Thanks, everyone, for participating so fully and genuinely in the Kahoot we did this morning! I learned so much about you – and it was a lot of fun. And I loved the questions you asked me as well! There were a few of those that I didn’t have enough time to adequately address in class – so I’ll do that below.

Here are the wordcloud images, along with some comments.

Looks like we have some rotting habits but also some healthy habits. Couple of piano players at least…yeah! I’ve been getting back into that and find that playing really angry music really loud works really well. That’s a lot of reallys. Something about banging out those chords on the piano though – so satisfying. I also love “look at wall.” You know, you do what you can.

Here’s a question for you: What’s hay day? Email me and I’ll join!!

I wanted to respond to your questions about study methods/tips. This is a more complicated question than it may seem, because everyone is different – and every class is different.

For me, histology is a really visual thing, particularly when we get to organ systems. So for this course, my brain wants to draw my own stuff, and make charts that compare different parts of a structure to see where things stay the same and where they are different.

Here’s an example of how I summarized GI histology – all on one page (though it’s kinda crowded), and I love tables:

It takes time to figure out what works best for you in dental school, and it will change for different courses. Some courses are quite visual; others are not. Some have a lot of stuff you just have to brute memorize, some don’t. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you’re doing right now (secret: nobody really knows everything about what they’re doing).

What worked for you in undergrad may not work here, because the onslaught of information is just so massive. We basically have a firehose full of information for you day after day after day. So it’s a different kind of learning, and you’ll figure it out over time

One thing that I DON’T advise is simply flipping through the ppt slides to get the info into your head. That can be really misleading. You think you know it all, and then you go do a Kahoot or a crossword, and realize that you may have just memorized words but not really understood concepts.

Flashcards (and Anki) work well for a lot of students – but I think that it depends on the material. If you’re just rote memorizing, fine. But if you want to connect things together, and have a deeper understanding, then flashcards might not be the best way to go. That being said, they worked for me for pharm and micro, when there were simply things that needed to be memorized and couldn’t be learned through understanding.

Some students like to study in groups – I did that for a while and found it helpful – but eventually I learned what my best practices were, and it seemed like the most efficient thing was just to do most of it myself. Often I studied my own way, but I had a wonderful friend named Pernille (she was Danish and so calm) nearby, doing her own thing). It IS nice to have someone quiz you once in a while, or ask you to explain something. The best way to learn something actually is to teach it haha.

Also: I want to reiterate the importance of sleep for memory consolidation. Here are a couple short videos that explain why you need to sleep in between learning something and using that information:

Matthew Walker: Hacking your memory with sleep (just 4:42 long)

Matthew Walker: Using sleep to improve learning, creativity, and memory This is a long video – but the section on memory consolidation starts at 44:25 and ends at 54:46. Here’s something cool: you need sleep BEFORE learning in order to get your brain ready for laying down new memory traces. And then when you sleep AFTER learning, those new memory traces get strengthened – that after-sleep basically presses the “save” button, so that you don’t forget those memories.

Fascinating.