Peace and Blessings Everyone! I hope all of you are having a great summer.

I successfully completed my 1st year of medical school! It was rough for me, but doable. Before starting medical school, I heard from others that as a student, you won’t have time to do anything besides studying because the content is a lot and challenging. However, I did later learn that just like having a life outside of work, you should have a life outside of medical school. This was indeed beneficial for my mental health. I was able to keep up with my extracurriculars, continue to exercise, keep up with seasonal anime, read a couple of books and manga, stream some video games, and still engage with Religiously Nerdy. So if you are a student and wondering how I was able to do it, here are some tips that I found helpful for me. Take these tips with a grain of salt, these tips may not work for everyone, and always seek mental health counseling or academic help if you need it!

Space out your studying time and don’t fall behind!

I can’t stress this enough, don’t leave your studying to the last minute! If you were able to during undergrad, congrats, but this is not feasible in medical school because you will be learning a lot of material in a short amount of time. For example, what I learned from one semester of Psychopharmacology in undergrad was taught to me within only a week during medical school. The way I study best is through flash cards and I divided the amount of cards I had to study into the amount of days I had before an exam. This made it so that I only needed to study a certain amount of cards per day. I also attended class in person 90% of the time so I rarely fell behind on lectures. After class, I will review my slides and if I didn’t understand something, I would immediately seek help from peer tutoring if possible. I understand that some people may have other obligations that may prevent them from attending class in person, so if you are in that situation, I recommend watching the recordings of slides from class the day they come out. 

Now let’s talk about my hobbies!

Leave time outside of your day to just relax

You might think that you have to study all the time, and feel guilty if you aren’t (I feel this way all the time), but don’t worry you will be fine. Unless you have an exam in the coming week, set a cut off time to just stop studying and engage in your hobbies. For example, on weekdays when I didn’t have other meetings to do during the day, I stopped studying at dinner time. Also when I can, I would read either a manga, comic, or book for 30 minutes before bed. For me, exercise is also relaxing so I set time to go to the gym either the hour before dinner or afterwards. You can also find time to watch anime or read when you are using gym equipment such as a treadmill. I had set times for watch parties to watch anime with my sisters and friends. Lastly, I set time during weekends nights to play video games! 

Take breaks while studying

Always take breaks before you get too exhausted. For me, my breaks from studying were when it was time to pray and time to eat. You may think you do not have time to watch anime but during meals, I would watch an episode of anime in which I was able to watch about 3 episodes a day! Also if you commute through public transit, you can use that time to read books or watch a show.

Anime and Manga Recommendations for the STEM nerds out there

Lastly I found ways to “kind off” study while I was watching anime and reading manga. I was able to learn a lot from these shows!

• Cells At Work (anime and manga): Talks about the roles of the cells of the body during illnesses and infections!
• Cells at Work Code Black (anime and manga): Same as cells at work but it covers heavier topics such as alcohol abuse and STIs.
• Cells at Work Baby (manga): Same as cells at work but in an infant’s body!
• Dr. Stone (anime and manga): It covers a variety of science and engineering topics, not just related to the human body!
• Parallel World Pharmacy: It covers the mechanisms of drugs and medicines, and their uses against infections!
• Apothecary Diaries: It covers the makeup of poisons and their antidotes!

Good luck in your studies/work!