For people interested in art or medical school, I thoroughly enjoy mentorship as I would not be where I am today without my mentors. My contact form is below or feel free to reach out on social media. For artists, most of my resources can be found at https://artres.xyz.

Disclaimer: I am just one person and based off my personal experience.

General Advice and Resources for Medical School

Premed

Focus on doing what you love, as it is better invest well into a few things really well than spread yourself out too thin. You can speak on your experiences in interviews better as well.
Shadow primary care as well as specialty care, preferably for more than a few days to see how the career is for you.
Try to study for the MCAT like you can only take it once. I thought 3 months was a good amount of time, and I also had a part-time job which helped break up the day.
Take care of yourself physically and mentally to establish good habits and a strong foundation.
Plan your LORs and store on Interfolio or related service for convenience.
Apply broadly and practice interviewing.

General Advice Medical School/Career

Save time by automating repetitive tasks and finding efficient workflow that work with your energy levels. I use Mac Typinator for text expansion & script execution and Keyboard Maestro for performing macros. BetterTouchTool is also useful for automation and making ergonomics easier.
- Text expansions that I find useful: dotphrases for my email, phone number, address, name, signature, entire email templates, commonly used Anki tags, long prompts that I use regularly with ChatGPT (Amboss library has a great integration so that it will only pull from their database), some coding things.
- Macros: one click to set up all of the settings (DND + self-control website blocker), websites, apps, and windows in the configuration I like for studying with my external monitor, one click set up for practice tests, Anki window set ups, location based automations, a time based trigger to lower the brightness and remind myself to give my eyes a 20 second break every 20 minutes.
- Somewhat time-consuming to set up with trial and error involved, but saves a lot of time in the long run.
Quality > quantity, research, plan, execute. But don’t over plan, go for weekly goals (research/studying/social) with flex built in.
Be adaptable, flexible, and learn from every opportunity.
An Artist’s Perspective: Medical illustration as an educational tool and creative outlet – Bookmarked on YMDC
Transitioning From Resident to Leader – an article I wrote with the guidance of my mentor, Dr. Nijm
Leverage LLMs such as chatGPT, see 30+ pages of prompts that I designed and used throughout M3 (mainly focused on M3 year, but also includes a variety of prompts that can apply)

Preclinical

Anki especially for bugs/drugs any concept you didn’t connect to get a practice question correct. Edit Anking cards heavily if needed to suit your specific weaknesses, and be picky with unsuspending
Consulting reddit and upperclassmen
Most of the things I did in preclinical were to set a strong foundation and can be found in the studying tips for Step 1 document below.
Favorite video resources: physeo, pathoma, Bootcamp, Sketchy, Pixorize (outstanding for biochem/genetic disorders/vitamins/immuno/neuro)

Studying Tips for Step 1
Last updated 10/10/2024

Preparing for Step 1 Download

Clinical

Finished all core clerkships, which all require a different approach and adaptation.
Treat your patients with the love and dedication you would a loved one, helps with the pressure of clinical rotations. Can be subjective, so as long as you’re trying your best for your patients and always acting with integrity, hopefully things work out. Take feedback in stride, implement what you can but stay true to yourself. Your patients will be some of your best teachers.
- Speak to other people regarding how you can be useful and ask for feedback, try to review rubrics if available. However, try to be gentle with yourself, as the learning curve can be steep.
- At the end of the day, the scores and grades are important, but what is most important is the learning process and how you treated patients and your team. Remember what it feels to be the patient, and try to be the doctor you hope you would have.
Sleep enough and do practice as many practice questions from UW and Amboss and remember the real patient behind each question. I found knocking on my door as if I was going to clinic helped me focus and remember the why.
Personally, I cannot focus well on questions during down time in clinical, so I would wake up really early or do it after work. Studying hard helps you know what is going and the why behind the plans and also sets you up to do well on shelf/step 2.
In last 2 weeks, exclusively focus on the 3-8 NBME (both offline and online) practice exams and review every explanation. For the oldest ones, there are maybe 1-3 outdated questions, but everything else is still relevant and useful. Exceptions are psych, only recommend doing the online forms due to changing DSM5 criteria and family (I skipped one or two forms).
- I would recommend cross checking with reddit as time passes and guidelines evolve.
Concepts that you missed into Anki (low card burden since a lot of the clinical reasoning builds upon on itself).
Youtube: Strudel Reviews, Dr. High Yield, and Divine Intervention right before the shelf. I don’t use OME as I prioritize practice questions.

Step 2 Dedicated

Similar approach to Step 1 dedicated, targeted questions to weakness in the beginning, but mainly focused on NBME material (9-15, free 120s 2021 and 2023. Did 1/3 of Free 137 for Step 3 which was actually helpful and was recommended on reddit).
- In retrospect, redo a few IM CMS forms if they were at the beginning at M3 could be helpful.
- I dropped UW completely during dedicated, which I think was helpful as I was able to focus on NBME content more. I had a strong foundation from M3.
Test taking strategy and anxiety control are almost just as important as your foundational knowledge. Alec Palmerton on Youtube has several useful strategies.
- Take NBMEs under strict test taking conditions, practice your breaks and hydration.
Comb through the QI/Health Care System/Biostats Ethics etc on Amboss. I read them and did all the associated questions, but I think it may have been helpful to reread the highlighted portions one more time for some of the weirder concepts.
Make sure you understand what would make the wrong answers right, try to get in the test writer’s head. They are testing if you are safe.
Leverage LLMs such as chatGPT, see 30+ pages of prompts that I designed and used throughout M3
- Rational explained in the document but 2 examples of the many HY uses of AI
  - to analyze your NBME performance in insights (download CSV)
  - with careful prompting to reduce hallucinations (or using Amboss GPT), can make for a highly efficient tutor that analyzes your thought patterns and compares it to test writer logic in the context of the clinical vignette.
Nightly affirmations can be helpful to reduce stress relief (I used ChatGPT for this) as confidence (with humility to learn more) is important particularly on test day.