[00:08] Torah: Hello, welcome to the Prep Me Podcast. This is a podcast especially for Canadian pre-med students. We are Torah and Chansey.

[00:16] Chansey: Hello.

[00:17] Torah: And we come to you every couple weeks with a podcast that answers all of your questions about getting into medicine. So this week we’re going to talk about how to study for the MCAT or sometimes how to not study for the MCAT and see how you do. But one of the best ways to make your studying easier is with our sponsor Prep101. They are your one stop shop for all of your MCAT preparation needs. They even have a study schedule that they make especially for you, your background, your timing with a personalized study schedule when you sign up for the comprehensive MCAT prep class. So check them out at prep101.com/mcat. So now today, Chansey, we’re talking about studying.

[00:57] Chansey: Studying.

[00:58] Torah: And you did the self-studying route and you did your MCAT without taking a prep course. So how did you study for the MCAT?

[01:06] Chansey: Not effectively is the summary.

[01:09] Torah: Well, the first time, maybe not. I always tease you about the first time you wrote the MCAT, but what about the other ones?

[01:15] Chansey: You tease me about the first time? I’ve never even heard you tease before.

[01:18] Torah: Never.

[01:18] Chansey: Never. You’re right because I think a lot of people when they’re thinking they want to go into medicine or write the MCAT, they don’t really realize or recognize all the tools that exist out there, that is hard copies, supplies on the internet, prep courses, all that. They don’t really know what exists until you really dive. And I think podcasts like this really helped to bring that to light. But I didn’t have that so I approached it like, “Okay, this is a huge test. I know I need time. I’m going to start early.” That was my biggest thing is that I’m going to start early. What am I going to do early? That took a lot more time to figure out in terms of the study plan. But it’s like, I need to start early. This isn’t a weekend thing. I’m going to give it a month, a month and a half. That was my initial approach to it.

[02:05] Torah: Oh, that was a lot of time for you?

[01:06] Chansey: Then. Yeah, then it was a lot of time for me. Yeah, for sure. I don’t know. Because I think like you, we came out of high school and that part of schooling was easy and there were no real hurdles, and then you get shocked by university and then certainly shocked by something like the MCAT. So yes, that was a lot of time for me then. And I think I would just literally, I’ll be completely honest, I think I sort of devoted a week to every subject. It was like, okay, a week of CARS, a week of bio, a week of chem, and so on and so forth. And then the last week or two was practicing, never even doing full lengths or never doing sections, but doing them at the very, very end. And then I think one or two of them went okay. We’re talking like just the cusp average, and others didn’t go so okay. But I was at a point where I was like, the test is coming. I wasn’t maybe mature enough to think about rescheduling or things like that, so I went for it.

[01:58] Torah: Did you know you weren’t prepared though?

[02:59] Chansey: I felt that way.

[03:00] Torah: Or you thought, “I’m going to be okay”?

[03:01] Chansey: I felt that way because of those full things. At the end when you really sit down and do the… It was still around six hours at the time and I was like, “Ooh, is it just that I had a hard test?” I think I convinced myself that, oh, these are just hard MCATs. I know this stuff. I studied for a month, I know this stuff. It was a month. And then I think I had a false security thinking that that was enough time and maybe over-reassuring myself that, “Oh you made silly mistakes. You won’t make them next time,” or “That was a hard MCAT, it’s going to be fine.” So a lot of like, I don’t know, self-fueling that I was more prepared than I was.

[03:35] Torah: And the assumption that it’s a science test, so as long as you know it, you’ll be good.

[03:40] Chansey: Yeah. Well, I wasn’t even thinking about how people review the MCAT in terms of admissions. My thought was, “Oh, maybe CARS, at the time of verbal reasoning, maybe it won’t go so well. That’s okay because I’ll do really well on the science sections and then my total score will be well.” I was so naive to even just the interpretation of the score sets. So it goes to show how that could really sink you. Like how there’s prep to prep for the MCAT, you know what I mean? And applications and all that.

[04:07] Torah: Yeah. Okay. But then you did well on your MCAT, you are a doctor now.

[04:11] Chansey: A success story.

[04:11] Torah: So what was the study schedule that– Yeah. What changed? So your first time you’re like, “Oh, I could just pound this out in a month.” And then what changed?

[04:20] Chansey: I imagine you can probably think of what changed. It certainly wasn’t a deficit to be teaching the MCAT. Essentially almost using the fault at the time of the test not going so well of saying, you know what, over time in grad school I was like, “I feel like I really got a grasp of this material,” whether it be bio and be a little bit of psych soc at the same time, “I’m going to teach it.” So teaching it gave some reassurance to the material, but what changed in terms of the outcome I think primarily was how much more I understood the test. I understood the way schools used the test. I understood the rules of cutoffs. I understood the studying schedule way better because of being in that world of seeing many people doing it and helping people doing it and learning and researching all the strategies.

[05:03] So I was just so much better researched and prepared going into it so that when I executed, I knew, hey, here’s my three-and-a-half, almost four-month plan of studying for this test and intermixing subjects. And every week, doing, if not a full length, doing a section. It was much more integrated and something I stuck to a study plan that made the difference, and something that wasn’t shortchanged by time. It was indeed four months. It was that full-time or extra part-time job of studying. Certainly, that’s what made the difference.

[05:33] Torah: And I do think that it is a 10-week kind of minimum process.

[05:39] Chansey: Oh, no doubt. I would say minimum. Minimum.

[05:43] Torah: Right?

[05:43] Chansey: Yeah.

[05:44] Torah: Because you need time to process the material, to kind of integrate it, and then practice. And dedicate four, five, six straight days over those 10 weeks in order to do a full-length exam. What materials did you use?

[06:02] Chansey: I’ll say at the time because I want to make sure listeners know not to. Do what I say, not what I did. Early on, in the unsuccessful attempts, I used a resource from everybody. I was like, “Oh, this bio looks really good from this resource. Oh, I like this chem book because it’s nice and concise and has lots of practice.” So I was jumbling between materials and study companions and practice and I had so much. I’m talking there’s probably 16 books on my desk. And that in and of itself was overwhelming and I think deterred efficient studying versus later, all I used was Examkrackers. And it was something that I had friends that were in medicine, I had fellow grad students that had just gotten into medicine and it was sort of by recommendation as well as what we were using at the time in Prep101. I thought, “Well gosh, I’m hearing it from all sides, I’ve got to use the same resource.” I know the bio one for Prep101, but I’ve never really opened the physics text. I’ve never really opened the CARS text. But I honestly have nothing but amazing things to say about those resources. It was all Examkrackers and then I had a few additional practice sets from AAMC and maybe a few Kaplans as well at the time.

[07:08] Torah: Yeah. And I think one of the mistakes people make early on is just trying to accumulate books and become a book collector instead of a book reader, and think they’re going to just get a whole bunch of materials and that will be a start. And that just becomes, I think, really overwhelming and psychologically draining to just stare at those books, those 16 books on your desk. Right? The other thing, how much did you use the AAMC resources? Because I think that those are absolutely crucial because it’s straight from the horse’s mouth. They developed the MCAT. All the other companies are riffing off of and really studying hard to replicate the MCAT’s style, which is to be frank, quite easy to do. But it’s the AAMC that’s the original, so the OG. Did you use the AAMC materials?

[08:00] Chansey: Yeah, certainly. I kind of thought of it similar to you, Torah, doing your bio classes in Alberta. As a student, I could find tests from all over the country. I could even find tests from older professors. But it’s not your test, it’s not your style, it’s not your level of difficulty, the way you format. So I think I had five or six full-length formal AAMCs, and then they also at the time had a practice set which was 50 questions from each section. And I used that to the point where I think I did them twice. I did a full-length, and I would review, and then I would start the section that was the worst, and I would repeat it three months later just to see how it compared. Just to give enough time that I wouldn’t remember all the details of the questions. But I still had those resources and there certainly were the most accurate to real test day. They were online, they were on the computer, so it was like I was sitting there doing the test at the testing facility, which was great. And I felt it recapitulated the real MCAT. I felt the same on test day as I did using those resources at home with the exception that I didn’t have a dog that could come up and I could pet to the left. I was in a cubicle. That was the only difference.

[08:00] Torah: I would maybe deem my dog a therapy dog so I could pet him halfway through the test just to calm me down.

[09:14] Chansey: That would be so nice.

[09:14] Torah: I know.

[09:15] Chansey: That’s what it needs. That’s what the MCAT needs is it needs pet therapy in the room.

[09:20] Torah: Just in between, at the breaks, right?

[09:22] Chansey: Yes.

[09:23] Torah: Okay. So then how much do you think is the best balance of studying? Because you do have to do some studying like you’re studying for an undergraduate exam. You do have to just memorize your amino acids, you just have to memorize the formula and look at the theories and just kind of get the science knowledge. But what do you think is the optimal studying versus training your test-taking ability?

[09:46] Chansey: That is so tough. I think about that all the time and I’m sure we could ask that when we’re teaching these courses. And I think everyone’s a little bit different but I think the important thing is you need to equally partition the practice with the studying. I think that’s the main theme is that many people spend too much time studying, trying to hammer up those few concepts that they just keep forgetting, missing out on practice time. Some people are gonna be 50/50, some people will be, “I’m going to study 60% of the time for my first half, so my first month, say, or first two months. I’m going to study 60% of the time, practice 40, and then I’m going to shift. I’m going to do 80% practice, 20% studying material. But I think it’s totally fair if in the early stages and the get-go if you want to devote your first month into learning material. Especially if you’re coming at it as a mature student or parent turned student again, or someone who just did a major that was not within the field or the bios and the sciences, you’re certainly going to put a bit more emphasis on the beginning to learn that content but I don’t think you can shortchange the value of practice.

[10:46] And it’s not practical to say, “Oh look, I’m doing great. I’ve got my 520.” Well, if you had your 520, you’d probably stop your studying there and just go write the thing. But you want to do it like you said. You want to experience the test, you want to experience the format, you want it to be so on test day when you walk into the room, the only thing you’re thinking about is, “Okay, hit me with material, show me what you got.” You’re not thinking, “Oh, how do these passages work? And how do I mark a question? How does the timer really work? Is this really six hours?” That should not be in your mind at all. You know all those answers. And I think people fail that because they don’t practice early and they don’t experience those AAMC resources and the mock full-lengths and all of that.

[11:25] Torah: And it’s also like, don’t get discouraged from the early practice that you do where you don’t score well, and treat it as a learning curve that you’re on. And then eventually you do kind of hit that exponential phase. But I was curious, I wanted to ask your ideas on this idea of splitting, like, again, starting maybe 60/40 studying, practice. Do you think that split changes depending on which subject? Because for instance, if I’m doing physics – I haven’t done physics since first-year university – I would probably do a hundred percent studying for pretty much a month and then turn it into practice. Whereas if you give me a bio test, I’ll be like, oh, I do have to brush up some topics. Sometimes I teach things and forget about them instantly. So I’d have to think about forcing myself to remember. So do you think we should treat the subjects differently depending on our strengths?

[12:14] Chansey: I think most people will by nature of feeling panic that there’s physics on this test and I haven’t done physics, we’ll say someone hasn’t done it since high school or even junior high. There’s that sheer panic there of, “I’m not going to write an MCAT that has physics on it if I haven’t even looked at it yet.” Sure, I think people will divide and conquer differently because they want to get a bit more exposure. But I don’t think that I have to stop practicing. You just have to be honest with yourself that if you’re going to do a full-length MCAT and you haven’t really covered a lot of chem yet and you do poorly in the chem section, there might be a tether there, there might be a reason for that. But you still have the good practice of going through problems, thinking about it, seeing all the tricks and the tips, and trying to employ strategies and all that that you’re also learning. You’re learning material, but good resources are going to teach you strategy too. And you don’t get to practice that strategy unless you’re doing the tests.

[13:02] But I think it’s totally fair to say, “Hey, if I haven’t done physics, I’m going to designate a bunch of time at the beginning to be two weeks of physics straight just to get the foundation that either A, I lost or B, I never really had. I think that’s totally fine. I also think people like… And we see this a bit in prep courses, but I think even personally, and I’d like to hear your thoughts too, whether it’s from studying from other things or teaching the MCAT is integrating the subjects. Not feeling like you have to solely be doing physics for three weeks and not look at bio or chem or CARS, but saying, Monday night is bio night, Tuesday night is chem night, Thursday night I’m doing CARS. What are your thoughts on that based on students you’ve taught and success stories and where people falter in terms of trying to figure out that scheduling? What do you think Torah?

[13:47] Torah: I think it’s mixing it up. I think mixing it up helps with that integration because we know that there’s organic chemistries in the bio section. We know that there’s bio in the psych section. We know there’s physics in the bio section. We know that it’s an integrated test, so I also need some to switch things up a lot. I don’t focus very well for long periods of time on one thing. And so I think that that one night in physics and that one night in CARS or whatever really would help. Again, just this idea of mixing it up and having a study schedule that allows for just that maturity in recognizing that this is an integrated test. And so that’s one of the reasons why Prep101 doesn’t do a month of bio and then a month of chem and then a month of physics because you want to mix it up. And I think that you do get bogged down. And I think psychologically to be able to sometimes transition into a strength every few days is nice.

[14:47] Chansey: It’s like the reward system. Like, “Oh I’ve been struggling so much with CARS” or, “I really hate doing my organic chem, but you know what, bio day is tomorrow or psych soc day is tomorrow,” and it gives you those mood lifts. That’s an excellent point.

[14:59] Torah: Okay, so did you ever do a study group?

[15:02] Chansey: Did I ever do a study group? You know what, I never did a study group in person. There were one or two forums I was part of. Because every once in a while, whether it’s from your resource itself that you’re like, “Oh is this really the right answer? I cannot understand why this is the correct answer in this practice set from, say, Examkrackers.” So being on an Examkrackers users forum, you could post that question and get a little bit of live feedback, and even sometimes authors from the book could chime in and clarify like, “Oh no, this is a systematic error in the book on this page,” blah, blah blah, so that I wasn’t losing sleep over the one question of like, I know this stuff but it’s telling me I’m wrong and I can’t settle with that because I’m a perfectionist and I’m that Type A personality and that’s going to ruin my studying tomorrow because all of a sudden I’m thinking about the question in this book. So that was a good forum. And then I had another one where it was just generic, everyone’s studying for the MCAT just asking topic-based questions and like, “What resources did you use?”

[15:54] Torah: But those forms terrify me.

[15:56] Chansey: They can.

[15:57] Torah: Because they’re full of such bad advice.

[16:01] Chansey: Totally. But you need to know your place in terms of what you’re using them for. And I think at the time, there weren’t a lot of people around me studying for the MCAT. So there’s definitely one that I dropped for that very reason where people are just stressing each other out and it’s like 100 people. No, I don’t want that. I want a little forum group of 12, 10 people that like, okay, I get the vibe of them, the questions they’re asking. Everyone’s using Examkrackers, everyone’s in Canada. You have to hone in on what works for you and know when you’re being bogged down by moles in a group that are not serving a purpose of helping you or helping each other and just deter or impact your studying. You have to field that for sure.

[16:39] Torah: I’ve got a student right now who is part of a study group and they meet twice a week I think, and do four-hour chunks of studying and keep each other honest. I do like that idea. I think you have to be both very strong personalities to not lose your confidence if your study partner is doing better than you or knows more and you start to get self-conscious about those things. So I love the idea of a study group. I love the idea of an in-person study group because I think that accountability is always good. Like we’re meeting at 8:00 AM, you don’t get a chance to sleep in. You are meeting someone. Someone is going to hold you accountable and you’re meeting in the library or whatever that is. I mean I’ve seen advice on forums like, “Just skip a passage in CARS,” or, “Read the questions before reading the passage.” Just horrific advice. And so it’s just objectively bad advice. So the forums yeah, do scare me a little bit, but that’s where good materials come in.

[17:41] Chansey: Yeah, you’re right. And you want to make sure those forums aren’t forms you’re following for strategy. You should be using materials for strategy. The forums are like those one-off questions. Lots of forums about applying to medicine and all that. But the MCAT style, I think a study group would be fantastic. I mean, we use them now. I use them in residency and you get together with a small group so that again, there’s accountability and you can pick a topic like, we’re doing chapter three of bio and we’re going to go around and just pick questions and quiz each other. Or we’re going to take 10 minutes and do this passage and then we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to talk about the importance, we’re going to talk about the stems where it tripped us up and we’re going to employ the strategies we’ve learned from our studying or from our prep course or whatever.

[18:16] These study groups I don’t think have to be limited to people that are going it alone as the self-studiers. I think it could very well be the people in Prep101 or in Kaplan or Princeton or whatever course you do if you go that route. You can still have a study group with people maybe doing that course with you or friends that aren’t in the course that are studying on their own. There might be good crosstalk there too. I think it’s a great idea to have a study group if you can find the right people that you can work well with.

[18:39] Torah: This is a big question that we get all the time, I think everyone gets. How many hours?

[18:44] Chansey: Many.

[18:46] Torah: Because, well apparently the hours that you study somehow proves your effectiveness. I’m more like how effective are you at studying? It’s not about the hours you put in but how well you use them. But anyway, that’s maybe a story for another day. But how many hours do you dedicate to the MCAT over let’s call it a 12-week study period? Because that is, in my opinion, close to the minimum.

[19:11] Chansey: Yeah. I’m just trying to do simple math in my head of what that looks like. I think we’re going minimums. If daily, we say approach it like a full-time job. If you could study for the MCAT five or six days a week, so that’s most days, like a work week, for seven, eight hours, you’d be in a good spot. But many people can’t do that. We have people that are scattering three or four hours a day, let’s say, or four or five. So if it’s five a day, five days a week, 25 hours, a hundred hours a month, 202 months. And then finally we have our 300 for the 12-week period you’re giving, and that’s the minimum. I think more people are going to be up towards the four or 500 hours minimum of studying. Some people are going to get up. I’ve fired people studying seven or 800 hours. But it depends on what you need.

[19:51] And like you said, you alluded to quality and quantity, it depends on what you’re doing with that time. If some of those hours are just revamping your study plan because you don’t like it or changing resources midway through studying, that’s obviously bad use of time and ineffective and it’s going to, I wouldn’t say sink you, but it certainly hurts your flow and your rhythm. But you need the time in because it takes time to learn material and it takes time to memorize and it takes time to do the practice. You can’t change the fact that the MCAT is six hours long. You can’t change the fact that a section is 59 minutes or an hour and 10. That’s inevitable.

[20:25] Torah: Well, I’m doing the math in my head too because the course is 140 hours, the Prep101 course is about just under 440 I think. Then you probably should do at least seven, I think, full-length exams just to get the rhythm and get your feelings in and out. So that’s… I can’t do that math. So that’s already been going on for about 200 hours. And then the amount of studying you go outside of that, yeah, 300 hours probably a minimum.

[20:52] Chansey: Yeah.

[20:52] Torah: Yeah. I’m with you. And a course makes your time very efficient for sure because studying alone, you’re more likely to get distracted. If you’re in a class for four hours, you’re focused for four hours. If you’re studying for four hours, you might take 15 bathroom breaks or coffee.

[21:09] Chansey: Yeah. And you or me or any other instructor is going to be honest with the time to the point of like, when do we move on? Versus I might get to, at home, be studying and get stumped on a passage and literally spend 30, 40 minutes on that one thing trying to figure it out, but I missed the opportunity to learn seven other things in that time span that I originally had in my study plan. So the courses certainly keep you accountable in that manner and keep you flowing and not getting stuck.

[21:35] Torah: Well, yeah, I could teach recombination and genetics for two hours. I do it in five minutes because it’s like, well this is a really unlikely question and it’s an extremely difficult topic and you can kind of fake it till you make it in this particular topic because we can do some on the side. And so I think that’s one of the– Again, we keep coming back to getting good materials, getting good materials because good materials also won’t be bloated. They’re not going to explain a topic that has appeared on one MCAT in the last 15 years. And then in that case it’s really a waste of time because you need to cover the big topics and then the medium topics and then the little topics. But the tiny topics, the ones asking about, I don’t know, the evolution of sexual dimorphism, you’re like, the chance of that appearing on the exam is so tiny that maybe we should move on.

[22:28] Chansey: And I think all the people that are writing the MCATs and many people like, again, those Type A-ers, those perfectionists, they want to know it all and they want to know it all the same. But that’s the study strategy that a lot of people I think are masked to or don’t realize that you need to prioritize that. Where’s the money? The money is in the bank so you go to the bank for money. You don’t go to the construction site for money. You have to pick your battles and you’re like, if you know these are the top five topics for bio, go for it. Not the sexual dimorphism, not the one question if it ever appears on interleukins and immunology. Sure it’s interesting, I love immunology, let’s do it.

[23:02] Torah: Yeah, but they’re never asking about interleukins.

[23:03] Chansey: I’ve never seen it on an MCAT.

[23:07] Torah: They’re never asking about it. But yeah, technically you can know a lot about it and never be rewarded. Okay. Hardest part of studying.

[23:14] Chansey: The hardest part of studying, which is also the reason that a lot of people are ultimately disappointed with their scores, is sticking to the study plan. That’s the hardest thing for me, I think is sticking to the plan because often people are studying during months where they normally would be seeking more hobbyist lifestyles and doing fun things and starting part-time work or whatever it is. So being able to realize that, oh this is a part of my life where this is a new component. This isn’t normally part of my summer where I spend five hours a day studying for the MCAT, right? So adapting to a study plan and sticking to it is the hardest part because there’s going to be so many times where you think, “Oh, I feel like I’m burning out a little bit. I need to take some time,” which is totally fine. But taking time is maybe taking a night off, not taking weekend after weekend after weekend, or pushing things and pushing things until exam day creeps up and you’re overwhelmed and you perform worse because of the anxiety of the fact that I didn’t get 30% of what I wanted done. 

[24:08] You control your fate in that. So I think the hardest part is just from the start to the finish is sticking with your plan and being patient. Being patient with the plan and being patient that results will come. Many people aren’t going to have an aced MCAT in the first week they do it, or even in the first half of their studying plan if I’m completely honest. And it’s tough to be worried that, oh, I’m not getting results yet, I’m not getting results yet. What’s the ending going to be? You need to practice patience.

[24:33] Torah: It’s a marathon.

[24:34] Chansey: Yeah.

[24:34] Torah: It’s a marathon. And I would echo that, and I think that cut yourself some slack, especially if you’re studying alone and you don’t have a support network around you of people going through the same thing. It’s one of the advantages of courses is everyone’s in it together. And burnout, for me, I see this year after year, burnout is week seven.

[24:54] Chansey: Yeah. I agree. Seven, eight, people are like, “I’m done. My brain is mush.”

[24:58] Torah: Zombies. Yeah. I feel like we need to like, in a course, plan for that, and have a donut party or something. And so I think even if you’re going it alone, know that burnout is going to happen and have a recovery plan. Cut yourself some slack, being a little bit more gracious with yourself and going, okay, I’m going to sit on my floor of my basement, have a donut party and be cool with it, and then be reenergized as soon as the energy will come back. And I think that’s what I found, maybe because I’m older and I’ve gone through a lot of independent work stuff. I do a lot of freelance work, and I know the inspiration is going to come, and sometimes I just have to wait for it. And it does come, as long as you allow yourself the space to take a break. So I think that has to be kind of planned in as well.

[25:48] Chansey: Yeah. Anticipating it. I think students, like, you’ve never studied for something like this before and you’ve never studied this long probably before. So you can almost anticipate that yeah, this additional feature of your life will burn you out to some capacity. Either it’s going to burn you out mentally because you’re just so tired of studying or you’re going to hit a part where you’re like, “Gosh, I haven’t seen people in forever.” And you can take rewards. Part of a study plan is knowing where you’re taking your breaks, anticipating things like burnout, and trying to prevent them or at least find your way to work through them in a healthy manner. And whether or not that’s like, okay, you know what, I don’t study on Saturdays. I just don’t do it. That’s my day with friends, that’s my day with family. And then Monday nights I play volleyball. Keep up some routine, keep up the things that keep you healthy in body so that you give the mind a break. That’s the best advice I’d say that maybe I even didn’t do necessarily well the first going offs and got okay tests. And when I did my best testing was when I was probably getting more respite like that.

[26:44] Torah: And the best test is maybe also when you were busiest.

[26:48] Chansey: Yeah. Probably. Multitasking and still like, oh I got to go to this wedding and I’ve got to do this and oh, we have a vacation in the middle so I got to plan around that. So yeah, versus I’ve got two months, my desk, my office, my books. It’s a recipe for disaster.

[27:02] Torah: It doesn’t work. I know. And then I do think that people should keep up their regular life and dedicate some time to studying. But the busier you are, often the more efficient you have to be. So that hour of studying becomes the power hour as opposed to an hour of studying because you’ve dedicated 18 hours that day to studying and that one hour you’re going to blow off. You can pound out a lot of material in an hour or two or three if you’re really efficient. And so I think recognizing that life continues, and it should because that’s the only way without burning out.

[27:40] Chansey: Yeah, 100%.

[27:43] Torah: All right, Chansey, anything else? We’re good. We’ve motivated people to A, study alone, which I guess our sponsor Prep101 wouldn’t be happy with, but that’s okay. That’s okay. We are not bold. They don’t listen to this.

[27:53] Chansey: Well, study alone, but you’re going to study alone even in a prep course. You’re going to have to study outside of it. So we’re just preparing you for the fact that not even a prep course can do it all for you. It’s going to be a game changer for many of us as it was for someone like me being in that world. But you still have to study on your own. So all this advice is still valid and important, but whatever way you choose to go about it, you just need to appreciate the process and have patience for it. That’s the big thing.

[28:18] Torah: And we will give another shout-out too when, if you’re studying it alone, you’re not involved in a prep class, Examkrackers materials, pick one horse, ride it all the way through, and Examkrackers has always been our favorite, not because they even pay us.

[28:33] Chansey: No, I haven’t seen a cent from Examkracker.

[28:34] Torah: We’ve had experience. Yeah. Love it. So if you’re going to go it alone, then please check out those nice, colorful books. The other ones tend to be either bloated or they’re just not as good. They’re just not as good. All right. Well thank you everyone today and tune in for the next episode.

[28:54] Chansey: See you, everybody.