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1. HOW TO EXCEL AT YOUR COLLAGE
OF MEDICINE
New thoughts for medical students to get better studying outcome
This presentation is made through pomodoro technique

2. HOW TO EXCEL AT YOUR COLLAGE
OF MEDICINE
• Dr. Barbra Oakley has enriched me with new ideas in this summer, I would like to
share with my colleague and the junior students
• My book [How to Excel in Your Medical Collage] has many ideas, discussed in
details, and here you will find the summary of them all.
• My own experience came throughout my 6 years of excellence at the collage of
medicine, University of Gezira, Sudan.
• I’ve been reviewing the latest books and courses on human development and better
learning fields.
• I’ve learned a lot from my own mistakes, my friends and professors.
• So, thanks all for your support during these years, I’d love to spread the word, there
would be a major 3 topics to go through during this presentation.

3. OBJECTIVES
• Finding a rewarding method, that make you start early and consolidate your
Knowledge, doctors need a solid background to be more valuable to the society.
• You will be aware of the most healthy actions in your daily studying life, and how to
schedule yourself to work productively for long term.
• Knowing about how your brain work and react, in fact, is the easy way to avoid bad
habits to be happier in your life.

4. A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STUDENTS
• If you go to the lectures, labs, cafeterias, you will find all types of students, all of them, but
how can you differentiate between major types?
• When the exams come to doors, it’s when you can see only two different types of students,
the stressed and the relaxed.
• Now you are getting the idea, which types I’m talking about!
• The stressed students of course are the dominant group, and here I would like to make you
aware of that, BE CAREFUL! Don’t be one of them.

5. THE STRESS BEFORE THE EXAM

6. THE STRESS BEFORE THE EXAM
• The only way to show your obtained knowledge is by exam.
• When the exams come, the students are running out of time because each moment is
valuable and can make a difference, sometimes this difference make you one of the excellent
students, and often save you from a flunk!
• It’s usual to see students in just two days early lifting bunch of notebooks, sheets and
references. I myself wonder how they will manage to review all of that! You may say so,
unless you became one of them!
• There’s no worse than student who get cramp just before the exam. (Goljan 2009)

7. THE RELAXED GUY
• You will notice for sure that guy (if you looked carefully) laughing and enjoying his time, till
the last minute before the exam, what does he has between his hands? It’s only one notebook.
• Why people are stressed? Does any one has his own reason?
• Unfortunately, yes, everyone has their own reason. But whatever the reason is , NOTHING is
leading to the pre-exam stress except procrastination, face it !
• To tackle procrastination there are a lot of tricks that you can easily master and make you a
better student, a relaxed one.

8. Topic A : Procrastination
 A common behavior of putting off important or high value activities is called
procrastination, that is putting things off that you should be doing right now.
 Some common causes of procrastination are:
 feeling overwhelmed by the task you are supposed to be doing;
 feeling unconfident about your ability to do the task, and so getting on with something
you can do well;
 waiting until you feel ‘in the mood’ to tackle the task;
 fearing you will fail (or succeed) at the task;
 feeling you don’t know how to organize the task.

9. Procrastination (Continue)
 However, researches find that one who procrastinate something, he think that it’s painful
and that may cause real pain in the brain (insula). Thus, procrastinator shifts his attention
to something he thinks it’s more pleasant.

10. Procrastination (Continue)
 Often procrastinators can’t see the difference between urgent activities
and important activities.
 The reality is that we all have to do things we sometimes find difficult,
boring or stressful and it’s helpful to use some tips so you no longer
become a procrastinator.
 The worse outcome you will have, is not remembering important
information that may save someone life.
 RMEMBER, studying medicine starts from the day 1.

11. Procrastination (Continue)
 It’s helpful to make a daily ‘to do’ list to help you keep focus on what needs doing.
 Also, we all respond well to rewards, so perhaps part of your personal strategy could be the
promise of a swim, bubble bath, night out, watching TV or game of football at the end of a
complete task.
 The reward is better to come while applying the pomodoro technique, this awesome technique
constitute of the following:
 25 minutes of focusing while processing a task
 No interruptions ( Switch of your phone and stay away from the laptop)
 Then a reward!
 Practicing on this technique will solve a big problem you may face later, so keep practicing as
“practice make it permanent”.

12. TOPIC B: FOCUSED AND DIFFUSE MODES
• It’s well known that learning something new can takes time. However, in
medicine, it’s a very big area where you learn new things everyday throughout
your journey within it.
• You need to stay focused in order to learn new concepts, but you may feel
overwhelmed and exhausted, then tend to procrastinate while you face the huge
amount of knowledge, especially if you aren’t used to concentrate for a long
time, but don’t worry, I’m here to help.
• It’s not only the focus mode what make you learn, by learning the basics about
how your brain works, you can learn more easily and be less anxious if you get to
know the diffuse mode and how to shift to the focus mode, and how important
they are in the learning process!

13. FOCUSED AND DIFFUSE MODES (CONTINUE)
• Focusing, it's when you concentrate intently on something you're trying to learn
or to understand.
• While diffuse thinking is more relaxed thinking style, which is related to a set of
neural resting states.
• We are using this diffuse mode while we are working on new ideas or
approaches, to get concepts we haven't thought of before.
• In this diffuse mode of thinking, you can look at things broadly from a very
different, big-picture overview, so we can make new neural connections traveling
along new pathways.
• You can't focus in as tightly as you often need to, to work on any kind of
understand the finest aspects of new concept, as you can be in either thinking in
the focused or in the diffused mode at a time.

14. FOCUSED AND DIFFUSE MODES (CONTINUE)
• From the most famous scientists, well known of their using of the focused and diffused modes; theyre
Thomas Edison, and Salvador Dalí.

15. • If you want to see a LIVING example of alternating these mode, head to the
radiology department, and there you will find how the radiologist make their
finest diagnosis, they look closely in the details then take a step back, closing
their eyes for a while, and taking another look from another prospective and
from a different angle at the same plane film!
• Using the pomdoro technique will make you able to shift between these
modes by taking a small gab between each 25 min and then come to focus
again.
• Researches found that anyone can focus for at least 25 minute, so you can do
it for sure. Afterward you should stop focusing and do totally different thing
for 5 minutes in order to be in the diffuse mode.
FOCUSED AND DIFFUSE MODES (CONTINUE)

16. DIFFUSE MODE
• So deep, slow breathing and periods of relaxation are important for all of us and
we need to practice how to do them well. Relaxation needs to happen regularly
during your study.
• You can also do better if you go for sport, at it allows new neurons formation in
the hippocampus area, where your emotion and memory are.
• When you get frustrated with some concepts, take a break so that another part
of your mind can take over and work in the background.

17. DIFFUSE MODE (CONTINUE)
• Take a long breaks, It is common to become unable of figuring out concepts
in medicine or science for the first time you encounter them. A little study
everyday is much better than a lot of studying all at once.
All at onceLittle by little

18. FOCUSED MODE
• Have you ever seen someone asleep over (or under) a book?
• In focus mode, you should study actively to grasp the material, not to necessarily
to put it in the brain.
• Speed reading make you conscious the whole time you are reading, and
eliminate the boring feeling and stop passive reading.
• Asking yourself “WHY” is a very important question that will make you
understand the depth of the idea, and most importantly, make you remember.
• Taking notes is one of the most important methods used to be actively studying
medicine, as the medical knowledge is unique by its need to be remembered
accurately and applied, so taking notes while studying make you more focused
and alert!

19. FOCUSED MODE (CONTINUE)
• SQ3R is a useful principle that make you reading around a subject and actively
thinking about what your learning needs to give you will make your learning
active, provide you structure in your learning, and should help you to build new
learning on top of your prior knowledge.
SQ3R
Scan
(Speed
Reading)
Question
(Why?)
Read
Re-Read
and note
Review

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23. SUMMARY
• Medicine, is a simple but a science with an enormous amount of information, in
order to excel you have to start early.
• Procrastination has devastating outcome, in order to beat it you can organize your
self, which is easy and more valuable than you think.
• Alternating between focus and diffuse mode of thinking can make you produce a lot
and keep your mind active and smoothly thinking.
• Keeping your body healthy lead to a healthier brain and more productive, in order
to keep that, you have to sleep.

24. IMAGE CREDITS
• The night before exam in medical school
https://www.facebook.com/MedicalVideos.us/photos
• Pomodoro timer, Autore: Francesco Cirillo rilasciata a Erato nelle sottostanti licenze seguirÃ
OTRS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Il_pomodoro.jpg
• Thomas Edison, courtesy U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Thomas
Edison National Historical Park
• Salvador Dalí with ocelot and cane, 1965; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:Salvador_Dali_NYWTS.jpg From the Library of Congress. New York World- Telegram &
Sun collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c14985; Author: Roger Higgins, World
Telegram staff photographer; no copyright restriction known. Staff photographer
reproduction rights transferred to Library of congress through Instrument of Gift.
• Building strong neural structures, ©Kevin Mendez, 2014. Without permission.
• Djonlagic, I., A. Rosenfeld, D. Shohamy, C. Myers, M. Gluck, and R. Stickgold. "Sleep Enhances
Category Learning." Learning & Memory 16, no. 12 (Dec 2009): 751-5.