One of the tasks that you rapidly have to master in medical school is figuring out HOW you will absorb and retain material. For some students, that means attending every organized class activity and for others, it means skipping certain activities. Personally, I have chosen to skip those non-mandatory activities, particularly our Large Group lectures. I attended through the first two weeks of the term but quickly discovered that the Socratic method of teaching was not giving me enough to sink my teeth into. This is not to say that the Socratic method is a bad one; I think that you need very skilled faculty to deliver content in this way and not all of our faculty have this skill-set.
If you make the decision to skip lectures, you need to be 100% sure that you have the appropriate resources to learn from. I have a variety of videos such as Conrad Fischer, Kaplan USMLE, Pathoma and Boards and Beyond. I also have a large variety of textbooks covering the different subjects that we learn in LGS. I download EVERY PowerPoint from LGS; these serve as my roadmap to what I need to learn for that particular lecture. I will choose resources that help me to learn what I need to learn for that lecture and then I test myself using practice board-style questions and of course, the weekly quizzes that we get.
There are advantages to skipping lecture. You get to learn in your own way and in your own time. You also get to stay engaged in a way that best fits you; I tend to rapidly get bored in lecture so they just don’t do me any good. You also get more opportunities to review the material. That said, it is nerve-wracking at times to miss lecture as sometimes, things are covered that aren’t in the PowerPoints. Obviously, if you have issues, you don’t have that chance to ask questions of the faculty the day of lecture, and you have to be a very independent, motivated learner to take this on.
Ultimately, lecture attendance isn’t necessary to get a good grade in your basic medical sciences class. If you choose to skip lectures, just make sure that you have the right resources at hand to assist you with your learning.
