Navigating the Third Year: Characteristics and Strategies for Success
The third year is often thought of by many as the most challenging year. Whether you’re just starting your first semester or are about to graduate, there is always something new to learn. In the end, the number one habit for success is being able to self-regulate your time management.
Time Management and Self-Care
A crucial skill to develop is time management. If you have a paper due Friday, have your draft ready before Monday so you have time to edit it. If you have a midterm coming up and a paper, this idea of starting early becomes even more important. Use a calendar to manage classes, work, and life in general. Whether you use a digital planner, Google Calendar, or a physical planner, this can make all the difference.
Be honest with yourself about what is and isn’t working in your routine. As you build this habit, make sure to not compare yourself to others. Schedule self-care and breaks. Find what you enjoy doing and what relaxes you. Try a workout class, take a nap, take a walk around the block, or listen to a podcast.
Get enough sleep. This is especially important before an exam. What defines “enough sleep” is different for everyone. Listen to your body and learn your limits.
Utilizing Resources and Active Learning
There is so much around us designed to assist us. Don’t be afraid to use these resources and ask for help when you need it. Whether in class or office hours, don’t be afraid to ask your professors or GSIs about topics you cover in class. Seek out tutoring or study groups. Classmates are another great resource-create a study group or join one and work through complex topics together.
Read also: A Look at Student of the Year
Be an active learner and an engaged student. Take notes, and compare them with your classmates. Make the effort to find those resources. There are a lot out there, and sometimes they take a little digging to find.
Personal Experiences and Perspectives
A habit I developed is picking and trying out a self-improvement goal every week. It started when I took my Neuropsychology of Happiness class, where we were assigned to do weekly happiness practices. Over time, I have incorporated and adapted this practice into my life. I don’t feel stressed about meeting the goal; it’s like a weekly focus. For example, I’ve had goals of being more mindful and not using my phone when I walk, practicing gratitude for challenges, and practicing self-compassion.
It’s easy to allow your academics to consume your entire schedule and let work bleed into the nighttime or the weekends. I found that once I assigned it to a kind of 9 to 5-weekday structure, I was able to be more productive and get the recharge I needed to maintain this productivity. Even setting an hour or two-hour time blocks to a specific class or task eased the weight of these assignments instead of dedicating an entire day to them.
Find a study space that suits you-some people like a coffee shop because the hustle and bustle keeps them going and they can order a fun little drink. Some people like an empty classroom because it feels like you’re still in an academic setting, or the libraries because there’s a very quiet, focused environment there which encourages you to stay productive. One of my roommates prefers studying in bed because she says that studying at her desk feels like being in an academic prison, but I love the focus I associate with sitting at my desk. And for language learners: study a little bit every day.
A lot of my success as a student is tied to my ability to form meaningful connections with the people around me. If I am taking a reading-heavy class that is a bit more difficult to comprehend, I make sure to do the readings and come up with at least 5 solid questions I have about the text that I can ask the professor in lecture.
Read also: Review of Student of the Year 2
Personality Traits and Academic Performance
The relationship between student personality characteristics, intelligence, and academic achievement has been vigorously debated in the literature at least since Raymond Cattell formally described this concept in the mid-1950s. As educators, the goal should be to create an environment where everyone thrives and is able to fully immerse oneself in the clinical experience. However, some students may be set up to better succeed purely based on their personalities.
A study suggests that traits of "deep thinking" and "sophisticated" correlate with medical students' grades. In addition to correlation with higher final grades, "deep thinking" students were more likely to score higher on shelf exams, and "sophisticated" students had overall better preceptor scores. A recent study of six Flemish medical schools in Belgium demonstrated openness to be a strong positive predictor of high grade point averages during student clinical rotations. Prior studies have suggested high scores in the conscientiousness domain are correlated with success. A study by Sobowale et al. using surveys with OCEAN personality domains found that medical students with higher conscientiousness scores performed better in all clerkships. Conversely, study results suggested that students with low conscientiousness domain scores were less likely to score Honors overall. It may be that a distracted student is viewed as unprofessional and potentially harmful toward patient care.
Students achieving top performance in shelf score were significantly more likely to be "efficient". Students with positive traits in the extraversion domain (“outgoing” and “energetic”) also had more success than their more introverted classmates. The converse is also true, as "shy" students were significantly less likely to score Honors. These findings are consistent with previous literature, which shows that outgoing and more extroverted students are more successful. Interestingly, “shyness” was also associated with a worse shelf score. It was demonstrated that "shyness" would negatively correlate with overall clerkship grade.
While the agreeableness domain was not statistically significantly correlated with overall clerkship grade or any subcomponent, the trait “helpfulness” was positively associated with clinical score. Helpful students may be perceived as supportive, valuable assets to patients and inpatient teams, which may reflect positively on faculty evaluations. Conversely, the "aloof" trait correlated negatively with clinical score outcome, which is consistent with the literature. In a single-institution study of 133 medical students in psychiatry clerkship, it was found that scoring high in agreeableness and extroversion was associated with favorable clinical evaluations.
A unique finding of this study is that a top preceptor score was significantly correlated with the "rude" personality trait. Recalling that preceptor evaluation is based on an attending physician’s evaluation of students during weekly small-group sessions, there is more individualized attention being given to each student. Students who express a trait of "rude" may be more assertive during small-group sessions, causing them to be stand-outs within the group and obtain a higher preceptor score. This could be advantageous if perceived as confidence in decision-making.
Read also: Essential Advice for 1L Students
Self-Esteem and Performance
Self-esteem, an individual’s confidence in his or her own abilities, is widely accepted as a positive human attribute. Specifically, in the realm of physician responsibilities, appropriate self-esteem can aid the practitioner with difficult decision-making and stressful clinical situations. Several studies suggest that higher self-esteem is positively correlated with academic success. In a study of dental students, Crego et al. found that students with higher self-esteem and coping mechanisms experienced higher grades. Conversely, Hojat et al. found that medical students deemed to have lower clinical competence based on lower numbers of Honors scores across clinical rotations were more likely to have lower self-esteem and sociability but higher loneliness. In the study, only 12% of respondents reported low self-esteem, and no statistically significant correlations between self-esteem scores and final clerkship grades were found. However, within individual grade components, there were results that trended toward significance. Students with a top performance outcome on the shelf component were more likely to have high levels of self-esteem. Interestingly, students who reported high levels of self-esteem demonstrated a negative trend with clinical and preceptors scores. Studies have demonstrated that medical students who are overconfident have worse testing outcomes, and even worse may lead to medical errors in clinical practice.
Clerkships: A Third-Year Perspective
As a third-year medical student, Sarvesh Palaniappan has been rotating through a series of clerkships-from obstetrics and gynecology to pediatrics. “The beauty of [clerkships] is that you go in and you ask questions,” Palaniappan says. In his most recent rotation, Palaniappan is working in internal medicine. The patients he sees are being treated for anything from kidney disease to cardiovascular disease. “It’s fast-paced. You’re always having to adapt, but that’s what makes it special-it’s that you see so many different things,” Palaniappan says. Working in internal medicine has been very exciting for Palaniappan, because it’s one of the areas he’s most interest in. Getting the exposure in the department could potentially help him with his Match-a system that determines what kind of residency specialty he will go into after graduation. “[What’s] keeping me motivated is the end goal,” Palaniappan says.
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