Deckolina Advice
Thank you to my friends in the Class of 2028 for contributing their decks: Leslie, Roa, Hayes, and Daniel! otherwise I probably would have given up. also regarding the name deckolina, credit to Hayes (my friends think they’re funny attaching -olina to words)
Some thoughts for u:
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Do your cards daily! over time you will have fewer reviews. I think over MS1 summer I had about ~150 cards and that included both in-house and 3rd party (but don’t keep all the cards lol). you have a big exam at the end of M1 year to look forward to called CEYE. I found keeping up w/ my cards made it substantially less stressful to study for. I also credit being consistent w/ being able to take step 1 earlier. but you do not have to be 100% consistent, lots of my friends n peers were perfectly successful without a crazy anki streak
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Enable FSRS – this is the scheduling system that determines when Anki will show you each card again. it uses some math that’s beyond me to predict when you are most likely to forget each card. don’t get freaked out about crazy intervals, you will revisit many concepts again! forgetting is part of the process, but every time, re-learning is easier
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Answer cards honestly – this also lets the FSRS algorithm do its thing
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Be selective about cards you unsuspend – this will also help decrease your # of reviews. but if I could go back, I would not unsuspend as many cards as I did. I don’t think I needed that “hemoglobin= heme + globin” card. also that random card that wasn’t mentioned at all in the B&B video? not sure why I tried to brute memorize that card just to eventually suspend it later. also there will be some niche cards in Deckolina because we were freaked out having to know everything for in-house. it is difficult at the start, but you will get better at distinguishing what is and isn’t important!
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Talk to the MS2s – about how they incorporated an in-house deck bc they know best regarding what worked and what didn’t. Everyone was always super nice to me, but maybe among themselves they thought the deck was absolute cheeks!!!
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Make your own cards - some of the Anking Step Deck and my cards may be worded in a way that doesn’t make sense to you. if you keep missing the same card, it is likely not because you don’t know it, perhaps it is the wording that is tripping you up
The in-house vs. 3rd party thing
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The general consensus / generational wisdom passed down from Paul L Foster himself is to stick to 3rd party resources as much as you can
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from editing the MS1 cards, I have found that in-house content overlaps with 3rd party more than you would think – some stuff just comes up later in different units
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also why do I feel like some of the in-house crap came up on my Step 1? unclear but i guess i shouldn’t call it crap
How to incorporate this deck into your studying
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recommend talking to your tutors and mentors
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this is the workflow my leech
friends incorporated: 1st pass - watch 3rd party videos, unlock B&B/Bootcamp cards; 2nd pass - open up the pesky powerpoints and unlock the pesky in-house cards (sort by “Created” bc I typically would create cards as I reviewed the powerpoint) -
at the end of the week take the formative exam (these can unfortunately be outdated)
Goodbye for now!!
best of luck 
you are going to do amazing! I am too lazy to type up the stuff again but please learn about optional tags and helping with revisions or typos or misinformation; I put the steps here in an old update: https://community.ankihub.net/t/updates-gi-optional-tags-suggesting-notes/553562