Hours at work and play...

[Redlan]

I have applied to McGill and am now waiting to hear back to see if I've got an interview. What is crossing my mind these days is what sort of time do you McGill med students have to devote to classes, studying etc... in general school related stuff, and how much time does the average student have left over to take off (per week). To put it plainly, do most students manage to take one day off per week throughout the duration of their studies at McGill?

Second question - I've noticed that some students regret having gone to all the lectures (i.e. they feel they could have spent their time more wisely studying or doing other activities). Is this a common and/or sensible idea - esp. to save time?

[miss_sunshine]

during BOM (first year and a half), you've got plenty of free time and depending o nthe unit (and the number of smallgroups, which are mandatory), you can take quite a few days off during the week. Wednesday afternoon classes are mandatory (physicianship lectures). I started off BOM going to 99% of lectures for unit 1-2 but then my class attendance decreased as I started going through the material on my own. Some units are more suited to "independent" learning than others (for example, the included lectures notes may be better or the readings in the textbook closely follow the lecture). The easiest units to skip class (for me at least) were 6-8. Lectures are now recorded as well (video and audio). It's great because you can have time during the day to do other things as long as you still study the notes/text. I find I learnt better this way than passively absorbing the material in class.

in later parts of med school, ICm for example, the amount of free time is variable as we are split into groups and each tutor has a different schedule and amount of time free to spend teaching us. Some groups start at 7:00 (my group for example), while others start at more decent hours but run later into the day(6-7 pm).