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Complete Sketchy Micro
in 6 Days. Actually Remember It.

The WRWRT method. Day-by-day breakdown. The system 100+ students used to finish all of Sketchy and move on.

By Dr. Marish Asudani · Published · Updated

How do I finish Sketchy Micro in 6 days?

Use the WRWRT method on every video: Watch, Recall, Watch again, Read the PDF, Test. Watch at 1x with no notes, recall the story in your head, rewatch only the gaps at 1.5x or 1.75x, read the Sketchy PDF, then do the First Aid Guide MCQs for those pages that night. Go DNA viruses, RNA viruses, parasites, fungi, gram positives, then gram negatives. Do TB, COVID, HIV and Bunyaviruses from First Aid. The goal is to finish, not master.

🎬 6 days to complete 🧠 WRWRT method ✅ 100+ students tested
⚠️ The Most Important Thing to Understand First

The goal is not to master microbiology in 6 days. The goal is to finish all of Sketchy and move on. The real learning happens when you hit these organisms in UWorld two months later and the visual story comes straight back. Completion over perfection. Every time.

4 exceptions — do these directly from First Aid, not Sketchy: TB, COVID, HIV, and Bunyaviruses. Skip them in Sketchy entirely.

The WRWRT Method — Applied to Every Video
W
Watch
1x speed. Full attention. No notes — notes split your attention, and your brain cannot process the visual story and write at the same time. Just watch.
R
Recall
Close the video. Look away. Walk the whole story through chronologically in your head. That struggle is the method — skip it and the rest does nothing.
W
Watch again
1.5x or 1.75x. Only the parts you forgot during recall — not the whole video. Fill the gaps, then move on.
R
Read the PDF
Open the Sketchy PDF for those organisms — the written version of what you just watched. Reading it once converts the picture into words you can actually retrieve on exam day. Download the PDF →
T
Test
Close the day with the Test Yourself MCQs in the First Aid Guide for those exact First Aid pages. If you cannot answer them, you watched — you did not learn. Page numbers are on each day below.
The T is the whole method

“Test” is not a vibe. Here is exactly where it lives.

Watch, recall, watch again, read — all four of those feel productive and prove nothing. The T is the only step that tells you the truth. And it is not you writing your own questions.

It is the First Aid Guide: all 646 pages of First Aid (as of October 2026), decoded page by page, with 2,534 page-by-page MCQs built into them. Every page ends in Test Yourself — questions on that page, not that chapter.

What is on a single page
Focus On — what actually matters on the page
Concept Walkthrough — the teaching First Aid left out
How is this tested? — Common Confusion → Core Concept → The Trap → Your Approach
Key Takeaways
Test Yourself MCQs — the T step
Worked example
Day 5 — gram positives. Sketchy gives you the organisms; First Aid carries them on pages 132–137.

That night, open the First Aid Guide at page 132. Read Focus On, then Concept Walkthrough, then “How is this tested?” — which names the trap before you fall into it. Then answer the Test Yourself MCQs at the bottom of that page. Then 133. Then 134, and on to 137.

Six pages. The page number is the address — you never hunt for anything.

If you cannot answer the page, you did not learn the page. You watched a cartoon. The T is what converts twenty hours of Sketchy into marks — and skipping it is the single most common reason a student “finished micro” and still misses the organism on the form.

Want to see one before you commit? Here is exactly what one page looks like, in full.

Open the First Aid Guide — free for 3 days →
Renal is permanently free. You can run the entire T step on a full system before you decide anything.
Two More Steps That Make Everything Stick
2
Open the Sketchy PDF after every 6–7 videos
It's a written version of everything you just watched. Read through it and highlight anything you can't recall. Those highlights aren't random — they're a precise map of where your memory breaks down. That's your revision list.
3
End every day with MCQs on usmlevault.com
Once you've done 15–20 videos, go to the Microbiology section on the Vault and do the questions for every topic you covered that day. By the time you're done, you've hit each organism 4 times in 4 different formats. Target: understand at least 70% by end of day.
Day-by-Day Breakdown
DAY
1
DNA Viruses
Start with the DNA viruses. You're learning the Sketchy format — take it slow and let each visual story land.

Test yourself at the end of the day: open The FA Guide → Microbiology in the left-hand navigation and run the Test Yourself MCQs on First Aid pp. 160–163.
3–4 hours
HSV-1 HSV-2 EBV CMV VZV HHV-6 HHV-8 Polyomavirus HPV Parvovirus Adenovirus Poxvirus Hep B
End of day: All DNA viruses done. Apply WRWRT to each video — watch, recall, watch again, read the PDF, then test on the Test Yourself MCQs. You're building baseline visual memory — don't expect to remember everything yet.
DAY
2
RNA Viruses
RNA viruses. Day 1's momentum carries you — same rhythm, new stories. Watch vaccine info carefully; Step 1 tests it heavily.

Test yourself at the end of the day: open The FA Guide → Microbiology in the left-hand navigation and run the Test Yourself MCQs on First Aid pp. 164–173.
3–4 hours
Poliovirus Coxsackievirus Rhinovirus Hep A Calicivirus Flavivirus Hep C Togavirus Orthomyxovirus Paramyxovirus Rhabdovirus Filovirus Reovirus / Rotavirus
End of day: All RNA viruses done — both viral families complete. Skip COVID and HIV in Sketchy; do those directly from First Aid.
DAY
3
Parasites
Parasites are short, weird, and unforgettable once Sketchy draws them. Enjoy this one — it moves fast.

Test yourself at the end of the day: open The FA Guide → Microbiology in the left-hand navigation and run the Test Yourself MCQs on First Aid pp. 152–158.
2–3 hours
Entamoeba Giardia Cryptosporidium Toxoplasma Trypanosoma brucei Naegleria fowleri Trypanosoma cruzi Babesia Leishmania Trichomonas Enterobius Tissue nematodes (optional) Schistosoma
End of day: Parasites done. Skip Malaria in Sketchy — do it directly from First Aid. Fewer organisms, high yield.
DAY
4
Fungi
Fungi are fewer but high-yield — Step 1 leans on them. Watch the dimorphic ones carefully.

Test yourself at the end of the day: open The FA Guide → Microbiology in the left-hand navigation and run the Test Yourself MCQs on First Aid pp. 149–150.
2–3 hours
Histoplasma Coccidioides Blastomyces Paracoccidioides Malassezia Sporothrix Dermatophytes Aspergillus Candida Cryptococcus Mucor / Mucormycosis Pneumocystis
End of day: All fungi done. You've now cleared every virus, parasite, and fungus — the bacteria are next.
DAY
5
Gram Positives
Into the bacteria. Gram positives first — clean, high-yield, exam gold. You're in full rhythm now.

Test yourself at the end of the day: open The FA Guide → Microbiology in the left-hand navigation and run the Test Yourself MCQs on First Aid pp. 132–137.
3–4 hours
Staph aureus Staph epidermidis Group A Strep Group B Strep Strep pneumoniae Enterococcus Bacillus anthracis Clostridia (all 4) Listeria Actinomyces
End of day: Gram positives done. One big day left — the gram negatives and the odd ones out.
DAY
6
Gram Negatives + Atypicals, Myco & Spirochetes
The biggest day: gram negatives, then the leftovers — atypicals, mycobacteria, and spirochetes. Push through and you're done.

Test yourself at the end of the day: open The FA Guide → Microbiology in the left-hand navigation and run the Test Yourself MCQs on First Aid pp. 139–144, plus pp. 145–148 for the atypicals, spirochetes and zoonotics taught inside this block.
4–5 hours
Neisseria Proteus Yersinia Shigella E. coli Campylobacter Klebsiella H. pylori Pseudomonas Salmonella Vibrio Bordetella Chlamydia Legionella Brucella Francisella Coxiella Pasteurella Bartonella Gardnerella Mycoplasma Rickettsia (all 3) Leprosy Borrelia Syphilis (Treponema) Leptospirosis
All of Sketchy Micro complete. ~20 hours of content in 6 days, every organism hit multiple times — watch, recall, rewatch, PDF, MCQs. Skip TB in Sketchy; do it from First Aid.
What NOT to Do
Watch at 2x speed. Sketchy is designed for 1x. Speed it up and your brain skips the memory encoding step entirely.
Take notes while watching. Notes split your attention. Your brain cannot process the visual story and write at the same time.
Watch each video multiple times during the sprint. Completeness over depth. Spaced repetition happens in UWorld, not in Sketchy.
Watch passively while texting or multitasking. Sketchy requires active visual processing. Close everything else.
Try to memorize everything before moving on. The goal is to finish. The real learning happens months later in UWorld when the visual story snaps back. If that urge keeps winning, read the ten canon events — it is one of the prep mistakes almost every student makes.
After Day 6 — What Comes Next
Days 7–9 General Pharmacology — 3-day sprint using the HY Pharm PDF + usmlevault.com. Same principle: complete it and move on. The FWRT pharmacology method is WRWRT applied to drugs.
Day 10+ First system: Renal — Start the 13-week system-by-system schedule. The Sketchy foundation you just built becomes relevant immediately. Before you call renal done, run it against the completion checklist.
Week 7+ The payoff — When you hit a microbiology question in UWorld, the Sketchy visual story will come straight back. That's spaced repetition working. That's why you did it this way. The same sprint logic scales to revision later — the whole of First Aid in six days.

The Microbiology MCQs, system-wise micro image, and all Vault resources are at usmlevault.com. Everything in this plan is already there.

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