Wondering if my memory is too poor to be a med student, if I need a new study system, or if I’m just plain stupid.
Hi, M1 here. I’ve always been able to understand most of the material we learn, but I have a big issue in remembering them when time comes. Conceptual understanding was okay during first semester, but now I just feel like a lot of things you just have to brute force memorize because there is simply too much information that we have to know.
I realized one problem I have is that I haven’t figured out how to do active recall properly. Usually, I would watch our lecture passively to get an overview. Then do a thorough pass with mostly typed notes, sometimes written (very time consuming but it’s truly what helps me understand). I tried the method of Anki before fully understanding the lecture and “trusting the process,” but it didn’t really work for me. I ended up feeling like I wasted time because I still had to go back and make notes to actually understand things.
When it comes time for our exams, I never have time to review all the lectures properly and I always forget what we even learned in the prior weeks lectures. I genuinely feel like I’m getting dumber or my memory is getting worse as med school goes on, I can’t even recall small things in my day to day life like “what did I come downstairs for again”.
I tried doing anki more consistently this block and I can’t tell how much it actually helped me on a recent exam we had. I feel like I didn’t recall facts on the exam that I knew I did the anki cards for. I tried using AI practice questions and they definitely help but again, I feel like my memory is so shot I can’t recall something I reviewed literally that the day before.
I feel my grades might even be a fluke- I’m getting mid 70s-low 80s on exams (P/F school, slightly above average) But I actually feel so stupid during the exams and can never answer a lot of things with confidence. Maybe I just keep getting lucky. I’ll see test questions and think “I know exactly what lecture this is from and this is something I’ve reviewed but I can’t remember if it’s X or Y.” There are some questions I’ll get right simply from looking at my notes the morning of the exam, and I don’t like feeling like I’m relying on short-term recall rather than actually retaining the material.
This has started affecting my mental health and sleep, and I’m getting scared about whether I can actually succeed long-term. I don’t think understanding is my main issue, but I’m really struggling with retention and recall, and I’m not sure how to fix my study system at this point. I don’t know what to do anymore.