I have just finished a 2 hour binge of HGTV and realized, "wow, my first week of MERP is complete and boy is this hard"! For those of you who do not know, Medical Education Readiness
Program (MERP) is a medical school preparatory program affiliated with Ross
University and American University of the Caribbean, which accepts students to
MERP and the medical school simultaneously. After you successfully complete your semester
at MERP, you head to Ross or AUC; Ross in my case.
So, my first week has been a whirl wind of emotions. I have been happy,
nervous, anxious, exhausted, and a mix of more than one emotion at a time lol. I thought being a pre-med major was hard, yea...ok, just wait until you choose to go to medical school. It's amazing how much information I have been given in just one week; from the way our body replicates its DNA to how our body fights off viruses and bacteria and protects us from repeat infections. I am currently taking Medical Anatomy, Medical Physiology, Medical Microbiology
and Medical Biochemistry. I have classes Tuesday through Friday: Tues-Thursday
8am-12pm, Friday 12pm-4pm. Mondays we
have an hour long individual quiz which quizzes us on last week's
material for all four subjects and following that individual quiz, we have a
group quiz which covers all subjects and takes about 3 hours. We are scheduled
to be done by 12pm. I easily spend 8-10 hours between class and studying each day and that is no
exaggeration. My schedule for week one and plan for all the other weeks has been:
This schedule was a major super duper shock to me because I NEVER had to spend this much time outside of class studying in undergrad. Point of advice for future med students, this isn't undergrad. Information came very easy to me before but this is not the case in MERP. While I have a good background knowledge in the material (as many students do), the way in which you learn must change. We also have Academic Success lessons, which help teach us note taking and good study habits for medical school information. While some students think this is stupid and pointless, one important thing I learned from my first day of orientation was, "it's not about what you learn but how you learn it".
Many of us from undergrad and grad school are linear learners as our Academic Success professor Dr. Sengupta explains. We rely on memorization instead of conceptualization and this has to change in order to succeed in medical school. It's a completely different level of learning and thinking. I am so grateful to have been able to transition through this journey by starting at MERP. I have only been here a week but can already tell these techniques truly will set me off on the right foot for success! I can feel myself actively learning, analyzing and conceptualizing the information and applying it to clinical situations--in large part due to the tips on adjusting my note taking and study habits from Dr. Sengupta.
Along with my academic adjustments, there are a few personal adjustments I had to make in order to
increase the amount of time I have for studying in order to become more academically successful. One major thing I changed in my behavior was switching from daily cooking for dinner to healthy meal planning. I have and plan to continue to cook all my
meals for 1 week every Sunday. I have cut out all fast food and limited my sugary sweets intake because its important to feed your brain good food (with a cheat snack here and there)! This allows me to come home at 6pm from the
library, shower, grab my dinner out the fridge, eat (while watching HGTV) and exercise. Meal planning has saved me soooo much time because I don’t have to cook every day. Surprisingly It has saved me money too becausee I don't have to buy as much as if I buy junk food because I'm full longer. This means I get to spend more time studying. I’m hoping to not get tired of meal
planning; although towards the end of this week, I hated the site, smell and taste of baked chicken,
rice and green beans.
Its also very important to have time to yourself, whether it be the gym, TV, shopping (which I also did for 3 hours Saturday morning) or some other form of a break, you need to decompress. I plan to start my exercise regime I was doing back at home in NY next week after the first quiz. I want to first get an idea on whether or not I need to change the amount of studying. I will be able to do my workouts at the Y and some of my running on the beautiful white sands of Hollywood Beach--I can't complain!
Aside from classes and my personal schedule, I am really settling in fine. I'm still trying to find my way around but that's not saying much because I lived in Syracuse my whole life and still used my GPS! It was not easy leaving my fiance Henry last Monday after I brought him to the airport. It was so nice having him here with me for the first 3 days to settle in. We even got to hit up South Beach. Of course I miss my family, particularly my daughter Alanah and Henry but everyone has been so supportive and understanding of my crazy schedule that I don’t get too much time to ponder on my thoughts of how far away I am; it’s not nearly as bad as I pictured it would be! I am kind of glad I took the move alone because I am not responsible or obligated to do anything other than studying and take care of myself; gives me the opportunity to succeed to my full potential!
Wake up: 6am
Class (2hrs/lecture): 8am-12pm
Lunch: 12-1pm
Academic Success: 1-2pm
Study in Library: 2:30-5:30pm
Dinner, Gym, Relax: 6-8:30pm
Study Lecture 2: 8:30-10:30pm
Break: 10:30-11:30pm
Pre-read: 11:30-12:00am
This schedule was a major super duper shock to me because I NEVER had to spend this much time outside of class studying in undergrad. Point of advice for future med students, this isn't undergrad. Information came very easy to me before but this is not the case in MERP. While I have a good background knowledge in the material (as many students do), the way in which you learn must change. We also have Academic Success lessons, which help teach us note taking and good study habits for medical school information. While some students think this is stupid and pointless, one important thing I learned from my first day of orientation was, "it's not about what you learn but how you learn it".
Many of us from undergrad and grad school are linear learners as our Academic Success professor Dr. Sengupta explains. We rely on memorization instead of conceptualization and this has to change in order to succeed in medical school. It's a completely different level of learning and thinking. I am so grateful to have been able to transition through this journey by starting at MERP. I have only been here a week but can already tell these techniques truly will set me off on the right foot for success! I can feel myself actively learning, analyzing and conceptualizing the information and applying it to clinical situations--in large part due to the tips on adjusting my note taking and study habits from Dr. Sengupta.
Its also very important to have time to yourself, whether it be the gym, TV, shopping (which I also did for 3 hours Saturday morning) or some other form of a break, you need to decompress. I plan to start my exercise regime I was doing back at home in NY next week after the first quiz. I want to first get an idea on whether or not I need to change the amount of studying. I will be able to do my workouts at the Y and some of my running on the beautiful white sands of Hollywood Beach--I can't complain!
Aside from classes and my personal schedule, I am really settling in fine. I'm still trying to find my way around but that's not saying much because I lived in Syracuse my whole life and still used my GPS! It was not easy leaving my fiance Henry last Monday after I brought him to the airport. It was so nice having him here with me for the first 3 days to settle in. We even got to hit up South Beach. Of course I miss my family, particularly my daughter Alanah and Henry but everyone has been so supportive and understanding of my crazy schedule that I don’t get too much time to ponder on my thoughts of how far away I am; it’s not nearly as bad as I pictured it would be! I am kind of glad I took the move alone because I am not responsible or obligated to do anything other than studying and take care of myself; gives me the opportunity to succeed to my full potential!
I had the chance to visit two malls (Fort Lauderdale and Pembroke Pines),
South Beach in Miami, the Wegmans version grocery store here called Publix and a great Christian church. Things
are a bit more expensive and apparently it’s hurricane season so its constantly
storming (greattttt because I hate rain) but overall I am settling in fine; loving the beautiful beaches and
sunshine and praying daily!! I have my first quiz on Monday so I will let you all know how my first individual
and group quiz went!! Here are some pics below to check out of my first week here...
~xoxo Ash
Enjoying beautiful South Beach
Enjoying beautiful South Beach
Mr. Handsome and I :)
Feeding the brain
Pre-studying meal
Is this even English...
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