I want to introduce myself; I am an 18-year-old from Maharashtra, India who will be moving to Ancona at the end of 2026 to study medicine in English for 6 years at UNIVPM.
I’m going to put in a lot of effort into preparing myself for this transition and making the most out of my time in med school by creating real and high-quality circles with other expats and locals from day 1.
I’d love to connect with others in Italy who are rationalist or EA people, especially around Ancona, Rome and Milan.
I’d be happy to offer any international student perspective or assistance in connecting to others, but would really be interested to know about any practical ways to succeed in med school and connect to high quality networks when moving.
I’m looking forward to having some real conversations.
Have you heard of Anki, a spaced reputation software program? Idea is: flashcards along with an algorithm that tries to optimally schedule them for around the time you’d just be about to forget them, which has been shown in studies to be the best time to review (called the ‘spacing effect’). Furthermore retrieval practice (as opposed to reading the source material again) has also been shown to improve memory—the act of recalling something appears to do a bunch to help you remember it better.
There are many users with thousands of cards that they keep up with with just ~20 cards of daily review that takes only 5 minutes. Note that it can feel longer—in my experience it takes more effort to recall cards that you’re near forgetting, and it also may make you feel dumb. I think if that starts to drag you should remind yourself how it’ll be over soon, and how much you can keep up with if you just take a little time daily.
I’m told that lots of med students successfully use it. Perhaps you should start earlier than them? Also I assume you’ve already done some learning of medicine yourself?
Hello Everyone,
I want to introduce myself; I am an 18-year-old from Maharashtra, India who will be moving to Ancona at the end of 2026 to study medicine in English for 6 years at UNIVPM.
I’m going to put in a lot of effort into preparing myself for this transition and making the most out of my time in med school by creating real and high-quality circles with other expats and locals from day 1.
I’d love to connect with others in Italy who are rationalist or EA people, especially around Ancona, Rome and Milan.
I’d be happy to offer any international student perspective or assistance in connecting to others, but would really be interested to know about any practical ways to succeed in med school and connect to high quality networks when moving.
I’m looking forward to having some real conversations.
Have you heard of Anki, a spaced reputation software program? Idea is: flashcards along with an algorithm that tries to optimally schedule them for around the time you’d just be about to forget them, which has been shown in studies to be the best time to review (called the ‘spacing effect’). Furthermore retrieval practice (as opposed to reading the source material again) has also been shown to improve memory—the act of recalling something appears to do a bunch to help you remember it better.
There are many users with thousands of cards that they keep up with with just ~20 cards of daily review that takes only 5 minutes. Note that it can feel longer—in my experience it takes more effort to recall cards that you’re near forgetting, and it also may make you feel dumb. I think if that starts to drag you should remind yourself how it’ll be over soon, and how much you can keep up with if you just take a little time daily.
I’m told that lots of med students successfully use it. Perhaps you should start earlier than them? Also I assume you’ve already done some learning of medicine yourself?