Tumblr Resources To Get You Through The School Year!

Music revives me after stu(dying) 12+ hours a day ;-; If y'all have any music recs please hmu ♡

self discipline tips

here are tips I discovered very recently:

something is better than nothing. 5 minutes of work are better than zero. Just because you missed something on your schedule doesn’t mean you can’t still work on it, even for 5 minutes. Grow and build on this.

second drafts / reviews can be done after.

Don’t think you are going to do your very best work on the first try. Take the weight of perfectionism off your shoulders.

don’t think about doing it. just do it as fast as you can.

build on your productivity, not your failures.

If you come from a past of procrastinating and now feel motivated to change and discipline yourself, do NOT try to do everything at once.

if you have a set of different goals to accomplish, begin with the most important one. Wait until the rotine of working for that one settles in (you feel productive and comfortable-ish), and then begin with the next. Repeat.

this way you’ll be building your way up and not juggling everything at the same time, hoping everything works out.

be patient with yourself, you’ll get there!

set smaller deadlines for your goals

have monthly and weekly-ish deadlines

e.g. if you are doing a project, due 22nd Feb, set personal deadlines, like have Introduction written by 2nd Feb, have Methods written by 10th Feb, have project complete by 18th Feb.

take them as seriously as you possibly can, don’t miss out on yourself.

write realistic daily tasks and don’t stop until you finish them. after them you can do whatever you want

on writing realistic daily tasks, the secret is knowing you can only do so much in one day, but trusting you can accomplish everything in the course of any period of time (a week, or 2 weeks or a month, etc.) because you will combine the work from all these different days.

it’s very tempting to write down all the tasks you need to accomplish in one day to just get over with it, but the real deal is you won’t accomplish half of them. You’ll feel very unproductive then, wich leads to demotivation.

spread daily tasks in the time necessary.

have a consistent sleep schedule.

if your mind isn’t ready everything will fall apart.

have one rest day per week where you plan nothing, do whatever you want except studying. this can be harder than you expect!

(don’t forget these are effective only if you actually put them into practice! good luck babes!!)

Hey you wonderful person! I just started studying bio and was wondering if you had any advice on thinking like a biologist?

hey you wonderful person as well and budding biologist! 

Thinking like a biologist.. hmmm! never been asked something like this before, so this is great for me to think about it too! here are 7 “rules of biology” if you may, that i personally find truth in. it’s definitely not complete, and maybe not all 100% correct, since i am just one person. but it’s what i believe: 

nothing in biology is absolute. this field is about as lawless as lawlessnes gets. for example: “smoking causes lung cancer”–yes, in some cases, but not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, and not everyone who gets lung cancer smokes. because individuality exists in biology, it makes things complicated. that’s not to say there’s no rhyme or reason; it’s just that nothing happens in a vacuum/by itself so the answer to a lot things is: “well, it depends.” that’s why you’ll see a lot of words like “may”, “can”, “sometimes”, and “suggests” in biology. 

science is a tool created by humans to understand nature. thus, science can never be 100% free from human bias and error. we try to be as unbiased and close to the truth as we can by using things like experimental controls and large sample sizes, but at the end of the day, sometimes science can still be flawed. and that’s ok! but we need to be able to edit past discoveries to what we know now. (and going off of that, I really don’t like that popular quote by neil degrasse tyson: “science is true whether you believe it or not”. that’s not accurate. what’s accurate is “NATURE is true” because humans doing science can be very very flawed)

going off of that, question everything. don’t accept something is true until the evidence is sound (ie. good study design, no false interpretation of data, reputable sources, etc). even if someone well respected in the field says something, doesn’t always mean it’s true. be your own advocate in finding out the facts. 

sometimes the “outlier” can teach us the most. take cancer, for example. it’s definitely a non-normal state of health and being, but from it we learned so much about normal cellular and organ function. or how we’ve been able to discover some drug metabolism gene variations in certain populations because they didn’t respond well to a treatment during a clinical trial. a lot of knowledge in biology can come from studying what goes wrong or contrary to what we expected. 

your personal ethics may be challenged at times. this is particularly applicable for things like: science vs religion, research on animal models, who and what gets funding priority (eg. a cancer drug with the potential for pharma companies to make billions vs a tropical disease that primarily affects poor communities?), the high cost of pharmaceuticals/health-care in general, open-access knowledge vs getting scooped, is it right to sequence every individual’s genome, etc. you will truly need to know yourself, especially your beliefs and your limits, to navigate these situations. 

everything is connected, sometimes extending beyond the realm of biology. this is related to what can happen in a given situation is always “it depends”. everything affects everything; we–every living unit from microorganisms to cities–are all connected in some way. for example, recent research has shown certain populations of bacteria in our guts can alter our mental health, and it’s easy to see how that can change our day-to-day-life, which in turn can affect society in general. 

never cease to be fascinated. the biology of nature is amazing, everything from the smallest virus to the largest ecosystem. no matter how jaded you may become later in your career, never let go of that childlike curiosity that first brought you to the field. 

good luck and have fun on your adventure as a biologist :) and i’m always here if you need anything! 

USMLE STEP 1 STUDY TOOLS AND TIPS

It is approaching that time of year where the second year medical students are preparing to cram for the United States Medical Licensing Exam Step 1. A test some consider to be the most important exam of medical school and subsequently determines the rest of your life. That is a little dramatic but I think it should be your goal to do the best you can. Here are some of the tools I used to study for Step 1:

First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 2017

This is the holy bible of USMLE Step 1 studying. I highly recommend this book and I think almost every medical student who has taken the test would say the same. I would read through this book 2-3 times to really have it sink in.

Pathoma

A lecture series made by a certifiable genius: Dr. Husain Sattar, a pathologist from the University of Chicago. This series was amazing and incredibly detailed. A lot of high yield material is covered in his lectures. 

https://www.pathoma.com 

USMLE World

The question bank of all question banks. Though it may be school dependent, almost everyone from my medical school chose to go with this question bank. A couple thousand questions covering the majority of USMLE Step 1 topics. The questions are challenging but you will see your scores improve as you continue to study throughout your first and second year. I’ve even used this product for Step 2 and I am currently (literally open on my computer) using it for Step 3. My number one goal would be to complete every question offered in this question bank, it is a lot but well worth it.

https://www.uworld.com

The rest are to cover my weakest subjects from USMLE Step 1: Biochemistry, Microbiology and Pharmacology. I recommend the following tools to turn your greatest weakness into your greatest strength:

Microbiology

Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple

Lange Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Flash Cards

Pharmacology

Clinical Pharmacology Made Ridiculously Simple

Lange Pharmacology Flash Cards

Biochemistry

Clinical Physiology Made Ridiculously Simple

Lange Biochemistry and Genetics Flash Cards

yesterday I realised that I barely know anything in maths so I’m having to sort myself out - trying to go over 2+ topics a day, making what I like to call “emergency notes”, so far so good but #prayforzoë

one of my lecturers printed us a step-by-step guide to writing an essay for an assignment we had. i decided to type it up and share it with you guys. i think for the most part it is really useful and a super simple way to break down your essay. hope this helps :~)

How I Make Notecards! :)

After my post about notecards and midterms, a lot of you guys sent me messages about how I make them, what kind of cards or rings I use, etc. Soooo, without further ado…

I’ll be using my Chemistry notecards as an example since they’re probably the most well done AND they’re even color coded!

STEP 1: Gather materials (that sounds really science-class-procedure-y) 

I personally use unruled index cards from Target (they’re like $0.49 per pack and really good quality) and two different writing utensils…usually some sort of marker and then my trusty Pilot G2. I like for my notecards to be on a ring (good for storage but I take them off when I’m quizzing myself), so I’ll need one of those and a hole punch (mine’s Swingline and I LOVE it).

STEP 2: I make a list of what I need on my notecards and then start labeling the front side of the index cards. My Chemistry notecards are just material from my 1st semester, so I make them as I go along, but you can make them all at once too! (wouldn’t really recommend it, it ends up being really time consuming)

STEP 3: Once I’m done labeling the front side with concepts such as Molarity, questions like “What is an aqueous solution?,” diagrams like Solids VS Liquids VS Gases on a molecular basis, etc., I go back to actually write out the content on the back of the cards. I define words, copy practice problems, draw diagrams, and the like. 

STEP 4: When all the notecards are done, I break out a pack of colored notecards to act as divider pages. I have a color-coding guide:

STEP 5: Since my notecards are for the entire 1st semester, I take some plain white notecards to use as dividers for different chapters. For this, I cut up a small sheet of paper or an index card, fold it in half, and tape it to the right edge of the card, so that it acts as a tab. 

STEP 6: After all that is done, I punch holes in the upper left corner and put them on the ring so that the order isn’t messed up (my Chem notecards are actually numbered though, so it’s not an issue)

STEP 7: Then I make my cover! I like this part the most. I cut out a piece of scrapbook paper so it’s 3in X 5in, and I punch a hole in the upper left corner. I tape a sticky note that’s been folded in half on the center (if the paper has a subtler pattern you can just write directly on it) and I use a marker/pen to write the class and/or subject. 

STEP 8: Finally, put that on the ring and then you’re done! I flip through my notecards before major tests to get a brief overview of the content before going to my notes/the textbook, or I take them off the ring to quiz myself. Study them however you’d like :)

This was my first tutorial-y post…I hope I helped and answered your questions! 

This website is helpful, especially if you’re new to academic writing! You can select what section of your study you’re writing about and then it provides you with example phrases for different parts of that section. I find this super useful when I feel like I’m repeating myself or I know what results I want to describe but I don’t know how to say it. Here’s an example below:

Hey! Im thinking of doing computer science in uni next year and I wanted to know if my computer will be sufficient? Got any recs?

Hi there! While I am a huge tech nerd, and would love to recommend cool devices for your use during your degree, I honestly think that most of the basic laptops are sufficient to complete a Computer Science degree. The flashy added features are mainly for aesthetic and are mildly time saving. You are rarely actually going to build projects that make use of all of your excessive RAM space or multithreading capabilities. The most of your degree is just going to be pulling up PDF’s and using your internet browsers. A lot of schools allow remote connection to stronger servers if you need a heftier processing power anyway. All that being said, here are my top tips when deciding on a device for your Computer Science degree: 

Focus on battery life and keyboard comfort (for your hand size and typing style). You are going to be typing a lot, and you don’t want your device dying on you randomly in class. *shudders in lost code* 

Invest in the largest solid state drive (SSD) that you can afford. Avoid hard drives as internal storage. Please. Your computer will constantly scream if you don’t. SSD’s are so much faster.

Good screen quality helps, especially if you play games and watch videos on your device like I do

Invest in an external monitor (or two!). The extra real estate is a life saver when coding, as you can pull up documentation, stack overflow, and multiple tabs in your IDE all at once. Really helps optimize your workflow

If your thirsty for cool tech, a dedicated GPU helps (but it will hike up your price a lot). It mostly comes in use if you are doing a lot of video editing, gaming, animation, machine learning or data science tasks. Don't really need it otherwise

If you try and get a good deal on a setup that provides most of the above, you'll be golden. Don’t stress too much! You don’t spend as much time on your computer in this degree then you think you might. 

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