amer_almohssen
Forum Junior
Topics: 13
Posts: 38
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Obsessive compulsive note taking and underlining is what I think I have,
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Here is my problem, I finally finished my Qbank, and I am going over my notes right now, I am only covering the parts of my notes that I scored low in my Qbank and my NBME, and I feel like I am going to go crazy.
I feel that I must underline everything I feel is important, and I am running out of space to under line !!! I mean its so bad that I am erasing the old lines to make new lines under what I think is important!!! I feel that I MUST underline or else I CAN NOT concentrate, and I wont remember it!!! The bad part of all this is that it is taking me so much time, and I feel that if I keep this up I will never finish anything I want to cover.
What do I do to stop my self from underlining, and to increase my concentration, I just keep thinking “ if it is not underlined, then you wont remember it” I know I sound like a crazy person, but hey knowing you have a problem is 75% of getting the answer,,, I guess,,,,, or am I just writing this just so I would know it is significant and thus remember it !!!!
By the way my notes are around 400 pages long !!!!
Come to think of it I should have wrote this 6 months back!
I honestly feel that there is something seriously wrong in the way I am studying.
Please someone anyone help,
Please,,,
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| humpf!!
Forum Elite
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hahahaha - this is funny - and i'm not really laughing at you, but truly, i laugh with you. there's nothing wrong with underlining - i used to have a hi-lighter fetish - and for awhile i would only use the brightest flourecent yellow hi-lighter or nothing...believe me, it never helped me memorize a single thing.
my suggestion to you - and i know you have a monsterous amount of notes - but you'll be surprised, you probably have a handle on more than you think. so what i suggest is, instead of underlining - go ahead and cover the notes with a clean piece of paper...then recite to yourself the information on that page that you have covered. if you know it - move on! if not, then look over the stuff again (underline as necessary)...then cover it up again, and again try to recite the information - or re-draw diagrams - whatever works.
you really won't know what you don't know until you actively go into your head and try to pull out the information.
good luck!
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| yolanda
Forum Elite
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Posts: 247
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Great Advice Humpf!
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| amer_almohssen
Forum Junior
Topics: 13
Posts: 38
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Thank you so very much Humpf! for your advice,
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I'll be sure to try it out, and I hope it works.
But I wonder if this is a courage problem that I am having?
I mean what if I was able to go through the material with out of making notes, and with out of underlining, wouldn't that mean that I would be able to finish everything, and be ready for my exam faster then if I had to write the notes, and then under line time and time again.
Is there a way for me to be able to learn something, with out of having to write it or under line it ?
To be honest sometimes I feel afraid not to underline something! I feel that if I do not under line it or rephrase it then I will forget it. I often wonder why don't I take it easy, and trust that I will be able to remember it when the time comes. I Have notices that going through the material for the 3ed of 4th time, even though only parts of the paragraph are underlined, I do end up reading the whole page again, and underlining ( or high lighting with another color ) again, and again and again, and then after I am done high lighting I think to my self " why did I under line in the first place? Why don't I trust my self enough to read only the underlined words?? Why do I have to read the whole page on and on and on just to reach the same conclusion?
I hope my replay makes sense to more then the guy on the other side of the mirror.
To be honest, I just had a great urge to reread my reply, and start highlighting it!
Thanks again for your kind words, and your wise advice,
And if you've got any more, I'm all ears (and highlighters)
amer
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| humpf!!
Forum Elite
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you are too funny - believe me, we all falter in our confidence - we question ourselves...the exam is like this big ugly monster that growls at us, as it screams "u won't pass it" - but it's for us to grow stronger with the courage and knowledge that we are bigger and better than the monster called the USMLE. i spent a lot of time psyching myself out - just to sit down and get started to study!!! i haven't taken this exam yet - but i should have taken it over a year ago!!! but no one pressured me - and i was my worst enemy - i didn't have confidence in myself that i could be disciplined and sit and study and really get the material and know it enuf.
well that had to change - come hell or high water, i have to match for 2007 (God willing)...so i sat down to just do it. and i was like you at first - wondered how much i was really getting. and it's harder when you don't have a study partner. so the next best alternative for me was to test myself, as though i had someone there to push me along. and i although i don't remember everything all of the time - when it comes to doing the qbank and other such questions - i hear myself reciting the info...
well anyway...at least you know that your spending a lot of time rereading and underlining...they say "knowing is haif the battle." now really go challenge yourself - break your habit! and move forward...you'll be happily surprised with yourelf, i'm sure!
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| amer_almohssen
Forum Junior
Topics: 13
Posts: 38
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Thanks a lot your advice is working much better then i thought,,,
i'm starting to underline less and less!
Thank you
amer
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| cyra
Moderator
Topics: 29
Posts: 844
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"I Have notices that going through the material for the 3ed of 4th time, even though only parts of the paragraph are underlined, I do end up reading the whole page again, and underlining ( or high lighting with another color ) again, and again and again, and then after I am done high lighting I think to my self " why did I under line in the first place? Why don't I trust my self enough to read only the underlined words?? Why do I have to read the whole page on and on and on just to reach the same conclusion? "
I have a thing for highlighting too!It was there all through medical school and is still going strong.I end up re-reading the entire page even if I have highlighted stuff AND underlined it!It got to me just like it did to you close to my exam.My advice would be to stop being hard on yourself for it....I think its just one way of reinforcing things and everyone has their own way of doing it.Try timing yourself as you go through your notes(pages/hr) so that you don't dwell too long on one page.It is hard work making those notes...rst assured it WILL come back to you during the exam.
Good Luck!
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| neevyg
Forum Junior
Topics: 15
Posts: 68
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i'm an oc underline as well!! u should see my books....you can't read anything coz everything is underlined...or highlighted....my books are pink yellow and green from all the highlighting...
i can't differentiate the imp points coz i think everything is important coz i dont know anything....
what i now do is i make sure i read everything once or even twice before i start underlining...so now it's come down by alot...
hope it helps
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| clueless
Forum Junior
Topics: 7
Posts: 21
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its good 2 kno so many oc underliners and hilighters...i am one of those..maybe we shd form our own grp ha ha..
jokes apart...i have never had problems with my underlining...and never considered it a decelerating factor...but yes..i do end up reading every thing again..but what sometimes gets 2 me is i write dwn things as i study..sometimes i write the key words 5-6 times...but it has worked 4 me so far...and i dont know any other way 2 study..so each one 2 his own i guess!!!
for those this particular habit(eccentricty??:nod seems to bother i guess humpf has offered a good solution.
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| mu
Forum Senior
Topics: 21
Posts: 85
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Hey, I think I'm the worst when it comes to underlining. I underline and circle words, phrases over and over and over again, till it looks like there's a bubble around the word/phrase. And then I can't see the words around it, and I clean it off, and start all over again. I simply CANNOT study without a pencil. I mean without underlining, it just makes no sense. I wonder if ther is a connection from the pencil point to my hand to my brain. I REALLY hope there is. I clean off and underline over and over again so much that some words in my FA are nearly invisible. It's amazing. My book looks like there's a war going on in it. Yeah, and I wonder how much gets into my head. But I don't care, it's what I know, that's how I read. I've made it so far, so I'll continue. I'm simply too old to change my spots. Gosh!! It feels so good to know that I'm not the only one that has questioned his/her sanity!! Ride on guys.
PS: sometimes, I underline so hard that the pencil tip breaks. I mean that happens a lot. So do I need therapy?
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| humpf!!
Forum Elite
Topics: 51
Posts: 120
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mu wrote:PS: sometimes, I underline so hard that the pencil tip breaks. I mean that happens a lot. So do I need therapy?
i went thru that phase too - nothing like a sharpened pencil that will relay your energy to the page (the harder you press, the darker the line!)...i say - try the mechanical pencils! hahahaha...
seriously tho - it's good to know we all have our "thing," (i'm currently in love with my deep pink flourecent hi-liter...). now i know i'm a little more closer to being "normal" !!! thanks guys!
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| yasmeen
Forum Guru
Topics: 68
Posts: 940
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i myslf is oc underliner.but as it means no harm i have no intention of leaving this habit .when i see my books obsesssively underlined i feel satisfied.i try to make notes of everything i read i,ve loads of my notes in my home.so carryon with these habits if u really think they r helping u
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| tolito
Forum Fanatic
Topics: 119
Posts: 2,174
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i hate to underline cos somehow my eyes skip whatever is underlined. i like to see clean sentences but guess what my own problem is, i write along the borders of the book. i write not just educational info but crazy stuff like an advertisement phrase and i doodle all over the book. i also make clean notes. i have a notebook for every subject, i have for causes of stuff, i have a notebook of mnemonics, i have a notebook of things i must read before the exam. i have a wall pasted with charts and cycles, and pathways. everthing you can think of, i have note for it. i found out that if i do not write things down, i just gloss over it and i do nto retain it till i see the question. then i stare and can actually see teh page in the textbook but i cannot read it with my mind's eye!! at the last count, i have 14 notebooks. hey, if anyone steals one of them, i am 'done for'. i absolutely have to read every single line before the exam.
so i think we need to do stuff that makes us happy and confident in ourselves. also we need to do stuff that we believe improves our memory. OCD?? maybe? WHO CARES
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| yasmeen
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| jhao
Forum Newbie
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Hi, I have the same problem. I have to underline or write down whatever I think important. But what I usually do is, first reading, I use pencil, the 2nd time I use yellow, 3rd, green, 4th, red. By this way, you can tell, where is your weakness. I mean, somewhere you just underline once, somewhere you have to do 4 times. You can see where you should pay more attention to. I don't use high light, because you can not double highlight. I don't get rid of my underline, because I need to know where I didn't know before but I know them right now. Just give myself a little confidence. Just before exam, I will only quick review my red lines. It works, at least for me. And I survived from medical school by this.
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| jhao
Forum Newbie
Topics: 2
Posts: 7
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Hi, I have the same problem. I have to underline or write down whatever I think important. But what I usually do is, first reading, I use pencil, the 2nd time I use yellow, 3rd, green, 4th, red. By this way, you can tell, where is your weakness. I mean, somewhere you just underline once, somewhere you have to do 4 times. You can see where you should pay more attention to. I don't use high light, because you can not double highlight. I don't get rid of my underlines, because I need to know where I didn't know before but I know them right now. Just give myself a little bit confidence. Just before exam, I will only quick review my red lines. It works, at least for me. And I survived from medical school by this.
I guess I use my brain by using my hands. I know it takes time, but that is the only way works for me. You can try other people's ways, but you should find a way really works for yourself.
Good luck!
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| amer_almohssen
Forum Junior
Topics: 13
Posts: 38
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thank you all so very much,
your advice has been so very helpful. i thought i was done for, i was wrong.
God bless you all,
amer
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