First: It's in The Atlantic, that inane former pulpit for the twisted views of Andrew A.W. Sullivan. I added the appropriate initials for him, they stand for Always Wrong. Since he left the magazine it has continued to be bright shining beacon for absurd and irrelevant takes on serious issues mixed in with oh-so-serious screeds about meaningless drivel of which this story is a prime example. Poor little rich girl Laura Dimon focuses her writing on such robustly investigated issues as "The last taboo for women" is "Doing your business (taking a crap) at work". So the Atlantic continues it's proud contributions to fleshing (or is it flushing) out the American Zeitgeist.

Pardon my ignorance please.

When I was in Medical school back in the early 80's we had a 2 lecture services that printed out the days lectures verbatim for every course. Also, an audio tape was available from the library. But the real answer to your question is how do you learn best, in detail. If you are still struggling with that this is going to be a rough year. Personally, and I'll admit I was considered odd for this, I never went to class. It just drained me because of all the distractions and the energy it took to take notes and listen at the same time. Also, almost ever professor misspoke about some fact in every lecture, and contrary to what one responder said about the value of the lectures, the tests were based on the facts in the textbooks. So what I did was to read the lectures to just see what was emphasized, then read the text book 2-3 times depending on what grade I was aiming for. In the first read of the lecture notes and textbook chapter I would stop on any concept or function I didn't really understand and access other resources if I need to, usually that was another classmate. I am a visual learner so my notes were marked up in 3 different colors with boxes, underlining, highlighting etc. That was the way I pared the massive amount of information down to the essential facts that had to be memorized. As I used to say to my classmates who asked how I could possibly pass without going to class "There is no shortage of data, only time to digest it". p.s. getting the old tests is a huge help. Best of luck.

You simply have no idea of what you are talking about. Medical school forces even the reluctant among us to become literally scholars of the human mind, body and even the spirit, if we meet a wise mentor. I would ask the writer if he went to college, and if so what the largest load of serious science course he took at one time in a semester. In my second year of med school, we had 16 courses, each with it's own comprehensive final and we were scheduled to be in class 40 hours a week. In this age of molecular medicine a physician needs to know where, and in which of our cells a medication works and which genes it turns on or off that govern a particular metabolic process. This is in addition to knowing the anatomy and physiology (again to the molecular and genetic level) of the entire human body and all of its organ systems. Try looking up one organ system and remembering the details well enough to stand up to extremely vigorous interrogation. I'll give you a year to do it. When you are ready for your test just let me know.