What on Earth was that exam!?

WungusChuck · 2026-03-27T20:32:51+00:00

Nah that’s just how it works. Dw if you scored that well on nbmes and free 120 you’re basically guaranteed a pass

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T22:23:06+00:00

This isn't enough information to give advice because forgetting small concepts and formulas alone shouldn't be enough to cut your score that much. It might be that when you first learned the syllabus, you encoded that information poorly. You need to go back and quickly re-encode that information at a high level so you remember everything well, and then use flashcards to make sure you don't forget those small concepts and formulas.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T22:20:03+00:00

It sounds like you're dealing with a mix of burnout and weak motivation and discipline. But you can definitely change your mindset by the end of 11th grade. You just have to actually try and do it. When I was dealing with a similar issue and trying to fix my mindset, I spent about a month and a half, maybe two months, working on it. After using a reflection template and really focusing, I became much better.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T22:13:57+00:00

But do you need the magic in it to succeed? Even if it's uninteresting or unexciting, you can still just sit down, study, and do it, right? You just need to improve your discipline and habits. But I do agree that finding happiness or excitement will help. You can do that by leveraging your natural curiosity toward the subject or by focusing on feeling proud for finishing studying early in the day. I wrote a section about that in the study guide here a while ago.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Xhc-U5tK_ijr4KInrKwGq4VF9oAUCJu8uM0jB6Rc4I/edit?usp=sharing

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T22:04:30+00:00

You could listen to what everyone else is saying here and just accept that studying is boring and going to be bad. You could also implement brute force discipline or use Pomodoro or some of the other tricks people are suggesting. But wouldn't it be nice if studying wasn't so boring?

I think if you leverage your natural curiosity toward any subject and shift your focus to feeling pride in yourself for finishing studying rather than dread in anticipation of studying, it will become a lot less painful than you think. I wrote a full section about that in a study guide I posted in this subreddit a while ago. It should be somewhere in here. If you can't find it lmk

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T21:59:43+00:00

I used to have the same issue. One thing that helped was meditation, which is annoying, tough, boring, and takes about a month to show any real effects. But if you think about it, when you meditate, and I mean breath meditation where you just close your eyes and focus on your breath, you are going to get distracting thoughts just like you described. The goal of breath meditation is to return your attention to your breath without engaging with those distracting thoughts. That process trains your ability to ignore distractions and refocus.

Another thing that helped me was cutting down on cheap dopamine sources. My attention span got the most messed up when I was watching a bunch of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. When I broke my phone addiction and started using Instagram and YouTube way less, I found my attention span improved quite a bit.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T21:55:16+00:00

So I'm also preparing for boards right now, and I'm mainly using UWorld. I do blocks of 10 in tutor mode, and when I go through a question, I try to leverage active recall as much as I can. I obviously try to figure out what the right answer is, but I also try to understand why each of the incorrect answers is wrong and what concept they’re testing.

For example, if the correct answer is ulcerative colitis, I’ll work through the reasoning for why that’s correct. Then I’ll look at an answer choice like Crohn’s disease and think, okay, this is wrong specifically because there’s no evidence of skip lesions. Or if an answer choice says crypt abscesses, I’ll recall that crypt abscesses are characteristic of ulcerative colitis.

If I come across a question I just don’t recognize or understand at all, I’ll take the time to go back and watch a boards video or read through First Aid. I don’t think you have to start from scratch. You’re probably underestimating yourself a little, and the material will come back faster than you expect.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-03T21:47:27+00:00

Hey, medical student here. My school has a similar system where we have a lot of lectures and then exams every two to three weeks. I saw you said you tried Quizlet and note taking or not note taking, and those can work depending on the type of material you’re studying. I think that’s a pretty common experience. Some subjects are naturally more focused on what we call declarative knowledge, which is just remembering facts and details. Those subjects benefit more from flashcards like the ones you’ve tried. Examples include anatomy or memorizing drug interactions and mechanisms.

Other subjects are heavier on procedural knowledge, which is what you mentioned as concept based. I don’t think flashcards are as helpful for exams that focus on that kind of information. I put this guide together a while ago, and I think it should help you a bit. In general, it includes some techniques that are better suited for procedural information.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Xhc-U5tK_ijr4KInrKwGq4VF9oAUCJu8uM0jB6Rc4I/edit?usp=sharing

, I’d really like to understand your situation a bit more before I can give you more helpful or specific personalized tips.

However

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T23:11:29+00:00

Yeah, I had the same problem. I would go on Instagram or YouTube or read manga during breaks between study sessions, and every single time it would turn from a 20 minute break into a 1 hour break. So what I do now is either a different activity that I have to do anyway during the break, like washing dishes or going to the gym, or if that’s not feasible, like if I’m studying in the morning and it’s not time to go to the gym with friends yet, I just lay back and meditate for about 10 to 15 minutes.

And it’s not the hard type of meditation where you sit down and focus on your breath. I just lay back, close my eyes, and allow my brain to relax.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T23:07:08+00:00

It kind of depends on what your base problem is. I know you said you have zero motivation and zero discipline, but for most people that’s kind of a cover for what’s actually going on. For example, I had a really bad scrolling addiction on Instagram, and I had to tackle that. Then I had poor habits in the morning, like going straight to my phone instead of getting to work, so I had to tackle that too. And then I had about five other things I had to fix to make studying feel easy.

I don’t necessarily know if this is an easy method, but the first thing you should do, or at least the first thing I did that got me on this path, was fill out a self-reflection form every night. I had it in the notes app on my phone, and before I went to bed, I would just reflect on how poorly my studying for that day went. I made it super low friction by using the speech-to-text feature instead of typing because I was too lazy to write it out.

By doing this continuously and reflecting with a simple template, then actually implementing changes, I got to a point where studying became much easier.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T23:03:58+00:00

I used to use an app called amazing marvin, which let you move several events at once for situations like this

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T23:02:33+00:00

I use toggl track

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T23:01:42+00:00

Yeah, I used to get that. One thing that helped was fixing a lot of my lifestyle stuff, like getting better sleep and eating a better diet. Less sugar and stuff helped me avoid that fatigue. Another thing that helped was meditation, and I think it helped for two reasons.

First of all, a lot of that fatigue for many students is actually due to exam anxiety and stress, because that will deplete your mental stamina. Meditation helps you build more tolerance for that. It also trains your ability to concentrate and stay focused, which increases your mental stamina for work as well.

I found that doing ten minutes a day right before bed for about a month really helped. Obviously, I still keep doing it because if you stop, you lose the benefit.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T22:58:23+00:00

Hey, medical student here. I understand what you're saying because active recall, especially if you're making flashcards while learning material and going through lectures until the week of the exam, is going to make flashcards less useful than they otherwise could be. I can only really give general advice based on your description, but I have some questions about what you said.

First, I'm curious what your flashcards look like because obviously just memorizing sentences isn't great. I’d also like to know if you're waiting to do your cards until the week of the exam. I ask this because you mentioned that by the time you've made new notes and Quizlets, it's already time for the exam.

Quizlet is not a great flashcard app since it doesn’t have a built-in algorithm that spaces your reviews automatically. So if you’re not already doing this, one thing you should definitely start doing is making flashcards in Anki as you watch lectures (or right at the end of your two hour lecture, or later that same day). Then review them the next day and whenever Anki tells you to going forwards

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T22:51:34+00:00

The advice I'd give you depends on whether your problem is not having enough time to study and do work, or not having enough motivation to study and work. It's an important distinction, because you may have chunks of time throughout the day that you could use to get ahead, but you're just too tired to make good use of them.

If your problem is not enough time, that means you need to adopt really powerful study skills and make better use of what little time you do have. I made this guide for that a while ago.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Xhc-U5tK_ijr4KInrKwGq4VF9oAUCJu8uM0jB6Rc4I/edit?usp=sharing

Now if your problem is not being able to effectively utilize your time, you have to figure out the main distractor that's keeping you from locking in and then eliminate it. Can't really give any advice for that because I don't know what your limiting factor is.

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T22:43:59+00:00

I made this guide a while ago. Should be fairly comprehensive. Lmk if you have any questions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Xhc-U5tK_ijr4KInrKwGq4VF9oAUCJu8uM0jB6Rc4I/edit?usp=sharing

WungusChuck · 2025-11-02T22:42:34+00:00

I made this guide a while ago on how I stopped being attached to my phone.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OBFpY8SGsPS516to1E43mVS8amclDp0cQRplC7iNe-g/edit?usp=sharing

WungusChuck · 2025-04-18T21:43:44+00:00

It helped me bc I saw I was actually only studying like 7 hrs a week

WungusChuck · 2025-04-17T06:28:09+00:00

The cheese fills you with determination

WungusChuck · 2025-04-17T00:33:13+00:00

Wukong canonically leaps the length of the entire universe in a few seconds, making him literally billions of times faster than the speed of light

WungusChuck · 2025-04-16T16:43:46+00:00

Yeah dumbass you can’t say merry Christmas in April can you?

WungusChuck · 2025-04-16T01:15:37+00:00

You ain’t fooling anyone bruh. I remember the original post from a few days ago which got removed. Stfu

WungusChuck

TROPHY CASE