in response to my video about 7 Regrets of My 20s.

This is my video in response to his video that was in response to my video.

You still following?

In the 7 Regrets video, I spoke about general principles to strive for or to avoid.

In this video, I'll tell you on a more personal level what mistakes I made in college and

what I wish I did differently.

What's going on guys,

Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.

Anyone who knows me won't be surprised by this one.

I wanted to hit the ground running in college and do well in my courses.

I wanted to pile on multiple courses and max out my units.

However, I listened to the advice I received from upperclassmen and eased into college

with a regular course load.

My GPA was a 3.8 that first quarter, which was good, but being a perfectionist, I knew

I could do better.

So for winter quarter, I said challenge accepted.

I piled on a heavy course load, maxing out my units and taking difficult pre-med science

courses.

And I worked hard.

A few weeks into the quarter, I had bright red blood in my stool.

After a week of bleeding that was getting worse, I spoke with an advice nurse on the

phone.

As an ignorant pre-med, I didn't understand the significance of the progression of bright

red blood turning to black tarry stools.

She urged me to go to the emergency department.

I replied that my chemistry midterm was tomorrow and I couldn't miss it.

Yeah, I know.

I still cringe thinking about that now.

Anyways, I went to the ED, was hospitalized for several days, lost 35 pounds, and was

diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

Getting an autoimmune disease like Crohn's is multifactorial, and I would not say that

I got Crohn's because of the stress, but I can confidently say that that first flare

was triggered by the super high stress.

The literature is conflicting on whether or not stress exacerbates or triggers inflammation

and flares, but many patients, including myself, will attest from personal experience that

it certainly does.

Unfortunately, my overly ambitious and headstrong nature didn't end there.

Even though I was hospitalized and missed two weeks out of a 10 week quarter, I refused

to take the rest of the quarter off, against the advice of others.

Heavy on medications and low on weight, I returned to class, made up my missing assignments

and tests, and earned a 3.7 GPA that quarter.

Annoyed that my GPA had decreased from my first quarter, I vowed never again.

And for the rest of college, I earned 4.0's every quarter.

This sounds good on paper, but if I could do it again, I would actually do it much differently.

And that brings us to point number two.

While the headstrong nature had some benefits, like doing well in my courses, it led to unnecessary

stress.

Again, Crohn's is exacerbated by stress, so my health suffered due to my inability

to just relax and see the bigger picture.

Instead, I always wanted perfection for myself and beat myself up any time I fell short,

even if it was something small.

And that's clear with regards to my school work, but it extended to other areas of my

life as well.

In the gym, I wanted to see consistent progress, so much so that I pushed myself to the point

of injury multiple times.

Now, after several years, I'm at the point where I still appreciate the satisfaction

of performing at my peak potential.

However, I have learned to have more compassion for myself.

Things often don't go according to plan, and instead of forcing a square peg into a

round hole, I've learned it's best to manage the situation without judgment.

Going back to working out, I now focus less on maximizing my gains and instead focus on

longevity and enjoyment.

Number three, inefficient studying methods.

Fueled by my desire to crush it in every class and set the curve as many times as possible,

I figured I just needed to study harder.

I recently went over why this is absolutely not the case, and how you should study smarter

rather than harder.

But I would sit down and study for hours and avoid taking breaks.

Of course, this led to rapidly diminishing returns.

Had I practiced the Pomodoro technique and broken up my study sessions, I would have

maintained a higher intensity over a longer period of time, and ultimately I would have

gotten more done in less time.

I didn't effectively utilize active learning methods either, like flashcards, mnemonics,

or condensing and summarizing my notes.

Instead, I took notes and just re-read them, and only occasionally did practice problems.

It was brute force and intense.

And while it ultimately worked, if I had adopted more effective study habits, I would have

been able to achieve the same results in much less time.

Number four, not prioritizing sleep.

Going along with inefficient study methods, I pulled one all-nighter in college during

my first quarter, and that was enough for me to learn how terrible they are.

In that setting, your cognitive performance is dramatically decreased.

For simple exams testing contextual knowledge, this isn't as big of a deal, but it is still

suboptimal.

But cognitively demanding courses, like physics, math, organic chemistry, or neuroscience require

you to be fresh and work through novel problems, not just regurgitate information.

A fresh mind is critical.

Even though I stopped pulling all-nighters after the first one, I still didn't really

prioritize my sleep.

I used to say, “Sleep is for the weak” or “I'll sleep when I'm dead”.

I know, all this so cringeworthy.

Staying up late and waking up early, fueled by adrenaline, only added to my stress and

hindered my mental and physical performance.

While sleep deprivation is often unavoidable in med school and residency, there's really

no excuse in college.

There will be several times in your career where you don't get enough sleep, but even

the act of optimizing for higher quality sleep during these few hours can make a drastic

difference.

I go over how to sleep smarter in my earlier videos, using sleep hygiene and sleep science

to your advantage.

Number five, not structuring my days ahead of time.

I really learned to love the art of scheduling and discipline in medical school.

This opened up an entirely new way to live more effectively – maximizing both work

and play.

In college, I didn't approach each day with a plan.

I simply had my course schedule and maybe one or two extracurriculars in my calendar,

and the rest of my day, including gym workouts, was more of “I'll do it at some point”,

kind of thing.

And as you can imagine, I missed several workouts, particularly around midterms and finals.

It was only during senior year, after getting accepted to medical schools, that I approached

weight training seriously and made sizable gains which ofcourse, promptly lost in medical

school.

If I scheduled my day as I do now, juggling my extracurriculars, coursework, and working

out, would have been much easier, and I likely would have gotten much further in terms of

strength gains and progress with certain extracurriculars that ended up becoming neglected.

Here's yet something else that is totally cringeworthy, in college I felt like I had

to drink when I went out to party in order to have a good time.

Of course, I don't prescribe to that anymore for multiple reasons.

First, binge drinking is just not good for you no matter how you cut it.

Second, even the argument of moderate drinking such as the suggestion that one to two glasses

of red wine can be beneficial has recently been debunked in a meta-analysis.

And third, I just don't like the way I feel the following day.

Since medical school, I've found myself drinking far less – only a handful of times per year,

and I couldn't be happier.

I have a blast going out, even without alcohol.

This is likely common sense for most of you, but for some reason, I had bought into the

narrative that when you go out to bars, clubs, or apartment parties, drinking was the way

to go.

I'm glad I am no longer so foolish.

And I'm sure that looking back there are things I do today that will make me think, "how in

the world did I think that was a good idea?"

Anyway, college was a great learning opportunity for me and much has changed since then.

Hopefully, you can avoid making the same mistakes by learning from mine.

We've released all new courses on how to ace interview both for medical school and residency.

We're proud of how thorough, comprehensive and high-yield they are.

Let us know your thoughts.

They are live courses and we're constantly working to update and improve them.

Let me know down in the comments if you have any bad habits that you have changed during

your educational career.

I would love to hear them.

Thank you all so much for watching.

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And I will see you guys in that next one.