Hi all,
I just wanted to start a specific thread for use of OF/GTD in medical school... I know there's been contributions about this subject in other threads, but it seems to me there's enough dispersed interest to warrant a specific thread.
I'm going to be starting med school next week, coming from a very wird background. I recently finished a Ph.D. in a very unrelated field (humanities), and towards the end I started applying GTD to my research/writing with much success. I'd love to see it translate to med school, but my experience trying to apply GTD to the pre-med classes I was taking while doing the Ph.D. thing wasn't so great. I'd very much like to hear other people's experiences and suggestions, and by no means do I think this should be restricted to medical school experiences; there's obviously a lot of common grounds with many different experiences. One of the particular challenges of med school organization as I see it, though, is that it's much more of a mixed experience than other forms of grad school: from the first two "pre-clinical" years consisting mostly (but not only) of classes, to the hospital rotations, licensure exams etc. My hope is obviously that GTD/OF could help manage this mess.
1) My initial concern is with respect to classwork. Unlike a research assignment, where my own experience tells me that GTD can be very powerful, med school classes are mostly ([un]fortunately?) about memorization. One very interesting post I found on this is here: http://tinyurl.com/mdphpf (Ryan B's comment). I'm a sucker for shiny electronic toys, but I thoroughly agree with this: "Towards the end of my studying I had two big revelations: PAPER is awesome, especially when trying to memorize dozens of drugs and their side effects."
At the same time, a lot of people seem to benefit from entering their notes in electronic format (see e.g. Lucas's post http://tinyurl.com/m6bnk3 )
I could envisage the benefits of taking paper notes/brainstorming PLUS entering those notes into OO or equivalent (repetition = memorization), but I'm concerned this could quickly become overwhelming. What do folks out there do/think about this issue?
2) The question of managing classes themselves (assignments, etc.). Do you do it in OF itself or in another application? There's been suggestions for both: Lucas and whpalmer4 presented screenshots of their school workflows of great relevance (http://tinyurl.com/l5fr98 and http://tinyurl.com/nmma8x ). But there's also been suggestions of using a stand-alone application (with possible links to OF, see e.g. http://tinyurl.com/nkmlp6 ) to manage assignments. No to re-ash completely the issue, I'd be very interested to know how in the specific context of med school or equivalent, people tie in this issue with 1) above. I.e., do you distinguish between classwork "content" (learning/reviewing stuff, completing assignments, etc.) and "management" (deadlines, admin, etc.)? Do you use different software for each? This seems to me an interesting problem for OF application of GTD as it is in a sense similar to the very debated question of reference material gestion/filing.
Looking forward to hear what others think, and I'd be delighted to hear from anybody else about to launch into/already in/through the med school adventure (if you want to start a "med school GTD support group" I'm up for it!).
Thanks!
I just wanted to start a specific thread for use of OF/GTD in medical school... I know there's been contributions about this subject in other threads, but it seems to me there's enough dispersed interest to warrant a specific thread.
I'm going to be starting med school next week, coming from a very wird background. I recently finished a Ph.D. in a very unrelated field (humanities), and towards the end I started applying GTD to my research/writing with much success. I'd love to see it translate to med school, but my experience trying to apply GTD to the pre-med classes I was taking while doing the Ph.D. thing wasn't so great. I'd very much like to hear other people's experiences and suggestions, and by no means do I think this should be restricted to medical school experiences; there's obviously a lot of common grounds with many different experiences. One of the particular challenges of med school organization as I see it, though, is that it's much more of a mixed experience than other forms of grad school: from the first two "pre-clinical" years consisting mostly (but not only) of classes, to the hospital rotations, licensure exams etc. My hope is obviously that GTD/OF could help manage this mess.
1) My initial concern is with respect to classwork. Unlike a research assignment, where my own experience tells me that GTD can be very powerful, med school classes are mostly ([un]fortunately?) about memorization. One very interesting post I found on this is here: http://tinyurl.com/mdphpf (Ryan B's comment). I'm a sucker for shiny electronic toys, but I thoroughly agree with this: "Towards the end of my studying I had two big revelations: PAPER is awesome, especially when trying to memorize dozens of drugs and their side effects."
At the same time, a lot of people seem to benefit from entering their notes in electronic format (see e.g. Lucas's post http://tinyurl.com/m6bnk3 )
I could envisage the benefits of taking paper notes/brainstorming PLUS entering those notes into OO or equivalent (repetition = memorization), but I'm concerned this could quickly become overwhelming. What do folks out there do/think about this issue?
2) The question of managing classes themselves (assignments, etc.). Do you do it in OF itself or in another application? There's been suggestions for both: Lucas and whpalmer4 presented screenshots of their school workflows of great relevance (http://tinyurl.com/l5fr98 and http://tinyurl.com/nmma8x ). But there's also been suggestions of using a stand-alone application (with possible links to OF, see e.g. http://tinyurl.com/nkmlp6 ) to manage assignments. No to re-ash completely the issue, I'd be very interested to know how in the specific context of med school or equivalent, people tie in this issue with 1) above. I.e., do you distinguish between classwork "content" (learning/reviewing stuff, completing assignments, etc.) and "management" (deadlines, admin, etc.)? Do you use different software for each? This seems to me an interesting problem for OF application of GTD as it is in a sense similar to the very debated question of reference material gestion/filing.
Looking forward to hear what others think, and I'd be delighted to hear from anybody else about to launch into/already in/through the med school adventure (if you want to start a "med school GTD support group" I'm up for it!).
Thanks!
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