Anyone else just finding it really hard??

justruth

I'm a first year mature undergrad med student, and I work 3 nights a week as well as I got myself in a lot of debt before I even got here! We had an exam on Monday and I was feeling quite low about that as for the first time in recent memory, no matter how hard I worked at it I simply could not learn enough to get it all fixed and understood in my head.

I emailed my personal tutor and explained that I didn't think I would do well but that I should have it by the summer exams. She emailed me back 'brilliant' apparently it's as much a kick up the behind to do this exam as anything else. Since then I have felt much better, and as we continue the lectures the stuff I was struggling with before is beginning to make sense.

I guess it's just a merry go round of highs and lows for the next 5/6 years.

Incidently I used to work 60+ hours a week some weeks, but I find 4 lectures a day exhausting!

HM-Yorks

"All nighters" rarely lead to good pieces of work. The key is to start things early so that you have the time for thought an reflection (OK that's not helpful when the deadline is Friday but you know what I mean!).

Down time, especially sleep, is as important as work time. When I was revising I studied in 3 2 hour blocks a day usually with 40 mins of those being a practice answer. There were plenty of people who said they were revising 12-14 hours a day and it was me who ended up top of my year.

My trick when there was something I didn't understand was to take a break and come back but read the area up in a different text book. Sometimes a different way of putting it helped. If that didn't work try to write down what I did and didn't understand so I could work out what to ask my tutor about.

Also spend the time on what matters - if it's something that doesn't count for marks than it doesn't need as much attention as something that does.

If there's an area you don't understand than you can get away with not knowing some areas. Usually there will be a choice of questions in exams and you can avoid particular questions. Obviously that only applies for a small amount of the overall syllabus and the structure of any assessments.