ systems I knew we’d be learning in term 1. So the cardiovascular, pulmonary and renal systems, which made up the final module. I used several different resources, like Physeo and Ninja Nerd, and tried my best to understand how these systems do what they do. My goal was to do really well this term but without killing myself to get the grades. I reasoned that by learning some concepts ahead of time, I could make my life easier once classes started.

That time investment really paid off, especially in the 2nd half of the CPR module when we covered the respiratory and renal systems. When we learned cardio, that was my first experience covering an entire organ system. I struggled to learn certain topics and understand how it fit into the bigger picture. The one saving grace was that I was familiar with the physiology. Even then, I still had to work quite hard to achieve my grade on that exam. If I didn’t have that knowledge, given the complexity of the cardiovascular system, I would have been drowning during those weeks.

By the time we started pulmonary and renal systems, I knew what to expect which made learning much easier. And compared to cardio, the pulmonary and renal physiology was easier to follow. That allowed me to study less in this block and still get a 96 on the exam.

Studying independently

Studying independently helped me save a lot of time during this block. My group only met up once over 4 weeks. I study more efficiently on my own and since I was comfortable with the learning process this time around, this freed up a lot of time. I was usually able to get through the week’s content by Friday or Saturday. Which left me plenty of time on either Saturday or Sunday to work through practice questions and have some down time for myself.

Lots and lots of practice questions

Practice problems were particularly important for this block because there were a lot of math-based problems and equations to know. For example, knowing how to calculate alveolar ventilation, A-a gradient, glomerular filtration rate, and renal clearance. These aren’t difficult calculations but there are a couple different ways to calculate the same thing. So it was important to recognize the appropriate equation to use and then be able to calculate it quickly.

In the days before the final exam, I really focused on these math based problems. Especially the ones for the pulmonary system. Luckily, there were a lot of practice sets available on the Google drives from upper term students. And I’m glad I invested my time in this – the exam had several calculation questions.

Having some down time

Surprisingly, I was able to have a lot of down time in this block. I noticed that I wasn’t studying for as many hours, like earlier in the term. I was relaxed and felt comfortable taking time away from studying. For example, I took the day of Eid off to enjoy with my family. I also made last minute plans to surprise my mom for Mother’s Day. These last few weeks were a nice way to end my first term of medical school.

In a future post, I’ll talk about what helped me balance studying while being married and taking care of my home, and what helped me avoid burn out.

For now, I’m going to enjoy the beautiful weather we’re having today.

What are your plans for this summer?

-M

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