Welcome. This is episode 505 of the Divine Intervention Podcast.

Into this podcast I'm going to be addressing a topic that I promised last week that I will be addressing.

And this is going to be why students fail USMLE exams.

Why students fail USMLE exams. And please, I will say a few things here. I'm going to try to be very calm and

kind with this podcast. But some of the things I may see today may be hard-hitting,

but I will just encourage you to please just take it with some grace. I'm not making this podcast to make anyone feel terrible. I'm making this podcast because I truly, genuinely from my heart, want to help.

I truly genuinely from my heart want to help. So, I'm just going to go right into it. Number one, why do people

feel the US Emily exams? Number one, and it's probably one of the more common reasons

is a poor foundation. It's a poor foundation. If you're building, if you want to erect the

building, the very first thing you do is the foundation. And it's pretty amazing how fast the building goes up after the

foundation has been laid. But many people going through their USMLA exams with very poor

foundations, very very poor foundations. Very, very poor foundations. Again, what's your

foundation? Your foundation is what's your base of knowledge is. And that base of knowledge You really have to be very careful when you're defining your

foundation because some people will say they have a broad base of knowledge or

they have a broad base of poor quality knowledge.

It's not just enough to have a foundation,

it's important to have a foundation

with the right components. Many people, they have a broad base of knowledge, but that knowledge is a bunch of sand, basically. It's not rocks, right? So you just have to be very, very careful with this. The foundation you're building, are you building a good foundation?

That's one of actually a very common problem with medical students. They'll see they've matured this deck, they've done this, they've done that, they've done that. They've done that. They've built a foundation. It's just a faulty foundation. And the thing is if you know that you have a poor foundation, then you have no business having a short dedicated period. That is the truth. You have a poor foundation, you have absolutely no business having a short dedicated period.

No, you're going to need a long dedicated period.

And you see some people they try to short circuit the process.

They want to start building when they have no foundation. That's why sometimes this generic advice of just

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