DIP Episode 499 - The Successful Dedicated Period (Part 2)

Welcome to episode 499 of the Divine Intervention Podcast. My name is Divine. Into this podcast we're going to be continuing our series on the successful dedicated period. The successful dedicated period. This is going to be part two. So just as a recap, we've talked about six principles that can really help your dedicated period be extremely successful. If you missed out the first podcast, go and listen to it. You're going to get a lot from it. So we talked about the subject, these principles, those principles number one, number two, we talked about the balance principle, number three, we talked about the question analysis principle, number four, we talked about the short form principle, number five, we talked about the planning principle, number six, we talked about the steam power principle. So without further ado, we're going to jump straight to number seven, those principle number seven, principle number seven is the attention principle, the attention principle. Now in this each that we leave it, what is one of the best things you can do for yourself during your day? Get it paired, get off the internet, literally get off the internet, get off the internet. The thing is people don't realize this, but a lot of the internet these days trains a person's brain to not focus and to not be attentive. Because most things these days are designed to not be long form, require concentration kind of deals. No.

So basically the way it works is, say for example, you're on social media, you watch it, you see like a 10 second video that catches your interest, you watch it and boom, you screw move to the next day, boom, you screw you move to the next day, your brain is literally being trained in, boom, screw move to the next day, screw, boom, move to the next day. That's not helping your attention, that's not helping your focus. So just get off the internet, honestly, get off the internet and get off the internet also means get off these interweb groups where people talk about their study plans and their scores and what they did. Don't consult those during your dedicated period. That is a monumental waste of time. And you do things like that, you're setting yourself up for failure. One, you're burning valuable time to be spending studying. And then two, getting involved in those things will make it more likely that you'll start changing your plans, that you'll start adjusting your plans. Don't be that kind of person. Don't do that kind of thing to yourself. So honestly I'm like strongly encouraging you. Be wise, be wise, get off the internet, get off the internet. Stop looking at a red during your dedicated period. Stop looking at SDN during your dedicated period. It's just going to induce fear and anxiety because most of the people that post online don't necessarily post things that are helpful. Right? Check for example, like the Reddit sub for many of the USME Ls.

It's just a bunch of fear mongering. Or I'm three days from my exam. I took this practice test, I got a 210. What do I do? I did this. What do I do? I did that. What do I do? Stop wasting your time on those. I'm telling you, like that's one of the dumbest things you can do during your dedicated period. You can do it, but it's not profitable. It is literally not profitable. The one thing activity I will say that really helps with attention that many people don't do is exercise. Exercise. And notice I'm not saying, wow, I'm going to do some intense exercise. I mean, you can. If that's what floats your boat, but honestly walking is a good kind of exercise. You just walk. You can do 10,000 steps. And in doing 10,000 steps, you can be listening to some podcasts. You can be learning in some way, shape, or form. That time very useful. Right? So exercise. When I'm telling you get of the internet, your interaction with the internet should be as limited as possible during your dedicated period. Don't get me wrong. It's a discipline you have to practice, but that discipline is well worth it. That discipline is well worth it. Now, what is principle number eight? So again, we've done the subject. This principle that was number one. We've done the balance principle. And analysis principle, short form principle, planning principle, state power principle, attention principle. Now, principle number eight is the simulation principle. Simulation principle. Simulation principle.

Simulation principle. So what does this mean? This means that you should run as many simulations that are similar to your test as is possible. Many people take their exams without having a run simulations. Think of it, for example, do you think from a city who companies produce drugs without running simulations? No, they run simulations. That's what our randomized control trial is. Or if a company that makes rockets like Space X is trying to launch a rocket into space, do you think they designed the rocket and just run it into space like that? No, they're going to kill a lot of people by doing that. What do they do? They run lots of simulations. Lots and lots and lots of simulations before they launch the real rocket. So I encourage people to run as many simulations as possible. And here's the thing. The more simulations you run, the better prepared you'll be for your exam. And the more useful your dedicated period will be. The more useful your dedicated period will be. So say, for example, you know that well. My exam is eight hours. So let's dig step two. Examines eight hours and there's an hour of break time. If you run the simulation where you're entitled, you get it period. Most days you're studying for eight hours, like focus eight hours. And then you're taking an hour of break time. You don't see it. So see you're like, ooh, we have study for an hour and take a 10 minute break after this. Okay, let me study for another hour, take a 10 minute break. Stuff like that.

You are enjoying your break times. Kind of like the way you're going to be taking your exam. You're running a simulation. By the time you get to your real exam, being in tune mentally for nine hours, right? That's your eight hours of taking your exam. Because the one or all of inter-digitated break time, it becomes like a natural to you. It just makes a lot of sense to you, right? Literally makes a lot of sense to you. Is not your exam is not going to be stressful because you've run so many simulations. Your brain has been trained, right? Is all about training you'll bring to do what you wanted to do, right? About training you'll bring to do what you wanted to do, right? So run simulations. I kid you not. I've run many simulations in my life where I'm prepared for an exam. Like I remember, like someone fought me this day when I was in college and men has helped me a lot. Where I literally go to back in the day, that was when AMC 11 was VMC practice test, right? And I remember the SAT, my exam was on a Saturday, the Saturday before I packed lunch, I believe I had breakfast. And I knew that all my tests was to start, I think, at 8 a.m. So that Saturday, the Saturday morning before my exam, I at 7 a.m. or whatever, I left my home, I drove to the test and center of the Prometric, right? So I simulated like getting out in traffic, like what does the traffic of a Saturday feel like? Okay, what does this Prometric feel like? What are the parking situation at the Prometric?

I've only walked into the Prometric place where the seats, where do they have their chairs and everything, right? How do I check it? I figured all those things out. Then I came home and by 8 a.m. I started AMC 11 and if I'm not mistaken, my score on AMC 11 was exactly my score on my relamp cart. And the thing is when I took my relamp cart, I was like, oh, wait, the one you just ran a simulation last week Saturday. This is just like another simulation. This is just supposed to be the real deal simulation and everything worked out extremely well, right? So Ron seems, Ron simulations, especially when there are things that scare you, Ron is a simulation of those things and that fear is going to evaporate. If you know that, man, you're scared of doing three blocks in a row, run that simulation a few times, right? Like I tell people at least at the bare minimum, you want to run a testy simulation where you literally have study days where you take a practice test and you're doing 320 questions in that day, you know, for the step two fork or 280 for the step one fork and you're taking breaks the way you take it on testy, the more you do of those, the better you're going to be. So that's principle number nine, the simulation principle. Now, what's, I mean, principle number eight. So now what's principle number nine? Principle number nine is the learning principle, the learning principle. So how do you learn during your dedicated period? Again, I'll give you a few tidbits here.

So first thing I'll say here is, you want to understand within a reason. The thing is there are two extremes you can seek with understanding and either extreme is not good. Most people on the extreme of the memorised, what they do not understand. Those people are not actually learning. They're just deceiving themselves. That's what's happening. They understand memorised so much, but they don't have any understanding. They don't have any context for that information that they are learning. They can you're kind of showing yourself in the foot. The other extreme is there are some people that want to understand everything. Honestly, that's also not profitable. You see some people dig into the weeds of every single thing. And honestly, one of the best ways to identify people that do this is, again, just go and read it. You see on the, you know, the step two sub, you see people, they'll be asking, why does this do this? How can you differentiate between this and this? And yes, I know something that comes with experience, but I just see many of these questions that people ask. And I just know that, man, these things, all these questions you're asking, you're spending hours trying to understand this thing, but is it going to offer you any benefit on your test day or in the road world? Probably not. Almost zero. You see some people trying to understand some neat, picky thing, some repatology, something where sometimes you just want to learn the information and move on.

Believe it or not, you'd be like, wow, divine, I've seen this. Yes, I'm seeing it. There's some things in life where I just want to memorize it and move on or know the basics and move on. There are some times where trying to get that needy detailed understanding does not make sense. Right? So it's just achieving a balance. That's why I tell people try to understand within reason. There are many things, however, that you need to understand that people do not understand or understand without within reason. They keep digging, digging into the weeds, especially when it does not offer much of any benefit for your life. Another thing on that this learning principle is when you're learning, pay attention to presentations. That is the downfall of many people in studying for the US Emily exams. They do not pay attention to presentations. They learn the facts of the pathology, what they do learn the presentation of the pathology. And then they wonder why they're struggling. They literally wonder why they're struggling. They wonder the presentations. Your exams are going to be a cacophony. It's going to be a collection of presentations. You're going to see many disparate presentations, right? So learn by presentation. Learn by presentation. I'm telling you, learn by presentation. Again, I'm telling you this. That's why I really love the review courses I teach. All of these review courses, 90 plus percent of it are clinical presentations.

On the step one class, the step one class, the 25 hour step one class, the 20 hour step two class, or the 100 hour step two step three class that's coming up in May of next year. These things are going to be all clinical presentations, right? My bio-stats class clinical presentations, my social sciences and ethics class clinical presentations, right? My testing class clinical presentations, question vineyards. That's just the better way to learn. Because you're not just learning the concepts at that point. You're learning the concepts. You're understanding the pathophase where you're seeing the presentation. You're seeing it from an exam perspective, from a real world perspective. There's a lot of value to that, right? Another thing I'm going to say as well in the learning principle is, make sure you're learning the critical information. Make sure you're learning the critical information. I cannot tell you how honestly like seeing this is something that makes me really sad. I have seen many students fall for this. To be honest with you, do you know why I feel sad? I feel sad because people are suffering with this stuff. People are literally suffering with this stuff. You see my students, their mental health is being crushed. They are being crushed during their daily period. What is the thing that's crushing them? They are learning so much. But a lot of the things they are learning have no value for the exams, no value. That's the thing I tell a lot of people.

That's why doing this, what's the term I want to use? Doing this shotgun approach to studying that, oh, I see this on key deck. That's 25,000 cards. I'm just going to brute force and go through that on key deck. For most people, that is not a valid success strategy. Many people learn things, but a lot of what they know is fluff. It doesn't help their lives at all. Just be careful what you're learning is actually high yield. A lot of people learn a lot of stuff and a lot of it is low yield. To be honest with you, when I was studying for my USMLA exams, when I was studying for my USMLA exams, there are certain things I will read under a Q-bank explanation that I don't even bother. I will just read through it once and I don't even ever go back to revisit it again because I'm like, yep, there's a waste of my time. That's why practicing with MBMM material is very helpful because it's going to show you what the consider to be high yield. I'm telling you this again, and again, I'm not speaking on something I don't know about. It's something I've seen from working on people one on one. That's one of the things I've done many times one on one with people. I redirect them to focus on what matters. You see a lot of people online, right? You see the kinds of questions you're asking, the kinds of things you're doing in your heart, especially again, if you represent that experience with this process.

You know that these people are consuming days of the adhered period that will really offer them no benefits whatsoever. They're studying these arcane details, right? Well, the critical things they don't know. Well, the thing is, if your exam is filled with arcane details, oh yeah, you're going to crush that exam. But how many USMD exams are chalk full of arcane details? It may not be less than more than a single digit percent of your exam. But the other double digit percent that requires you to know the critical information. If you don't know those things, you're going to bomb your exam, right? So make sure you're not just learning. We are learning what is critical, right? Like, honestly, even these things that many people do, especially these on-key decks that are closed-delay-shot, where they will just lift the sentence from some Q bank or some resource. And they remove a word and then put the full sentence in the answer choices. Those are one of the dumbest kinds of on-key decks to make. Because literally, you're just memorizing words in a sentence. You literally have like no context whatsoever, no context whatsoever. Like, to get an example of what a good on-key deck should look like, I will encourage you to consider this deck for step one. I think it's called a Duke Bethoma deck. I literally don't know who made this deck. But I'm just giving you an example of wheat. This is an on-key deck that makes a ridiculous amount of sense.

It's not closed-delay-shot as far as I remember. As far as I saw this deck was years ago. I was just evaluating it. You know, he's only giving recommendations to people like work with one on one when making these podcasts. And that deck, right? It asks like an open-ended question, you have to raise it and then give an open-ended answer. That's a more valuable kind of deck. But a lot of people, making a closed-delay-shot deck is way easier. But the yield of such decks is very low. It is very, very minimal, right? You know, people just learn a lot of trash information that they don't need, right? They're just memorizing words in a sentence. They have no context, no critical thinking, no reasoning whatsoever. And then they wonder why they've matured this deck. What is not reflecting in their practice test scores, right? And then the final thing I'm going to show you that the learning principle is, when you're learning, learn with integrations. Learn with integrations. I'm telling you, if you're a person that learns with integrations, you're going to do extremely well on your USML exams, right? What does it mean to learn with integrations? It means to see a concept in many other terms. To see a concept in many other terms. When you're able to see a concept in many other terms, then it doesn't matter how the word or present the question to your exams.

In fact, one of the ways you know a person that is a very good integrated thinker is, they're reading an MBME, if you need it, they're reading like the first two sentences. And they literally already know the direction the MBME is going. They know that, okay, this question is obviously going to be a straight question in a person that has a right amount of dose. They would see those connections, they see it, right? Because they've learned to integrate, because the thing is, again, the USML is test principles. Yes, don't get me wrong. There are things you need to memorize, but they test principles, right? So if you can make these integrations, again, if you listen to my podcast, how do you see me teach? I try to make integrations. I try to make integrations. You may see me talk about five-oddiclung disease, but then I can bring in a heart-sound integration. I can bring in a kidney integration. I can bring in a joint integration. I can bring in an equal integration. I can bring in a blood oxygen content integration, right? If you learn concepts with integrations, then it's going to be much more valuable knowledge for you. Because it's not every question on your exam that is cookie-corder, where it's like, oh, they're going to give you this cookie-corder presentation and boom, you get the answer. No. When people say, oh, two-step thinking, three-step thinking, those are questions that depend on integration. Those are the questions that most people get wrong on their exams.

Again, if you listen to my podcast, you have an idea of what integration sounds like. And again, that's something I really need to do with many of my review courses. OK. Now, let's go to principle number 10. What's principle number 10? Principle number 10 is the critical repetition principle, the critical repetition principle, right? Critical repetition principle. And the thing is, this is a thing that people that keep jumping from one resource to the other never do. The thing is, you want to, I'm telling you, this is something you should not skimp under in any dedicated period. You should have a universe of what is considered to be critical information. That critical information, you need to repeat it multiple times throughout your dedicated period, multiple times. You see some people, critical information, they only go through it to one string of the dedicated period. No. That's not a smart way to prepare for exams. So for example, you're like, OK, there's this resource. That is exactly contains a lot of the higher information that I'm going to be learning from my exam. Don't go through it only once. Don't go through it only twice. Don't go through it only three times. Go through it at least four times. Make those multiple passes so that you can stick in your brain. Many people don't repeat critical things. You see some people, because again, some people, on key for them is, oh, you're like one green speech repetition. But you're doing a speech repetition of trash.

They're not doing a speech repetition of what is critical. So the critical information, the information that it encapsulates a lot of the principles and concepts that are tested on your exams, go through those things repeatedly. Go through those things repeatedly. And one thing about people sometimes is they sweat about memorizing everything the first go around. No. The thing is, just make sure that every repetition you're doing, you're learning that information, you're learning a little more, a little more. So let's say, wow, okay, I'm able to capture 50% of this thing in my first pass. By the second pass, try to have learned 72 to 75%. By the third pass, try to have learned like 85 to 90%. By the fourth pass, make sure you've captured like 95%. So just keep learning a little more each time. That's something that really works well for me. Like many times people think that, wow, when the vine is learning something, he's learning it with the intent to memorize. No, honestly, as I learn, my goal is to make connections. That's what I keep in my mind. And then I just tell myself that the vine set a schedule for going through this thing. You're gonna go through the thing five or six times. But each time I'm going through it and making a new connection. And I notice I'm like, wow, this concept has always been there. But second pass, I learned this new concept. Third pass, I'm learning this extra new concept.

But as I go through those many times, by the fourth, fifth pass, that information is like stocking my brain. And again, I'm not really trying to memorize it. I'm just going through that many more times, making connections, making integrations, learning the presentations. And then I notice that is almost like that thing is just all smossing into the present brain. That's a smart way to learn, right? That's a smart way to learn. Now, what is principle number 11? Principle number 11. Principle number 11. Principle number 11 is the resource principle, the resource principle, the resource principle, the resource principle, the resource principle. Now, we're going to talk about this in a few dimensions. The thing is when you're studying, make sure you're using the right resources. Again, that is one thing that kills people's dedicated periods. They're using resources that have limited benefit, right? Ooh, let me just try this completely new resource that has not been tested and trusted. That's not a speaker's. You're pretty much experimenting with your life. The daily period is a defined period. You don't have limited amounts of time. That is not when you should be experimenting. That is not when you should be experimenting. And if there's a large detailed resource that you know that well, this resource is good, but it's pretty detailed, it's a large resource. The best thing to get through that resource is before your dedicated period starts.

I'm telling you one of the best ways to gain a lot from your dedicated period is to take a good advantage of the time period before your dedicated period. For example, I like to use my step one experience. Step one, I took it at the end of my second year of med school. And half we threw my first year of med school is when I actively started preparing for step one. And honestly, it's not like I put in crazy amounts of time every single day. No, literally, I just put in like an hour or two learning along with my curriculum, learning along my curriculum. And the thing is I did not abandon my curriculum. That's one feeling that many people have. That's a very common piece of advice you see out there. A lot that, oh, you know what? Just do the bare minimum to do well in your curriculum, to pass your curriculum exams. But then invest all your energy into step one. Again, it's common advice, it's popular advice, which is very bad advice. Again, take this from me. I have literally same people that have scored the highest highest highest scores and people that have failed, failed, failed their exams. Most of the people that end up doing well on their USML Es are people that did well in their experiences leading up to the USML Es. What do I mean by that? The people that you're gonna see crush their step one exams are people that were doing well during their preclinical years. They did well on their preclinical exams.

The people that you see crushing their step two, step three exams are people that are crushed their shelf exams, right? So the thing is the dedicated period is not the end of be all for doing well academically. Although don't get me wrong, if you've had a bad foundation if you don't horribly in the past, you can have a lengthy dedicated period and salvage yourself. But most of your prep is not during the dedicated period. Most of your prep is in the period before your dedicated period. I'm gonna say that again, most of your prep is in the period before your dedicated period. Before your dedicated period, right? Your dedicated period should just be a time for putting things together, not learning so much new information the first time, right? That's the thing, that's the thing. So just gonna keep that at the back of your mind. Now, principle number 12 is the removal principle, the removal principle, the removal principle. What is the removal principle, me? The removal principle, and maybe let me say one last and about principle number 11. The good thing about preparing before your dedicated period is that you don't feel that pressure of being in a dedicated period. So you can learn things little by little and you can learn them well. You can get that deep understanding. You can get that integrated understanding, right?

And another thing to also keep in mind with this period before your dedicated period starts is, one of the most effective ways to do this process is do it in tandem with your experiences, right? Like say, for example, you're on a searcher rotation, learn your searcher material extremely well. Because then it's gonna help you do well on your rotation, right? It's gonna help you do well on your shelf exam, right? It's almost like you're giving yourself like a dedicated searcher period where, wow, this rotation is two months and I'm gonna immerse myself in searchery and get the best knowledge I can possible out of it, right? Or say, for example, you're in your pre-kneak or you're doing your bio-cam block, delve deep into bio-cam, really learn bio-cam, right? By doing that, it's almost like you're firing on so many cylinders or cylinders at once. You're gonna crush your pre-kneak old exam, you're gonna learn that material deeply and then when it comes to your dedicated period, even if you're forgetting some of that information, when you're reviewed from some review resource, all that information is gonna come flying right back, right? Like say, for example, there are some things I've not, oh, listen, I've not reviewed it in like four, five years because I learned it well the first time, honestly, if I look at those things again for like an hour, all that information is gonna come flying back. Things that I learned well the first time do not truly ever leave you.

I'm gonna say that again, things that you'll learn well the first time do not truly ever leave you subconscious. When you just reviewed again, all that information is gonna come flying right back. Okay, now, principle number 12, I said was the removal principle. This is a simple principle, but basically, remove as many commitments as possible from your life during your dedicated period. This is a common mistake many people make. You see them, they're going through the dedicated period and they are presenting at some conference. They are doing some research projects at the same time. They're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing this, they're doing that, that's not smart. Honestly, I know that this is not always possible for everyone, but if you can take time off of work during your dedicated period, do it, do it, right? Remove as many, it's called a dedicated period for some reason. During this period, it was supposed to be dedicated to this activity of studying, right? So remove as many commitments as possible, right? Again, I know it's not possible for everyone. There are some times where you cannot remove commitments. I've had dedicated periods where I have to be doing a ton of work during overwork, like making these podcasts, I can kill you not. Making these podcasts, holding review sessions and all these things during that dedicated period, right? Or just doing like taking care of a family or something like that.

So you just something you wanna keep in mind, right? But also, the fact that you're removing commitments, it doesn't mean you should own distress. You should have some distress opportunities, right? Like you should have three or a day, plead time, right? Where you're watching TV or you're doing something fun, you're hanging out with your friends or whatever. And I'll encourage you to try to hang out with friends that maybe are not studying for the exam like you are, right? So you can just get like a different outlet on life. Now what is the final principle I'm gonna talk about? The final principle I'm gonna talk about is the timing principle, the timing principle. Basically what does this mean? This just means, take your exam at the right time. That's the thing, plan your future. This seems like common sense. What again, common sense as many of you know, is not exactly common. Literally, plan your future, plan your future. Take your exam at the right time. People don't plan their future a year, two, three years ahead. And then they wonder why things are so hard for them in their present. Your present is a function of the decisions you've took in the past, right? So literally plan your future, plan your future. Like you do not plan your future, right? Like if you know that man, okay, I'm studying off my third year, you should have in your mind. This is when I roughly wanna take my exam next year. So how you can start planning, planning, planning, right?

You see some people, because they did not plan, they failed to plan, they don't get the aware rotations they want, or they are not aware rotation. And then they also indicated period during that time. It's not smart, right? Or you notice that, wow, they are taking the exams two, three months after the ERA process has started. They don't have a step to score, right? Those people's applications are pretty much almost dead in the water. If I'm being completely honest with you, I'm not trying to show you all good things here. I'm trying to be truthful. So I would just encourage you, please be wise, be smart, be smart, plan out your life. So you can take things at the right time. Like for me, when I was taking my MCAT, I plan when I would take it much very early, very, very early. I'd meet those plans very early. I think I took my MCAT like in March off, if I'm doing my math right. I'm pretty sure I took it in March of like 2013, or something like that. This was way back in the day. It's like 10 years ago. Oh my goodness. It's more than 10 years ago, right? And by planning that, we already planned that, oh God forbid, if I failed the exam, if I didn't get a square one, then I could retake it again. I still have ample time before come cast applications where do you then? So again, I would just encourage you, just be smart, plan your life. I'm telling you like, many people live life harder than it needs to be. There are certain things that people call hard work.

That is not a hard, is not hard work. It's just repercussion for stupidity. That's the truth, right? You see many people, you notice that there are some people, and this is something that you seem to see with a select few. They don't seem to be working so hard in their lives, but they seem to be getting so much out of life. They seem to be living at the top. A lot of that is a function of planning and preparation, right? If you plan, you don't have to work as hard as people that did not plan. Go to the Bible, read the part, read the story of the ants in the book of Proverbs. It has, it contains so much, that may actually be something like the, of Lord on the Divine Intervention Life Lessons, podcast website, but the ants, there are so many things you can learn from the ants, so many things. If humanity applied those principles, humanity will be far better, right? A lot of people are working so hard now, because they did not plan in the past for their present, which is now, right? So just plan things, plan things. Like I remember my dedicated period for step one. If I'm being completely honest, was I studying for 15, 16, 17 hours everything like many people do? No. I was studying very few hours, people that are very close to me. During my dedicated period for step one, I was literally doing a bunch of random things, right?

That we're not even studying related, but I had that leisure because before I even got into my dedicated period, I was already scoring above the National average on step one, right? So why? Because I planned and prepared and I had, oh, for like an hour or two every day, studied little by little, little by little, little by little. My dedicated period was way shorter than most people at my med school, right? Again, I didn't have to delve, I didn't have to sweat and struggle and suffer. And again, I'm not seeing this to be proud. No, honestly, that is not the goal. I'm just explaining to you how preparation and planning can make your life a whole lot easier. And also, it's good for your mental health. I'm telling you, planning and preparation is a cause of mental health crisis. Again, don't get me wrong. There are many other causes of mental health crisis, right? But this is one cause. This is a cause, right? Because if you're under so much stress because you didn't plan, you didn't prepare early, your mental health is not gonna be good. That's just a truth. You're gonna be super stressed during a dedicated period. But if I dedicated period for step one, I can promise you, was I stressed? Yes. But was I as stressed as most people are during a dedicated period? Absolutely not. I was not like that. Why? Because I planned and I prepared. I planned and I prepared. So, again, plan, prepare, right?

Find outlets where you can, you know, distress for me, honestly, way for me to distress is when I go to church or when I listen to like a Christian message or something, all those things help me, right? But find something that can help you distress. What plan and prepare your life, right? So I'm gonna stop here. Again, if you're interested, I'd go for one on one, tutoring for all the USM and exams, pre-climatic school exams, 30-ish off exams. And then I offer review courses, you know, for step one, to step three, I offer a four-hour biostatistics review. I offer a five-hour ethics, quality improvement, social sciences, communications, healthcare systems, and professionalism class. I mean, that class has like almost 200 different scenarios with this cost over a five-hour period. And then I have an MBA me testing strategies class that's a two and a half hour class. It's not all about knowledge, but knowing how to take tests. And then for step two, step three, I show off exams exclusively. I have a 20-hour review course. And then for step two, step three, I show off exams as well. I have a 100-hour review class that's gonna be taking place next year. It's gonna be taking place largely in the month of May next year. So if you wanna plan ahead, I can give you some more information. Just shoot me an email or listen to the podcast I've made on those things. And then finally, finally, I have this podcast on Apple Google and Spotify. Also, our You Tube channel, you can check out.

And then have another website called divininginterventionlifelessens.com. Divininginterventionlifelessens.com. Basically, every week, I post about two podcasts, where from a biblical perspective, I deal with a life lesson. I really post the podcast on Fridays and Sundays. There's actually an Apple podcast associated with it called the Divine Intervention Life Lessons Podcast. So thank you for listening to me today. I'll see you in episode 500. I guess that's gonna be a seminal episode. A episode 500. Wow, that's like half of a thousand episodes. That's a milestone. Well, thank God for that. So I'll see you next time. Have a wonderful weekend. And God bless you. Bye for now.

Implement the Attention Principle; get off the internet and avoid checking scores/study plans online.

It trains the brain for the actual test environment (e.g., timing, breaks) and reduces anxiety by making the real exam feel less stressful.

1) Pure memorization without context; and 2) Trying to understand every niche detail ("digging into the weeds") regardless of benefit.

Learn by clinical presentation, as USMLE questions are a collection of presentations, not isolated facts.

Critical information must be repeated multiple times (multiple passes) throughout the dedicated period, focusing on making new connections each time.

As early as possible; most preparation happens in the years leading up to the exam, not just during the dedicated period.

It induces fear and anxiety and wastes valuable time by causing students to change their established plans.

1) Getting off the internet; 2) Regular exercise (even just walking 10,000 steps).

Open-ended decks require critical thinking/reasoning, while closed-delay-shot decks only test rote memorization of words in a sentence (low context).

Before the dedicated period starts, allowing the dedicated time to be used for integration and synthesis.

The goal is not memorization, but rather making integrations and seeing concepts in many different terms (making it "stick" subconsciously).

The Removal Principle.

It induces fear and anxiety and wastes valuable time by causing students to change their established plans.

1) Getting off the internet; 2) Regular exercise (even just walking 10,000 steps).

Open-ended decks require critical thinking/reasoning, while closed-delay-shot decks only test rote memorization of words in a sentence (low context).

Before the dedicated period starts, allowing the dedicated time to be used for integration and synthesis.

The goal is not memorization, but rather making integrations and seeing concepts in many different terms (making it "stick" subconsciously).

The Removal Principle.