Bros/Zanki deck... how to integrate into daily classes?

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HybridEarth

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Hi all,

I will probably be starting the Zanki deck (FA/Pathoma/Pharm) after my upcoming exam. However, I'm not really sure how to integrate it alongside my classes, because there's a ton of stuff in the review materials I haven't seen before.

Would it be best to just review my class materials throughout the day, and then for an hour or so teach myself 30 flash cards a day? I haven't been looking at the FA book at all, it is kind of overwhelming to look at, but I have been following Pathoma and I will be using Sketchy. Is there a better way to do all of this? I'm a bit lost and need some guidance. I have the work ethic to do well on this exam and I don't want to mess it up by approaching this in an inefficient way.

Thanks much.

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Thats what Ive done, Ive been doing it daily for 8 months. Some of our classes follow the material from FA/Pathoma quite nice and its easier and quicker, others do not so its a bit challenging at first with a bunch of random cards but you eventually get used to it. I spend an hour in the morning when I first wake up doing it and thats been really convenient personally. One thing you can do is try to drag the cards that relate to those lectures to the front at the end of the day and knock them out then, so that may be helpful.

You should be fine doing it without having first gone through FA, for my first 4 blocks I didn't touch FA till the end of them after I finished bros and it felt like I had read it all many times before! Also I suggest trying to keep the decks current as you go along, even though reviews will pile up, Ive gone through about 8k new cards and have 150-200 reviews a day from past stuff, its manageable and Im glad I have as I would have forgotten it otherwise.

My last comment is to consider getting boards and beyond, its a godsend. I just started using it this summer to refresh biochemistry, and used it for our first block this semester with our class. I feel like I learned FA so much better than any time before and it helps give the context to bros/zanki. I take Step in February, so I won't be able to get through all of it with everything else, but if I could go back and do anything differently it would have been to do that with every block.
 
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Thats what Ive done, Ive been doing it daily for 8 months. Some of our classes follow the material from FA/Pathoma quite nice and its easier and quicker, others do not so its a bit challenging at first with a bunch of random cards but you eventually get used to it. I spend an hour in the morning when I first wake up doing it and thats been really convenient personally. One thing you can do is try to drag the cards that relate to those lectures to the front at the end of the day and knock them out then, so that may be helpful.

You should be fine doing it without having first gone through FA, for my first 4 blocks I didn't touch FA till the end of them after I finished bros and it felt like I had read it all many times before! Also I suggest trying to keep the decks current as you go along, even though reviews will pile up, Ive gone through about 8k new cards and have 150-200 reviews a day from past stuff, its manageable and Im glad I have as I would have forgotten it otherwise.

My last comment is to consider getting boards and beyond, its a godsend. I just started using it this summer to refresh biochemistry, and used it for our first block this semester with our class. I feel like I learned FA so much better than any time before and it helps give the context to bros/zanki. I take Step in February, so I won't be able to get through all of it with everything else, but if I could go back and do anything differently it would have been to do that with every block.

Thank you for this post, this is extremely helpful. I really appreciate it. Quick question, when you're doing the cards and it's a random fact you don't know or maybe don't understand, do you just memorize the answer or do you stop and look up all the relevant info to understand it first, then move on to a new card?
 
Thank you for this post, this is extremely helpful. I really appreciate it. Quick question, when you're doing the cards and it's a random fact you don't know or maybe don't understand, do you just memorize the answer or do you stop and look up all the relevant info to understand it first, then move on to a new card?

Def look it up, but don't agonize over the details unless you see it multiple times. There are a plethora of minutiae in those decks and while its important to know how it fits into the greater narrative of the body system, its not always necessary to know every side effect of every 4th line drug for every disease process. Maybe just knowing what it does and what its for is enough.
 
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I definitely agree with the above post, I know I'm going to fill in the gaps along the way so I don't agonize over that. Though there are times where it comes in handy to just sit down for 10 minutes and learn something rather than suffering through the cards for that topic (e.g. porphyrias or cardiac embryology) otherwise it ends up taking more time seeing the same cards over and over.
 
Awesome advice, thanks.

One more question: how do you teach yourself all the stuff that isn't covered in your lectures but is in FA? Do you just memorize the cards or should I make time to learn this stuff throughout the block? Or do I wait until after the block exam is over to begin teaching myself the "extras"
 
I would learn it during the block. Putting it off can be a quick slippery slope.
 
This is what I do. For each organ block, I would suspend all cards. As I'm going through the class lectures, I would browse key words in that suspended blocks and un-suspend those class material related cards. At the same time, on my free time for each block, I would self-study concepts in First Aid and un-suspend cards as I go along. As for Pharm, I have a Sketchy Anki deck and one from Zanki. As I'm going through the related drugs I would move all cards related to those drugs to my Sketchy Pharm deck for that block. Again, I would suspend all cards in that block beforehand.

As for stuff that you don't understand, you can look it up on google and add images or MOA in order to strengthen that card in your mind.
 
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I do similar to 68PGunner, but I bury cards I haven't seen yet/will see later in a block or module (they show up next review). The time it took to suspend/unsuspend cards was a little too long for me.

One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to keep up with previous modules spaced repetition when I have an exam coming up in a week and want to put all my efforts towards that!
 
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