Motivation 1, USMLE

If your question is the one below, go on reading.

1. I know I should study for the USMLE, but I can't study either because I don't find studying interesting, or I don't have enough motivation/will/drive to study hard. What should I do?

(If you are not studying even half the available time, or if you have studied for more than a year and yet not taken Step-1, or taken the test and failed once, or if you graduated from med school long time back, or if you didn't study well in your med school, then you need to see this answer)

Answer: First of all, we should change our thinking. Nothing great in the world was achieved without hard work. No invention and discovery in our world, which we take for granted, was achieved without hard work. Thomas Alva Edison tried 3,000 materials before he tried Tungsten for the light bulb filament. He never stopped trying until he reached his goal. When somebody asked him what he learnt after his 3,000th failure in finding a filament, he retorted that he has found 3,000 ways that a light bulb filament can't be made. It was he who said, 'Genius is 99% perspirtion and 1% inspiration'.Things will be difficult at first, but later on, as we keep working, they get easier and easier, and even interesting.

We should think of the long term goals that we can achieve if we clear the USMLE. Always keeping those long term goals, which we cherish, in our minds, we should doggedly pursue USMLE preparation. That goal can be anything. It can be to have a good wife/husband and family, to make our parents happy, to buy an expensive car and a house, to achieve something in medicine or any other field.

Each step (1,2ck) of the USMLE, for a person with above average intelligence, and who has studied barely enough to survive at medical school, takes atleast 6 months of full time preparation (12 hours a day with one day off a week) to get his/her full potential. It may be 75 or 80 or 90 or 99. For someone who is of average or below average intelligence, it takes still longer.

Coming back to interest, USMLE can be actually interesting - if you try mastering one topic at a time. For example, if you want to study Anti-Microbial Drugs, ask yourself, 'What are the various drugs(groups) that kill these microbes and how do they act? What specific organisms does each drug kill and what is its toxicity?' If you actively read with these questions in mind, you'll find it interesting, and at the end you know the answers to your questions.

Challenge it! Ask yourself whether you are the master or USMLE. And act accordingly.

If you can't study at home because you are distracted, choose a library or Kaplan where you find little distractions. Study in that place almost all the time, and associate that place with study.

If after all this, you are not yet motivated, choose a study partner and study with him/her - both doing the same topic. More about this later.

Bfn,
Subhas.