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Study with me + My revision method - Cambridge University medical student VLOG #30

2018-04-10 · Study with me · Ali · recording, 7:37 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying (also: Medicine and his doctor years) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Aimed at students, His medical past, His own numbers

In his first study-with-me vlog, Ali, a final-year Cambridge medical student, time-lapses an Easter-holiday day of OSCE revision: Anki flashcards, questions he writes for himself, and an active-recall spreadsheet in Excel with the answers coloured white, then reviewed again on the train with spaced repetition in mind.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A wasted early morning, then an hour and a half of Anki flashcards at the gym

  • ★ Ali makes his first study-with-me video after a couple of viewers asked for one in the comments. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali woke at six intending to get a lot of work done, but spent the first two hours on his phone and YouTube in bed and on the toilet. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ From 9.15 to about 10.45, in the lounge of his gym, Ali spends about an hour and a half going through his OSCE flashcards on Anki. — 00:00:58 · Anki
  • ★★ Ali's problem with flashcards is that you can do them for a while, but they get really boring really quickly. — 00:01:27 · Anki
  • ★★ Ali says that an hour and a half of flashcards makes the day a win even after wasting the first two hours, since he has done something useful even if he does no more work. — 00:01:27 · Anki

00:01:56 — The hand and abdominal exams: questions into Anki and an active recall spreadsheet

  • ★★ Revising the hand examination, Ali makes sure he understands its principles, then writes questions an OSCE examiner might ask and adds them to his Anki deck so they come up in later reviews. — 00:01:56 · Anki, active recall
  • ★★ For the abdominal exam Ali first reads through his notes, then, since rereading is a bit of a waste of time, makes himself an active recall spreadsheet. — 00:02:26 · active recall
  • ★★ In Ali's active recall spreadsheet, column A lists every question on the topic he can think of or has found in OSCE preparation books. — 00:02:26 · active recall
  • ★★★ Ali writes the answers in the spreadsheet's second column in white text so he cannot see them while testing himself; hovering over a cell shows the answer in Excel's formula bar. — 00:02:55 · active recall, Microsoft Excel

00:03:24 — Preparing the revision-techniques video, and reviewing the questions on the train to London

  • ★★★ Ali says writing questions for yourself instead of notes works because active recall is by far the most efficient study technique, while simply rereading notes is a total waste of time. — 00:03:24 · active recall
  • ★★ After about three and a half hours of medicine work, Ali spends some two and a half hours preparing a video on effective revision techniques: a semi-script and the papers he will mention. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali normally does not plan his videos much, but a video about the evidence behind something he plans fully before shooting, to know exactly what he is talking about. — 00:03:53
  • ★ In the evening Ali takes the train into London to film a video about the Academic Foundation Programme with a new friend. — 00:03:53 · Academic Foundation Programme, London
  • ★★ On the 40-minute train from St Albans, Ali answers the morning's questions in Google Sheets on his phone instead of rereading the notes, practising what he preaches about active recall. — 00:04:22 · St Albans, active recall
  • ★★ Ali thinks his recall of the abdominal exam viva questions improved because he waited a few hours before going over them. — 00:04:22 · spaced repetition

00:04:52 — An operation on his nail and why the footage stays unposted

  • ★★ Ali plans to go over the abdominal exam questions again the next day and again the next week, as spaced repetition. — 00:04:52 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Later that day Ali has an operation on his nail for a subungual haematoma from a lacrosse injury a few months earlier. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Ali and the surgeon filmed the operation but decided not to post it, unsure of the General Medical Council's policy on footage of an operation on oneself and its professionalism issues. — 00:05:21
  • ★ Ali says viewers may one day see a video of the operation on his finger, or may not. (hedged) — 00:05:21

00:05:43 — 10,000 subscribers, the study-tips Q&A on Thursday, and a request for feedback

  • ★★ Ali's YouTube channel has reached 10,000 subscribers. — 00:05:50
  • ★★★ Ali will do a 10,000-subscriber Q&A themed on study tips and revision on Thursday 12 April 2018, and asks viewers to send questions by Instagram or Snapchat message. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali does not claim to be an expert on studying well, but has read some of the evidence and has many friends who do much better in exams than he does. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali says that if viewers find this study-with-me video useful, he will be happy to do another, time-lapsing his OSCE preparation. — 00:07:06

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall · Anki

Also: Academic Foundation Programme · Ali Abdaal's mother · London · Microsoft Excel · spaced repetition · St Albans · University of Cambridge

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