speedo542 said:
Most of our class (2009) still attends lecture, but, we are still in our first semester. I also feel that we should attend class the first semester until we find we our groove. Also, our notegroups tend to suck so far. I have noticed MANY things that are covered in class, but do not show up in notegroups. There were a lot of questions in the last test block that had stuff that was only covered in lecture. Some of these same things were not touched on in notegroups. Thank god I went to class and caught some of these things. For any MSIs, i.e. the NADH Q reductase question. Maybe notegroups will just get better later on, but for now, I don't trust them to learn material.
Your elected notegroup chair person needs to get some complaints and then start kicking some butt in the way of emails to those people putting out crappy notegroups, or maybe even fines if they're exceptionally bad.
A good notegroup in my opinion should be succint, not repeat the syllabus material verbatim, not be excessively short or (in our classes case) excessively long (we've actually had a notegroup or two approaching 10 pages). It should mainly cover the parts of the lecture which 1. summarize the syllabus, 2. emhasize testable points as pointed out by the lecturer 3. Things which specifically aren't in the syllabus. As a general rule, a good notegroup should usually be able to be written in 2-3 pages.
As the year wears on,, I think you'll find that the vast majority of test questions come from the syllabus. Those that violate this general rule can sometimes be successfully argued by the exam review committee (or personal email to the course director if they prefer that form of test question contest). Remember lecture attendance is widely recognized as optional, and thus most lecturers USUALLY don't write test questions from lecture points not incldued in syllabus, or if they do, they usually emphasize it heavily for the notegroup writer.
I've come to rely on notegroups less and less over the last year.
My study strategy goes something like this:
1. Cover the days material once on the day of lecture.
2. When the hardcopy notegroup comes out a few days later, BRIEFLY read over it ONCE along with the corresponding material. Then put the notegroups away never to be seen again.
3. The week before test block, study each subject in reverse order of the test schedule alloting two days per subject.
Example: Our next test block has MMI on Mon. Pharm on Wed. and IHI on Fri. So the week before I'll study IHI Tues and Wed., Pharm Thurs and Fri., and MMI on Sat.and Sun.
That way MMI stuff is fresh for the test, and I have Mon. night and Tues to review Pharm which I just looked at a few days before, etc.
Overall, my main rule is too keep each subject separate. That means no putting pharm away early on Fri before test block to look at MMI. This keeps each subject from clashing with the others and becoming a big mess of confusion.
I developed this strategy around the first/second block exams last year, and so far it's worked extremely well.
This strategy means I see each piece of information four times.
I've talked to other people who say they're too busy to barely look over the material twice, so apparently this works well.
Anyways, don't get too upset about notegroups. Some people are just fairly inept at writing them, some people have such horrible spelling and grammar that it's like reading a foreign language, and some people's writings are so awesome, you swear they should quit med school and become the next John Grisham.
