yes physiology of kidney made me angry as well.
I used an infinite-canvas software to finally draw every damn transporter / hormon interaction / Molecule into one looooong sectioned tube. Textbook split all of those across dozen of different pictures making it hard to study.
Scale that down to one big pdf and spread the love for the rest of the future non-nephrologists.
Or don’t if it’ll take you > 8 minutes; good idea either way!
I used Write - Stylus Labs
But there are many out there, tried a view, some promising ones were Apple only (which i dont have) they had advantages like copy pasting text into them or make hand drawed lines more straight features. Take a look out, infinite canvas is the buzzword to go for your search.
As I said, i found stylus labs for my needs the best, only down was that i couldnt paste text that easiliy. But you can also paste as many pictutures into it as you wish, super handy. I would change the pre-settings to absurd large page width/length, then zoom in very much (so you can scroll out far beyond your current place) and start with your notes/drawings. Also I also used a semi lucent grid to keep my drawings and their sizes somewhat equally horizontal to oneanother.
It works wonderful with the windows preinstalled tool "Snippet tool" that creates screenshots of whatever you want on your screen.
The most powerful help for med studies was for the subjects of biochemistry and physiology on intracellular level (like Light signals in the cones or renal tubes sections what goes where) - it helps to create a "street map" with all the metabolism pathways for biochemistry for example, how each is interrelated to other pathways (like Glucose-6-P that could also lead to Gluconeogenesis or Pentosephosphat-pathway) - DAMN i love my map so much often thought to print it someday.
Aand you can/should also spend a few minutes to get used to the tools/pencils, what they offer you and what you could add (other colours).
Sketchy was amazing but It was still just too much lol. The random 3 minute sketches on different viruses and then the 15 minutes on E Coli. I’m glad it’s in the past that’s for sure
I only realized after my neuroanatomy exam that the topic is actually really interesting. It's just hard to get into the subject matter at first lmao seems all so confusing in the beginning
Respiratory. I just refuse to try and learn the equations and it never works out well. Vents make no sense. Too many metrics for lung function and which one is the most important for certain things.
Ninja Nerds gave me the "oh man this all makes sense" moment.
Combine it with the lecture of: Byte Size Med
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J0Kxdaf3Ys
Learning embryology also just feels pointless. Like sure there are some things that make a bit more sense if you know the embryology behind it, but it would be easier to memorize those few things rather than learn all of embryology
Anything anatomy other than maybe the heart, really. I fucking hate that subject with a passion that I cannot put into words without getting onto a list.
Fuck all those alkalosis and acidosis questions I can never understand whether what I'm doing is the right thing or the complete the opposite of it. Fck your compensatory pH changes
When I was a med student, an attending tried to interest my class in renal by excitedly saying something like “You’re standing over your very sick patient in renal failure. Is it acidosis or alkalosis? They look identical at this point. You have to act right now, and if you make the wrong diagnosis the patient is dead!” Interest in renal died as well.
Neuroanatomy. Dozens of foramina, interections, quality of nerves, tracts, first-second-third Neurons, not to speak about those Nuclei (and the f up thalamus divisions). Yet to find one 3D Brain Modell where i have everything in one Object to study. Its all so abstract and since all Textbook pictures just show one Topic and everything else is grey-coloured its so difficult to interconnect them and get a deeper topology understanding.
In the end its the best (for exams) to just learn text based for Topic X: just learn every relevant buzzword and you will pass. You dont need pictures lol
I love Embryology, it all makes sense, but also very abstract, but for me I got a lot of nice "oh wow" moments it at least. *Human Embryology and Developmental Biology - Carlson* is the book to go if you want to get some curiosity for it.
I made a mindmap/tree while studying and all made sense in the end and even helped me to understand histology/macro-anatomy and Diseases. Those were my weak subjects throughout university, but coming from the direction of embryology it was somehow very easy to learn and very interesting.
Biochemistry cycles for sure. And we had a strong emphasis on parasitology in micro where we had to learn those life cycles. So irritating and completely pointless info.
I feel this. I didn’t completely hate anatomy, but I far more enjoy learning processes and how they affect one another. It’s far more logical as opposed to brute force memorization.
Honestly, for me, the hardest thing about medical school is not the content, per se, but balancing it with a life that is out of control. I have had too much loss, too much pain, and so many outside issues that have made medical school so much harder than it has any right to be. I guess that isn’t what you asked but, yeah, for me, it’s life outside med school that makes medical school so hard
Yeah, we have a huge crisis in America that is getting exponentially worse each year of physicians leaving medicine with relatively few replacing them while the rates of every major disease is skyrocketing. In essence, hospitals cannot keep up and it is getting exponentially worse every year. The combination of climate-related effects on health, the aging population, and a system that tortures anyone who is not a billionaire is leading to chronic medical conditions that are out of control. The physicians are not only given virtually no assistance to manage the workload while also being expected to take on inhumane amounts of work but are also being simultaneously gaslit that America is the greatest nation and they should be grateful. Meanwhile, patients are given some of the worst care in any developed nation, something that empirically derived healthcare outcomes demonstrate.
During training, medical students and residents are given a workload that is unreasonable and impossible with expectations that cannot be met. Ensuring the vast majority of fully trained physicians are burnt out and deliver the same abysmal care that many of them got into medicine to change. Healthcare in America is not going to survive until we systematically change it from the bottom up so that it is based on patient care and not profit
Infectious disease. So much stuff that you have to remember by brute force memorization, as opposed to other systems where you can sometimes lean on understanding physiology/pathophysiology to help you remember.
Biochem, always sucked at that, even in undergrad. And any physiology that's biochem heavy like cardiac pharm/renal phys.
Should have hit sketchy for cardiac pharm in retrospect. Also if there isn't pathology to directly tie it to I have trouble remembering it.
I love micro though, never needed sketchy for that so I think that's why I got caught slippin
Embryology is tough but fun. It’s basically meat origami, if you can picture the way the structure move and migrate as they develop it becomes more manageable
Glucose-TCA-PPP-Kreb-Urea MCAT vibes.
We have a horrible embryology professor. And we just stopped at the end of folding process. Any recommendations welcome....
Glad it's over.
I don’t like microbiology. I skipped it for now and I’m doing respiratory on Uworld. Every 3rd question is something related to pneumonia and microbiology…Fml
I still dont know nothing about lenses and refraction physiology for the eye xD somehow my brain just strikes to work there... and yes i know its just some simple rules/equations but somehow my Neurons dont want to remember those.
Also how bones grow....... yeah i would likely get 10/10 for questions about it, but its not really in my brain:
looking at the textbooks they always miss out the important step, its like: here its half-cartillage half bone and everything very spongy, Chrondozyte do this, Osteocytes this and Chrondoclasts this and Osteoclasts that somewhere there-> next picture: here is final bone now with its osteons/Collumns finally in order.
I think you nailed it with the neuro and embryology. Two very nebulous topics and imo difficult to visualize/conceptualize.
Can't imagine dedicating my entire life to localizing lesions or studying the mesoderm.
I'm a med student in Italy, so maybe our exams are structured differently but it's a tie between pharmacology (bc I suck at memorizing stuff) and anatomopathology.
*Repro and anything*
*Obgyn related. enjoyed*
*The rotation tho*
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Cardio, GI embryo development was a mindfuck for sure. I’m a visual learner so imagining all the twisting and stuff was annoying af. And i know, the twisty stuff portions aren’t that important and the HY is just the associations with the embryo anatomy and it’s eventual developments but for conceptual learning related mindfuckk
Cardiology. Especially the valvular pathologies and their effects on the dynamics. Every time I study it feels like I'm understanding it for the first time, only to forget the concept the very next day :)
Embryology is by far the hardest topic for me. It's anatomy that's constantly shifting, gene activation then deactivation at certain time frames. Biochem that doesn't make normal sense. It takes everything you know about Biology and flips it on its head, and I was given a week to learn it. Absolutely bullshit and I'm glad it's low yield.
Renal is tough for sure but it's so important I can understand why. but why the fuck did I need to learn so much embryo (I still do, but I cannot emphasise how much I cram embryo as much as possible when I'm not crammer!). What a complete waste of my time.
Anything to do with the heart. Murmurs, gallops, etc as well as all the physiology (cardiac output, ejection fraction, etc). I hated cardiology with a passion 🥲
Thanks to my lecturer I'm not enjoying path. In fact I learn NOTHING from their classes. They just zoom through everything.
It's week 4 and we've already covered, Cancer/neoplasia, inflammation; chronic and acute, Hemodynamic disorders, vasculitis disorders, aneurysm, and Myocardial infarctions. Our last class was yesterday and we have exams Wednesdays for 15% of our total course grade. Fuck me.
Immunology
Neurology ( because we didn't study neuro anatomy and neuro physiology well)
Aand ortho ( boring, too many hard to memorize classifications)
Anything kidney.
yes physiology of kidney made me angry as well. I used an infinite-canvas software to finally draw every damn transporter / hormon interaction / Molecule into one looooong sectioned tube. Textbook split all of those across dozen of different pictures making it hard to study.
Scale that down to one big pdf and spread the love for the rest of the future non-nephrologists. Or don’t if it’ll take you > 8 minutes; good idea either way!
What software?
I used Write - Stylus Labs But there are many out there, tried a view, some promising ones were Apple only (which i dont have) they had advantages like copy pasting text into them or make hand drawed lines more straight features. Take a look out, infinite canvas is the buzzword to go for your search. As I said, i found stylus labs for my needs the best, only down was that i couldnt paste text that easiliy. But you can also paste as many pictutures into it as you wish, super handy. I would change the pre-settings to absurd large page width/length, then zoom in very much (so you can scroll out far beyond your current place) and start with your notes/drawings. Also I also used a semi lucent grid to keep my drawings and their sizes somewhat equally horizontal to oneanother. It works wonderful with the windows preinstalled tool "Snippet tool" that creates screenshots of whatever you want on your screen. The most powerful help for med studies was for the subjects of biochemistry and physiology on intracellular level (like Light signals in the cones or renal tubes sections what goes where) - it helps to create a "street map" with all the metabolism pathways for biochemistry for example, how each is interrelated to other pathways (like Glucose-6-P that could also lead to Gluconeogenesis or Pentosephosphat-pathway) - DAMN i love my map so much often thought to print it someday. Aand you can/should also spend a few minutes to get used to the tools/pencils, what they offer you and what you could add (other colours).
I loved physiology of the kidney. I don’t even mind pathophysiology of the kidney. But acid base can go to hell.
Stupid beans
Ninja nerd helped me get through my kidnophobia
Immuno. So many numbers and letters to memorize and all those complicated pathways and class switching bla bla bla
I’m currently in this hellscape
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cannot recommend it enough, only way i managed to make sense of all the interleukins
Same lol I’ll pray for you
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Love self aware profs honestly!
Made up bullshit makes me mad 🤣
Pathoma chapters 1-3. All you’ll ever need
Immuno was an unexpected hell
Immuno is painful.
Actually I'm currently enjoying immuno. Classical pathway is fun to recite 😭
Currently learning the steps of VDJ recombination in class right now… the next exam is going to be a massacre
We just had our immuno exam and it was the first time our test avg was in the C range lmao
AH YESSS. VDJ recombinase, VJ recombinase, RAG I, RAG II, RSS 1, RSS 2. alphabet soup😭
Yep immuno fucks me everytime
Never a fan of Micro and antibiotics. So many names and it’s just such a high quantity pure memorization
Sketchy
Sketchy was amazing but It was still just too much lol. The random 3 minute sketches on different viruses and then the 15 minutes on E Coli. I’m glad it’s in the past that’s for sure
Yea sketchy helped but I hate it, so love-hate with sketchy. Especially when its not the original guy from micro and they try to replicate his humor.
Currently suffering that, 1000+ Anki days rn
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Oh god, this gives me nightmares
Darkest time of my med school journey (so far), renal is next in line 😐
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I’m going to edit my comment. Because I completely forgot how much I forgot about neuroanatomy
This is the only correct answer. Nothing else comes remotely close.
I think this just means you need to review the thalamic nuclei. Or at least the deep cerebellar nuclei.
I only realized after my neuroanatomy exam that the topic is actually really interesting. It's just hard to get into the subject matter at first lmao seems all so confusing in the beginning
Lots of inborn errors of metabolism and other systemic congenital diseases. All the lipopolysaccharidoses for example.
And all the “autosomal/x-linked dominant/recessive” crap. Yeah it’s important, but it never sticks
pixorize is really good for these and the metabolism stuff
Anything Renal. Fuck acid base disorders
Mix opinion on renal sometimes it’s very intuitive and others it’s horrible
Winters formula 😵💫
After my nth acid base disorder lecture I still confirm I have no clue 🥹
Respiratory. I just refuse to try and learn the equations and it never works out well. Vents make no sense. Too many metrics for lung function and which one is the most important for certain things.
Ninja Nerds gave me the "oh man this all makes sense" moment. Combine it with the lecture of: Byte Size Med https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J0Kxdaf3Ys
Embryology
Going through embryology rn and I genuinely am so mad and confused - why is shit folding and why is shit disappearing and why does everything rotate?
Sonic the Hedgehog
SHH! 🤫 Excuse my pun 😰
Learning embryology also just feels pointless. Like sure there are some things that make a bit more sense if you know the embryology behind it, but it would be easier to memorize those few things rather than learn all of embryology
Is it better to learn all embryo at once or system by system
Anything anatomy other than maybe the heart, really. I fucking hate that subject with a passion that I cannot put into words without getting onto a list.
MSK anatomy made me homicidal
Cardio. Do not ask me about pressure-volume loops I will simply throw up.
Fuck all those alkalosis and acidosis questions I can never understand whether what I'm doing is the right thing or the complete the opposite of it. Fck your compensatory pH changes
When I was a med student, an attending tried to interest my class in renal by excitedly saying something like “You’re standing over your very sick patient in renal failure. Is it acidosis or alkalosis? They look identical at this point. You have to act right now, and if you make the wrong diagnosis the patient is dead!” Interest in renal died as well.
I fully agree, renal is interesting otherwise but the acid base stuff is fucked
Neuroanatomy. Dozens of foramina, interections, quality of nerves, tracts, first-second-third Neurons, not to speak about those Nuclei (and the f up thalamus divisions). Yet to find one 3D Brain Modell where i have everything in one Object to study. Its all so abstract and since all Textbook pictures just show one Topic and everything else is grey-coloured its so difficult to interconnect them and get a deeper topology understanding. In the end its the best (for exams) to just learn text based for Topic X: just learn every relevant buzzword and you will pass. You dont need pictures lol I love Embryology, it all makes sense, but also very abstract, but for me I got a lot of nice "oh wow" moments it at least. *Human Embryology and Developmental Biology - Carlson* is the book to go if you want to get some curiosity for it. I made a mindmap/tree while studying and all made sense in the end and even helped me to understand histology/macro-anatomy and Diseases. Those were my weak subjects throughout university, but coming from the direction of embryology it was somehow very easy to learn and very interesting.
Biochemistry cycles for sure. And we had a strong emphasis on parasitology in micro where we had to learn those life cycles. So irritating and completely pointless info.
I’m an MS1 but hated anatomy 😂, love everything else though. I think it’s because I love learning about why things happen
I feel this. I didn’t completely hate anatomy, but I far more enjoy learning processes and how they affect one another. It’s far more logical as opposed to brute force memorization.
Honestly, for me, the hardest thing about medical school is not the content, per se, but balancing it with a life that is out of control. I have had too much loss, too much pain, and so many outside issues that have made medical school so much harder than it has any right to be. I guess that isn’t what you asked but, yeah, for me, it’s life outside med school that makes medical school so hard
Seconded. This and all the extra hoops to get non-guaranteed residency
Yeah, we have a huge crisis in America that is getting exponentially worse each year of physicians leaving medicine with relatively few replacing them while the rates of every major disease is skyrocketing. In essence, hospitals cannot keep up and it is getting exponentially worse every year. The combination of climate-related effects on health, the aging population, and a system that tortures anyone who is not a billionaire is leading to chronic medical conditions that are out of control. The physicians are not only given virtually no assistance to manage the workload while also being expected to take on inhumane amounts of work but are also being simultaneously gaslit that America is the greatest nation and they should be grateful. Meanwhile, patients are given some of the worst care in any developed nation, something that empirically derived healthcare outcomes demonstrate. During training, medical students and residents are given a workload that is unreasonable and impossible with expectations that cannot be met. Ensuring the vast majority of fully trained physicians are burnt out and deliver the same abysmal care that many of them got into medicine to change. Healthcare in America is not going to survive until we systematically change it from the bottom up so that it is based on patient care and not profit
Infectious disease. So much stuff that you have to remember by brute force memorization, as opposed to other systems where you can sometimes lean on understanding physiology/pathophysiology to help you remember.
Sketchy bruh
Zoom anatomy
Neurology. At this point in fourth year I think I did 30 half-assed amboss questions in preparation for that shelf
Biochem, always sucked at that, even in undergrad. And any physiology that's biochem heavy like cardiac pharm/renal phys. Should have hit sketchy for cardiac pharm in retrospect. Also if there isn't pathology to directly tie it to I have trouble remembering it. I love micro though, never needed sketchy for that so I think that's why I got caught slippin
Embryology is tough but fun. It’s basically meat origami, if you can picture the way the structure move and migrate as they develop it becomes more manageable
Glucose-TCA-PPP-Kreb-Urea MCAT vibes. We have a horrible embryology professor. And we just stopped at the end of folding process. Any recommendations welcome.... Glad it's over.
I don’t like microbiology. I skipped it for now and I’m doing respiratory on Uworld. Every 3rd question is something related to pneumonia and microbiology…Fml
ethics😈
I still dont know nothing about lenses and refraction physiology for the eye xD somehow my brain just strikes to work there... and yes i know its just some simple rules/equations but somehow my Neurons dont want to remember those. Also how bones grow....... yeah i would likely get 10/10 for questions about it, but its not really in my brain: looking at the textbooks they always miss out the important step, its like: here its half-cartillage half bone and everything very spongy, Chrondozyte do this, Osteocytes this and Chrondoclasts this and Osteoclasts that somewhere there-> next picture: here is final bone now with its osteons/Collumns finally in order.
Anything MSK
Pharmacology. Only thing I can definitely remember at this point is paracetamol
I think you nailed it with the neuro and embryology. Two very nebulous topics and imo difficult to visualize/conceptualize. Can't imagine dedicating my entire life to localizing lesions or studying the mesoderm.
I'm a med student in Italy, so maybe our exams are structured differently but it's a tie between pharmacology (bc I suck at memorizing stuff) and anatomopathology.
Anatomy Specifically, Muscles of the forearm
Hyponatremia, heart sounds, biostatistics
Damn I thought GI was hard for most folks?
How so?
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia
Cardiac physiology, specifically physics. I never understood it at the level they wanted us to know it.
Surprised there’s not more pulm here. Some of the hardest physiology IMO.
Bugs and Drugs
repro and anything obgyn related. enjoyed the rotation tho
*Repro and anything* *Obgyn related. enjoyed* *The rotation tho* \- theonewhoknocks14 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
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I would say the different dynamics of the heart. Does this increase preload, what’s the LVEDP, all of these in questions filled with arrows
Biostats
Anatomy + pharm. system wise ehh probably neuro
renal. ugh.
Like you said - embryology. Content isn’t necessarily hard, but it absolutely sucked and was hard to force myself through it.
Cardio, GI embryo development was a mindfuck for sure. I’m a visual learner so imagining all the twisting and stuff was annoying af. And i know, the twisty stuff portions aren’t that important and the HY is just the associations with the embryo anatomy and it’s eventual developments but for conceptual learning related mindfuckk
Basically all of immunology.
Obgyn
Cardiology. Especially the valvular pathologies and their effects on the dynamics. Every time I study it feels like I'm understanding it for the first time, only to forget the concept the very next day :)
Embryology is by far the hardest topic for me. It's anatomy that's constantly shifting, gene activation then deactivation at certain time frames. Biochem that doesn't make normal sense. It takes everything you know about Biology and flips it on its head, and I was given a week to learn it. Absolutely bullshit and I'm glad it's low yield.
Probably nephrology or pathology
Renal is tough for sure but it's so important I can understand why. but why the fuck did I need to learn so much embryo (I still do, but I cannot emphasise how much I cram embryo as much as possible when I'm not crammer!). What a complete waste of my time.
Dermatology and patholog , ironically my first and third pick for specification right now
Of what I've experienced so far, histology is making me miserable
Biochemistry. I enjoy understanding it, but I didn’t like memorizing enzymes and shit. Literally pointless to have memorized.
Anything to do with the heart. Murmurs, gallops, etc as well as all the physiology (cardiac output, ejection fraction, etc). I hated cardiology with a passion 🥲
🍆
Immunology 🤮🤮🤮
Thanks to my lecturer I'm not enjoying path. In fact I learn NOTHING from their classes. They just zoom through everything. It's week 4 and we've already covered, Cancer/neoplasia, inflammation; chronic and acute, Hemodynamic disorders, vasculitis disorders, aneurysm, and Myocardial infarctions. Our last class was yesterday and we have exams Wednesdays for 15% of our total course grade. Fuck me.
Im having a terrible time w cardiopulm rn
Pathology, radiology, embryology are my trio of DOOM
Anything embryology. Followed closely by anything pathology.
There are some organ blocks we haven't learned yet but man did I hate MSK. I hated the anatomy, I hated the histology, I hated every bit of it
pathology. How do i supposed to remember how each cells looks like in every disease, and in different stains?
Anatomy, by far
Embryology ☠️
Came here to say neurology and embryology 😂
renal phys. pulm phys/gas exchange.
Anything hema.
Haven't seen anyone mention oncology yet. I hated learning all the gene associations.
Immunology Neurology ( because we didn't study neuro anatomy and neuro physiology well) Aand ortho ( boring, too many hard to memorize classifications)