One weird thing about me is that I was never into highlighters in med school. Everyone else was. One day some drug company gave out these pens that had highlighters at the other end, and many of the students were almost salivating.
One day when I was studying with friends during third year, I noticed that the student next to me was highlighting stuff from the peds textbook. I glanced over at the page he was reading and I saw that he had highlighted every single line on the entire page with a single exception. I looked over and read out loud the single sentence that he had not highlighted:
"H. influenzae type b cellulitis is now very rarely seen."
For me highlighters are useful: I force myself to highlight very selectively. This requires me to read over a passage in its entirety, think about it and choose what is most important. Its a form of active reading, much like making notes (except it doesn't take forever).
ReplyDeleteHaha that's so true! I have a friend who has every word in Robbins patho highlighted with one of five colors based on importance and the number of times she's read it. It's a little bit of overkill.
ReplyDeleteI love love highlighters. And....sometimes I tend to OVERhighlight. guilty.
ReplyDeleteIn my uni there's a rumor circulating that the "new highlighting" is to cross out useless words (such as conjunctions, most verbs, etc.) with a black marker so you can save time reading. Never seen anything like that so far though.
ReplyDeleteResearch (don't ask me for source) shows that using a pen or even pencil to underline is better for retention
ReplyDeleteI love highlighters, but mostly for anatomy. Makes it much easier when the pictures in the text aren't in black and white. Not so much with highlighting words, more to color in.
ReplyDeleteMy roommate and I used to make sure to highlight using only a fluorescent highlighter. Then we would study under a blacklight; only the highlighted material would show up!
ReplyDeleteI totally get off on highlighting...
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