White board for medical school

When I was in undergrad, I used to be able to read something, take an exam a few days or weeks later, and recall everything that I read. Then, I got to graduate school. While in my first master’s program, pharmacology & toxicology at Michigan State University (GoGreen!), I discovered that there was just TOO MUCH to read while trying to effectively study. I mean, sometimes, we’d be assigned 60-80 pages in a week in the Intro to Toxicology class and that was on top of 100+ PowerPoint slides. I had to rapidly learn to extract the “high yield” stuff from the readings/PowerPoints and figure out a way to make it stick.

I went back to something that I used to love to do as a child: Draw. I don’t know what it is about drawing that helps with my memory retention and recall but even now, to this day, 40 years later, I can draw that P-51D Mustang or 1970 Chevelle SS from muscle memory as if it were a Saturday afternoon in the fall of 1981. When I started drawing during my master’s degree, I started remembering and retaining more, especially when I would draw things multiple times. I still have notebooks full of receptor pharmacology drawings and I can draw any of them to this day AND explain what is going on.

So, pro tip: Get a white board and some dry erase markers. If you have an iPad with an iPencil, that will work just as well. Using the whiteboard will promote:

1. Active recall
2. Help to remind you that you need to study
3. Enable group collaboration
4. Help to do quick cramming before an exam, sort of like a cheat sheet. Before an exam, try to write down everything that you remember.
5. And if you can’t afford an iPad or other tablet, they are cheap and easy to install.