I have a rough two weeks in front me, too. Midterms. And some parts of my second-year classes will end at midterm.

I never was one to learn much from recordings of my textbooks or recordings of any books. That's just because that's not my learning style. I'm more of a reader or a hands-on experiential learner than I am a student who gets a lot out of simply listening to words. When a lecturer or instructor is talking and writing on boards, it's different somehow. I guess because I'm taking notes. When I read, I can highlight or jot notes in the margins. The interaction with the learning materials helps solidify the subject matter for me.

The notes I take nowadays are already typed. Most of us med students have our laptops with us in class and our books on CD loaded onto the laptop. So what I do instead of retyping the notes is go back through them and clean up the typos and review.

I have to study in small doses over a long period of time. Twenty minutes and then a break. Then another 20 minutes, followed by another break. After about two hours, I take a longer break and eat or exercise, sometimes just going for a walk. That restoreth my brain and I can sit back down and study some more. I snack on something at every break between the 20-minute periods, but that's how I reward myself. I try real hard to give myself enough away time (usually a minimum of 8 hours) to let what I've learned sink into my brain and let my unconscious mind do the necessary sorting/filing. In the morning before a test, I typically do one last review session and then count on my brain's "batch cycle," the unconscious sorting/filing process, to call the necessary info up to the surface. It seems to work. Getting enough sleep helps, too, and helps with the sorting/filing process.