@bladerz1 and @ang,
Just to give you a 180 degree contrast in studying methods from @blugrn6, I’m an avid textbook reader (assuming the reading isn’t way too much), mainly due to habit from high school and studying for AP exams. For me, a textbook is authoritative, usually well-organized, gives you the information you need to know, and many times can explain things in much greater detail from something that was taught in lecture. It can also be a repetition of something exactly taught the same way in lecture. For some people, reading a textbook can easily lead to losing their concentration, losing their place while reading line by line in a book, or it’s just too much of a passive way of learning for them, etc.: http://www.gavilan.edu/tutor/documents/StudyTipsforDifferentLearningStyles_000.pdf
Here is a good start on how to study a textbook properly, famously called the SQ3R method: http://www.studygs.net/texred2.htm
I’m also the type where repetition is the key to getting information in my head so hearing it in lecture, writing it down, maybe rewriting my notes and filling in any gaps, and going through it over and over again, or saying it out loud verbally, just solidifies everything for me. I tend to be the type to listen to lecture (whether that’s being there physically or listening to a recording). I’m an “old fogey” so some of us used to bring in tape or digital tape recorders. I would think UMKC courses would now start using the Tegrity system they have there: http://www.umkc.edu/ia/it/tegrity/, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they purposefully didn’t use it, to keep people coming to class.
The one thing I would say though, and I realize this is very far off for you but just to keep in the back of your mind, when it comes to USMLE Step 1: There is just no way you will be able to reread from front to back all of your course textbooks, all your course lecture notes, etc. If you’re Type A like most med students are, it’s very different than the usual way you study for midterm and final exams.
For many people, in starting studying for Step 1, it was not only going mainly through specific subject-based USMLE review books, but mainly it was doing lots and lots of test questions, whether that’s in physical books (i.e. Kaplan Qbook), online Kaplan Qbank, and now these days people are using USMLERx, USMLEWorld, and the NBME self-assessment exams.
Whatever you do, don’t use the ExamMaster Qbank that UMKC offers, which is free for students: http://libguides.library.umkc.edu/content.php?pid=272182&sid=2244393 – it’s utterly useless for the exam and I don’t really know why the UMKC library continues to buy it for student use.
There is something different neurologically in the brain when it comes to reading lines in a textbook vs. answering questions (whether that be questions you’ve made up in a study group, old exam questions, or doing USMLE review resource questions) when it comes to long-term retention (vs. short-term) which you’ll need for the morning of your Step exam.
If you’re not used to this type of learning (by actively doing questions), then you’ll have to get used to it, because on Step 1, there is just so much information, that just rereading all your books (even just review books) 50 times won’t get you a better and higher score like it would for class exams. I was scared initially by doing USMLE test questions early on, without having read everything first, since I was afraid of getting them wrong, but the truth is if you just read only and wait for that “perfect” time, that time will never come, and you don’t get forever to study for Step 1.
It’s a really silly way of thinking, because you’re only fooling yourself into thinking you really know the information, and questions themselves are really another way to learn from, not just for testing purposes. It’s also a way to think on your feet and actively remember things, bc you never forget a question testing the concept you got the wrong answer to. So then when you go back to read it again, you remember it. It’s reading the question, answering it, seeing whether you got it correct or wrong, AND (this step which people forget to do) it’s going back to the read the long explanations and figuring out why the right answer is right, and why the other answers are wrong and/or not the best answer. By the time you take your exam, you want to be a test question answering machine, and that only works by sitting and going thru blocks of questions.
Same with studying for NBME subject exams (they’re called “shelf” exams colloquially), as @blugrn6 mentioned, which are written by the same test writers who write your USMLE exams. You take the shelves for Year 5 Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, OB-Gyn, and Psychiatry in Year 5. I believe we also took them for Year 3 Pathology and Year 4 Behavioral Science – as UMKC doesn’t have you take any of the other shelf exams for any other basic science subject (yet).
For those, most people have a reasonable textbook (at the medical student level), a USMLE type review book, and questions sources. Most of us used the Pretest book series as that was the only thing available back then, but now students use resources like the Case Files book series, online Qbanks for Step 2, etc. In fact a girl this year, did her research project on this very topic: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/research/2015Posters/Megan_Litzau%20NBME.pptx. As @blugrn6 said, which you’ll figure out quickly, you don’t get points on the exam for HOW you study. So you’re best off choosing a way that is efficient to where you can get through the material, but also which you can understand, process, and retain it.
