Hello! Precalculus Is A Pretty Interesting Class If You Put Your Mind To It, And I Found Some Great Resources

HOW TO WRITE A HIGH-GRADE RESEARCH PAPER

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The first time I had to write a research paper for university was one of the most stressful experiences I’d ever had - it was so different to anything I’d ever done before and caused me so much anxiety! It turned out that I’m pretty damn good at writing research reports and I’m now looking to pursue a career in psychological research. 

I have never received less than a First (or 4.0 GPA for you American studiers) in my research papers so I thought I’d share my top tips on how to write a kick-ass, high-grade research paper.

*disclaimer: I am a psychology student, my tips are based on my personal experience of writing up psychological research (quantitative and qualitative); therefore, they may require some adaptation in order to be applied to your field of study/research*

These tips will be split up into the different sections a research paper should consist of: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references and formatting.

ABSTRACT

The aim of an abstract is to summarise your whole paper - it should be concise, include key-words, highlight the key points of your paper and be written last.

When I say concise, I mean concise! The abstract is what other students and researchers will read in order to decide whether your research is relevant their own work and essentially determines whether or not they’ll read on - they want to know the key details and don’t want to be overwhelmed with information.

I always aim to keep my abstracts under 250 words. I set myself this limit to stop myself waffling and dwelling on unimportant points, it helps me to be really selective of what I include and ensures I’m gripping the reader from the start.

Your abstract should discuss the research rationale, the methods and designs used, your results and the general conclusion(s) drawn. One or two sentences on each of these topics is enough.

Make sure you’re using key-words throughout your abstract as this will also help the reader decide whether your work is relevant to theirs. You can make key-words super obvious by highlighting them in a key at the bottom of your abstract (see below) or just used jargon consistently. Using key-words is also important if you’re looking to get your work published, these words will help people find your work using search engines.

Finally, write your abstract last! An abstract is a summary of your whole research paper which makes it practically impossible to write well first. After writing the rest of your paper, you will know your research inside and out and already have an idea of what key things you need to highlight in your abstract.

INTRODUCTION

For me, the introduction section is always the most intimidating to write because it’s like painting on a blank canvas - massively daunting and leaving you terrified to make a mistake!

The aim of an introduction is to provide the rationale for your research and justify why your work is essential in the field. In general, your introduction should start very broad and narrow down until you arrive at the niche that is your research question or hypothesis.

To start, you need to provide the reader with some background information and context. You should discuss the general principle of your paper and include some key pieces of research (or theoretical frameworks if relevant) that helps your reader get up to speed with the research field and where understanding currently lies. This section can be pretty lengthy, especially in psychological research, so make sure all of the information you’re including is vital as it can be pretty easy to get carried away.

This background should lead you onto the rationale. If you’ve never written a research paper before, the rationale is essentially the reason behind your own research. This could be building on previous findings so our understanding remains up to date, it could be picking up on weaknesses of other research and rectifying these issues or it could be delving into an unexplored aspect of the field! You should clearly state your rationale and this helps lead into the next section.

You should end your introduction by briefly discussing your current research. You need to state your research question or hypothesis, how you plan on investigating the question/hypothesis, the sample you plan on using and the analysis you plan to carry out. You should also mention any limitations you anticipate to crop up so you can address these in your discussion.

In psychology, references are huge in research introductions so it is important to use an accurate (and modern as possible) reference for each statement you are making. You can then use these same references in your discussion to show where your research fits into the current understanding of the topic!

METHODS

Your methods section should make use of subheadings and tables where necessary and should be written in past tense. This can make the (potentially) lengthy section easier to navigate for the reader. I usually use the following headings: participants, materials, design, procedure.

The participants section should describe the sample that took part in your research. Age, gender, nationality and other relevant demographic information should be provided as well as the sampling technique. Personally, I use a table (see below) alongside my continuous prose as an alternative way of viewing my sample population. Please note, if you’re using a table make sure it adheres to your university guidelines.

The materials section of your methods should include any equipment, resources (i.e. images, books, diagrams) or any other materials used in your data collection. You should also reference the program that helped you conduct your analysis. For example, if you are writing a qualitative research paper, you may want to include Microsoft Word in your materials if you use the program to transcribe interviews.

You should then describe the design used in your research. All variables should be identified in this paragraph, if relevant. You should also discuss whether your research is within-groups or between-groups, again only if relevant.

Last is your procedure section - the most important one! You must write this section with enough detail so that anybody could pick it up, read it and conduct the same experiment with ease. You should describe what participants were required to do, how data was collected and it should be written in chronological order! While it’s important to provide enough information, try not to overwhelm the reader with lengthy sentences and unnecessary information.

RESULTS

Your results section’s sole purpose is to provide the reader with the data from your study. It should be the second shortest section (abstract being first) in your research paper and should stick to the relevant guidelines in regards to reporting figures, tables and diagrams. Your goal is to relay results in the most objective and concise way possible.

Your results section serves to act as evidence for the claims you’ll go on to make during your discussion but you must not be biased in the results you report. You should report enough data to sufficiently justify your conclusions but must also include data that doesn’t support your original hypothesis or research question. 

Reporting data is most easily done through tables and figures as they’re easy to look at and select relevant information. If you’re using tables and figures you should always make sure you’re stating effect sizes and p values and to a consistent decimal place. Illustrative tables and figures should always be followed by supporting summary text consisting of a couple of sentences relaying the key statistical findings in continuous prose.

DISCUSSION

The discussion section should take the opposite approach to your introduction! You should start discussing your own research and broaden the discussion until you’re talking about the general research field.

You should start by stating the major findings of your study and relating them back to your hypothesis or research questions. You must must must explicitly state whether you reject or accept your experimental hypothesis, if you have one. After stating your key findings you should explain the meaning, why they’re important and where they fit into the existing literature. It’s here that you should bring back the research you discussed in your introduction, you should relate your findings to the current understanding and state the new insight your research provides.

You should then state the clinical relevance of your research. Think about how your findings could be applied to real-life situations and discuss one or two practical applications.

After this, discuss the limitations of your research. Limitations could include sample size and general sample population and how this effects generalisability of findings, it could include methodological problems or research bias! These limitations will allow you to discuss how further research should be conducted. Suggest ways in which these limitations could be rectified in future research and also discuss the implications this could have on findings and conclusions drawn.

Finally, you need to give the reader a take-home message. A sentence or two to justify (again) the need for your research and how it contributes to current understanding in the field. This is the last thing your audience will read so make it punchy!

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That’s it folks! My tips for writing a kick-ass, high-grade research paper based on my personal experience. If you have any questions regarding things I’ve missed or didn’t provide enough detail of, then please just send me an ask!

Also, if any of you would like to read any of my past research papers I would be more than happy to provide you with them :-))

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100 Reasons to Study:

I never expected this “reasons to study” thing to get so many submissions, and as it takes me so long to post them all, I decided to do a bulk post of some so here they are:

(If I haven’t included a url, it was submitted by an anon).

To prove people that “bad” students can become excellent students too.

To expand your knowledge of the world.

To look back on your success in ten years time. (Submitted byadxlastudies)

To not let my mental illness define my grades. (Submitted bymusicandmaths)

I study because I am privileged enough to have the opportunity. I study because I have no one getting in my way telling me I can’t. I study because I want to do some real good in this world. I study because I live in a country where being female has no significant disadvantage; and so, I take this opportunity so that I may make future opportunities for those who don’t have them. (Submitted by crimson-voltaire)

My reason for studying is how I’ll get to where I want to be in my life which is successful, comfortable, and happy.

I study to make my mum happy and proud.

I study to prove my anxiety wrong!

I study because I want to save lives.

I study because my grandpa, orphaned during WWII when he was 8, worked 4 days a week in a mine to learn for 2 days. He’s retired after 40 years of working in diplomacy, for the last 5 years as an ambassador. He’s my role model. And I love him so much.

I study because my primary school teacher from when I was 6 replied “Well who would think that?” when my mother informed her I was going to university. I study so I can tell her “Why would you not think that?”

I study because I want to give myself the best future I possibly can as a black woman. (Submitted by n-marlzz)

I study because my dreams are improbable. But not impossible. I will achieve them. (Submitted by redheadbecool)

I study because even though I can’t imagine having a future, I want one. (Submitted by stxdys)

I study so that I can be surrounded by the right people at school, at home, at work, and on Tumblr. You can only walk the path that you choose for yourself, so choose wisely. Pave your path with bricks, not straw.

I study because last year I was in a mental hospital for young people and I discovered that I want my death to mean something.

I study because diseases have haunted my family for long enough, and cancer deserves to be taken down once for all.

I study because my father left school at age 13 to work to provide for his family and he has been working ridiculously hard ever since so I can have an education.

I study to be self reliant and to get more answers. The concept of being independent is attractive to me, and if i study hard enough, i will be able to live freely without relying on my parents. The thought of getting answers is a huge satisfaction.

I study because I told my ex, “Watch me go to Harvard”. So oops.

Because I want to have a well paying job which means I can eventually travel the world one day.

I study because I love to be productive really just in love with the feeling of it being noon and already have gotten everything done that I needed for that day. (Submitted by revision-babe)

I want and I like to study because I believe that we as humans have the responsibility of maintain and grow the knowledge people developed in the past. How could we waist all those efforts to try know this wonderful world a little better?  (Submitted by mochilunar-universe​)

I study because my Dad went through a lot of work to get to this country so that I could have a good life and a good education, and I’m not going to waste all his good efforts and take him and my education for granted.

Because I believe I can do it and I won’t let their words stop me. (Submitted by truly-written-by-me)

I study for my own sense of achievement! I’m also really motivated by my boyfriend who is very clever and works really hard. I want to get a first in my masters this year and I will!  (Submitted by @orchidbeam)

I study for Nicki Minaj, she would be proud of me, and all the other women in the world. I hope that my degree will put me in the position to make a better world for all my sisters out there and the little ones.

I study because my family isn’t as rich as our family friends, and other families always make fun about what my dad does for a living. I want to change that and make sure the only thing others talk about is how amazing we turned out and what a good career I’m going into.

I study to make my parent’s hardships (moving to America, to provide a better life for my siblings and I) worth it.

My reason to study is to show myself and everyone I am stronger than my mental illness and to prove everyone who said it would stop me from getting anywhere wrong.

I study so I can change the world for the better.

I study because I want to help my family, to fulfil my dreams and save lives.

To be a champion.

I want to study in order to prove myself and people that being dyslexic and dysorthographic doesn’t mean being stupid.  (Submitted bybritannicusmyfav)

I love to learn,and I want to know about all the things I missed because of school system. (Submitted by @seshet)

I study because I want to be the first sibling to go straight into uni without transferring from a community college.

I want to study so that I can transfer out from a community college to a really good university so that people won’t think the decision I made to go to community college was bad. Also to make my DAD super proud!

I study because I want to be the best version of myself.

I study to make those who have taken care of me proud, to show them they did a good job. I also study for myself, to prove that I can fulfil my goals and that everyone who has ever made fun of me just pushed me forward instead of putting the boot in. Getting a good job to live with my boyfriend would be a great plus! We all need motivation, and what’s better to motivate oneself than dreams to fulfil! Here are mine. (~Submitted bystudy-littleidlegirl)

I study because I never want to stop learning about myself and the world we live in.

I study so I’m educated enough to take down the haters in an articulate way so I feel accomplished when leaving the situation.

I study to ensure that when I’m actively in politics, only weak minded people will be able to scorn me due to my ethnic background or religion (or something stupid along those lines) instead of the immaculate policies and work I am carrying out.

I study to become successful in my future and because I have a passion for learning. (Submitted by baklavugh)

I study because I don’t have anything else to do. I guess it keeps me so busy that I don’t have time to think how lonely I am.

Because it makes me happy to see my hard work paid off and also ensures a better future than I would have if I didn’t study well. (Submitted by h4rshitaa)

I study to be able to pursue the career I want. For the thrill of knowledge, the security of understanding. For the way it shapes how I interpret the world. I study not because it is something I must do, but because it is something that is a part of who I am.  (Submitted by @audesapare)

I study to improve my mind so I can understand deeply the things people thought I was not capable of understanding. I study so I can live the most fulfilled life possible. I take every second of this life as a chance to learn and improve myself.

Because I’m going to prove girls are useful for more then just looks and a sex object.

I study to open doors of opportunity. I study to improve my and others lives. I study to feel good when I go to sleep. I study to feel confident with my ability. I study to prove to myself what I can do.

Because I want to show to my child that everything needed effort and passion. Also I want to show how important knowledge is, as a mom and as a housewife. (Submitted by studymamapartiallyhousewife)

I study because it makes me happy to know I am in control of my future.

I study because I am curious.

So that I won’t have to struggle like my parents are financially.  (Submitted by study-sugar)

I study because I want my single mother who has worked so hard for my education to live a better life when she’s older. I want her to look at me in the future, sitting in my office in a law firm and telling herself “it was all worth it”.

FOR NICKI MINAJ. I WILL GO TO A HIGHER EDUCATION FOR YOU.

I study so that I can be proud of the person that I am.

I study because I want independence. After my bachelor’s degree I plan to be able to continue into further study such as an MA and support myself. I am an only child which has always led my family to be over protective and education will always be my way in holding my own in the world.

I study so I can have the freedom to leave where I am now and actually be happy for a change. Without studying I wouldn’t be able to get the job nor satisfaction in life I know I deserve.

I study because it’s the one thing I can decide for myself.

I study because knowledge is power and I never want to feel inferior to anyone or have any regrets. I don’t want anything to hold me back from achieving my dreams. (Submitted by shreestudies)

I study so I’m not so nervous for tests. Also to improve myself and my learning.

I study because I have a huge thirst for knowledge. I love to learn and allow that to change me as a person for the better. I love being able to understand the world around me and contribute my opinions that have been developed from what I’ve learned. (Submitted bymymindssecretpalace)

I want to be a successful person in life. I can use my intelligence to help those in need. Besides, people won’t belittle or pick on my appearance! ✌

I study because I want to help others and make people aware that how important it is to be literate. (Submitted by anashiv)

I study to show that I have potential. I study to show my learning disabilities and adhd is not me. I study because I want to grow. I study to be the person I know I can be, the person I know I am.

I’m so tired of not passing my tests, of feeling like I don’t know the material. I have testing anxiety which prevents me from doing well. I want to study enough that I feel so comfortable with the material and the anxiety goes away. I want to study so I can begin feeling proud of myself and all my accomplishments.

To help those struggling with different mental illnesses and help them see a better light.

Because I want to build that building.

I study because I want to prove all my male teachers and friends, that not only boys are learning the best, and if I want to, I can beat them all!

I want to study to make my parents proud after all the sacrifices they made for me and to succeed so my family and I can live a better life.

I study because I love to learn new things. (Submitted by ki-soonal)

I study to find a solution to stop the passing on of the genes for hereditary diseases. As in to reduce risk of young children being diagnosed with hereditary diseases.

To get that dream job and slay everyone who said it was too difficult for me.

Because education is awesome.

So I can change the world.

To give my mom and dad the life they deserve! (Submitted by samiya-malik)

Because everything is a competition and I must be best. (Submitted by letustudy)

To prove to myself and others that I can do anything I set my mind to. (Submitted by studiousstudying)

So when you are taking a test/exam your anxiety and stress levels are lower. (Submitted by introvertedturtlequeen)

I study because I want to know I’ve earned everything I achieve.

The biggest reason I study is that all of my friends are incredibly smart and when I was younger I wanted to prove to them that I could keep up, but now that I’ve decided that I don’t need to compete, I study just because it makes me feel good. (Submitted by queen-elbow)

I study because the world is an interesting place, and I want to know it as deeply as possible. (Submitted by matchamonstr)

I study because I am so sick and tired of seeing my mom struggle, all because she didn’t have a good education. I don’t want to wake up to a job I absolutely dread, and be paid minimum wage. I want to say “thanks mom, I can take care of you now.”

I study to grow big enough to reach my high hopes. (Submitted by seriousstudygirl)

To see the look on my mum and dad’s face when they see my results. (Submitted by seizethesaturday)

I study because I love to crush my enemies. I like to see the looks on their faces when they see me succeed. (Submitted by dirtylaundry-emptystyrofoam)

I study because I feel the need to prove to the world that I am more than a child prodigy that burnt out one day. I need to prove to myself that I’m just as good, if not better than I used to be. That I’ve got places to go and people to prove wrong.

I study because I love to teach and I want to know everything that I can so that I can more clearly convey things to others, and to be able to make connections across topics to make things personal and interesting to them. (Submitted by the-homework-fandom)

My dream as a little girl was “to be the most smartest person ever” and I still don’t know what else to do. (Submitted by polaroceanographer)

To create room for the real me in the future.

My reason for studying is so I can get into the university I want, and not have to travel away to one. (Submitted by iggythedragonslayer)

To get a well paid job so my children can have the best possible life.

My reason to study is to prove to my parents and myself that I can achieve my goals without the help of others. My reason to study is to gain valuable knowledge, NOT just for a grade.  (Submitted by barbstudies)

To prove to myself that I am strong and can reach my goals. (Submitted by scared-robot

I study so I have a chance of getting into the United States Air Force academy… 

I study so I am offered to meet interesting people that are also studying the same field as I am. (Submitted by ghostsname)

I’ll study so I can live relaxed as a cat in Hokkaido.

*Shia LaBoeuf voice* JUST DO IT

So I can prove myself that I am, indeed, intelligent and not just some bimbo with a hollow head. (Submitted by study-guerassimovna)

Because learning new things and having a more informed view of the world is beautiful. (Submitted by studism)

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why does it have to be a one-upmanship though? I've never heard people say doctors are better than vets, and even if some do, surely smugly saying 'we know so much more' makes you just as bad? Can't we accept that they are both very demanding, difficult jobs in their own ways? There are so many differences I think it's hard to even compare them.

Mk, I told you I wasn’t going to discuss this anymore unless you came off anon, but I think this is important because I know I have a few medblr followers and a lot of not-medical-at-all followers.

This is not one-upsmanship. “Real doctors treat more than one species” is a joke - in response to being treated like we’re not as good as MD’s. You can literally buy T-shirts and bumper stickers with that on them. As I stated when I responded to your original ask, all of us in the veterinary profession have respect for doctors. Another common saying in the field is “I’m in vet med because humans are gross.” But somebody has to treat them, and we’re glad it’s not us. Many of us would prefer that animals come in sans owners. During the rest of this post, keep in mind that I (and the vast majority of vets) respect MD’s because we need them just as much as they need us. But that doesn’t make us any less than them.

You say it’s hard to compare them - you must be on the human medical side. Want to know some similarities?- We go to school for the same amount of time.- The prerequisite courses for getting into school are nearly identical.- We accumulate approximately the same amount of debt from our schooling.- We learn much of the same material. Anatomy, histology, general/systemic pathology, clinical pathology, physiology, neurology, pharmacology, immunology, toxicology, bacteriology, virology, radiology, theriogenology (aka veterinary gynecology), ethics, business, medicine/treatment, surgery, public health, nutrition, epidemiology… except we learn it for every species, not just one. More on that later.- Vets have to learn about humans too, because we have to know how animals can infect humans. For example, we have to know how every single veterinary parasite in our 3-credit, semester-long parasitology class can potentially affect/not affect humans. Med students spend one or two lectures on parasites.

But you’re right, there’s a lot of differences.- Vet schools are 3-4x harder to get into than medical schools.- Vet school is harder, full stop. Not only are we learning the same things as med students, we have to learn it for every animal species plus some human stuff, and we have to be prepared to actually practice after four years of education without an internship or residency to catch us after school is over. Yes, some students will choose to go the internship/residency route, but the majority will not. Another common joke in vet school, which my professors have literally said to my entire class more than once, is “if you wanted it to be easy you should have gone to medical school.”- An MD is unlikely to be injured by their patients on an average day. A vet is.- When I graduate, I will have performed upwards of 50 surgeries on at least 4 species of animals, despite the fact that I have no intention of specializing in surgery. A human medical doctor has to wait until their residency to do even one surgery, and that’s only if they’re specializing in a field that requires surgery on a routine basis.- Upon graduation, for any given patient I may have to be a general practitioner, gastroenterologist, dermatologist, cardiologist, pediatrician, emergency doctor, radiologist, orthopedist, oncologist, behaviorist, endocrinologist, surgeon, dentist, neurologist, internist, pathologist, pharmacologist, pulmonologist, anesthesiologist, OB/GYN, physical therapist, opthalmologist, and more during their lifetime. Medical doctors have to specialize in a single one of these things. Lucky me, I don’t have to choose. Poor me, I have to know every single one of these specialties for every single animal. Hence, knowing more and doing more than MD’s.- Show me a human general practice clinic (or even hospital) where I can come in with a bellyache, vaginal discharge, and diarrhea and have an exam, bloodwork, x-rays, ultrasound, and emergency hysterectomy all in the same department, within 2-3 hours of arrival, and go home the same day if absolutely necessary or at least the next day. Yeah, not gonna happen.- Vets have to pay for equipment/supplies, building expenses/upkeep, and staff salaries in addition to their own salaries, and this is incorporated in the cost of vet care. Human clinics are subsidized so they don’t have to worry about this…- … and still charge upwards of 5-10x as much for the same procedure that a vet does. Here’s a total hip replacement comparison, for example.- Because of the two above points, if a client stiffs a doctor, it’s not a big deal - the government and the practice insurance will cover it. The lights will not go off. If a client stiffs a vet… well that one client might not make the lights go off, but now the vet isn’t going to be able to offer clinic-based payment plans because they simply can’t afford to be stiffed anymore. Some practices won’t even send a bill and instead require payment up front, because collections cost more than the bill is worth (that’s how low veterinary bills tend to be, comparatively), and these clinics will still get slammed on Facebook/Yelp/Google for “only caring about money and forcing me to pay upfront when my puppy was dying.”- Humans are required to have insurance, but pets are not. This leads to a lot of emotionally demanding decisions for both the vet and owner (I can’t afford his care - do I put him down? surrender him to the clinic if they’re able to take him? bring him home and let him die? toss him to a shelter and let him suffer?) and a lot of emotionally demanding owners ( “If you really loved animals you would treat him for free” - well yes Becky, but I have to eat and pay my student loans/mortgage too…)- Despite our similar educational debt load, my average salary will be less than half of an MD’s. And people still think we charge too much and make too much and try to guilt us into performing services or giving items at a discount or for free.- Vets can put patients down. While this is usually a blessing, it does mean that patients we’ve treated since they were babies are now dying because we can’t do anything to save them, whether due to owner finances or inability to cure a terminal illness. That’s hard enough as it is, but then you get clients who are moving, had a baby, don’t want the pet for whatever reason, and demand you put the animal down instead of doing something else to try to rehome it - “convenience euthanasias.” Both types take an emotional toll on vets, and euthanasias happen every day, usually multiple times.- A vet’s work-life balance is notoriously terrible. Non-ER MD’s can turn away people who walk in at 4:55 when the practice closes at 5. Vets often can’t (or don’t). Because our patient care is so much more involved, it’s rare for vets or vet staff to be able to leave on time even from general practice, and that says nothing for emergency care or the many vets who are on call nights, weekends, holidays… At the first practice I worked at, staff members got to choose one (1) holiday PER YEAR to get off, and were expected to work every weekend.- Due to the previous 5 points, suicide and mental illness in the veterinary field is at an all-time high. Vets are twice as likely to commit suicide than an MD. It’s alarming, and the field is working to change it, but not much can be done on a national scale.

In fact, maybe you’re right. Maybe there really is no comparison. If you read all that, I think you’ll understand that vets have earned a little bit of wiggle room to poke some harmless fun at their “real doctor” colleagues.

Oh, and not to mention the biggest difference between MD’s and DVM’s, but…

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Setting some goals as i enter college ✨

Taken from my studygram: @equaticnss

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Generic

Lessons learnt from this summer by @minijournals

Tips and guides

Selfcare guide

Self care by @kimanoir

Self care tips for students by @theorganisedstudent

12 steps for self care

Self-care to do list

Some little self care things by @irinastudies

Self-care guide by @thetrevorproject

101 self care ideas by @microstvdy

Self care by @littleredstudies

Finals self care by @rubypolar

Instruction manual by @hufflepuffwannabe

Some self care tips by @lovefulls

Self care by @lazyhermione

15 self care ideas by @kaleylearns

Little self care things by @flowerais

Self-care by @mlstudies

Self care by @likelyhealthy

A very brief guide to selfcare by @ejlandsman

My favourite selfcare tips by @rubynerdy

26 selfcare activities by @sheisrecovering

Little habits/things to do more of by @heyrosiebee

Sleep

Guide to sleep by @educatier

Balancing sleep & education by @brbimstudying

Perfect night sleep

How to go to bed early and actually fall asleep

Water

How to drink more water ft printables

Hydration masterpost

Breaks

Take a break

Types of study breaks by @samsstudygram

Tips for getting better rest

Treat yourself

Simple ways to treat yourself by @anitastudy

Guide to treating yourself by @pennyfynotes

25 No/Low cost self care acts by @gaygirlhustle

Feel good

How to feel better by @bbangstudies

Feel good by @librarystudies

7 ways to feel better by @p-antarei

If you are having a bad day by @theblacksiren

Destress

Easy ways to destress by @parisgellerstudy

Stress relievers by @noteology

How to deal with stress by @studywithclover

Apps to help you destress by @gracelearns

Tips to manage stress by @fairy-studies-blr

Burnout

How to deal with study burnout by @eintsein

Avoid education burnout by @neuroticmedblr

Mental health

Saving your grades from a crisis by @smartstudy

Chronic illness + studying by @studysenior

Coping with mental health by @overstudies

Studying with depression by @rannedomblr

Anxiety

Anxiety distraction games by @peachou

Anxiety masterpost by @dotgrids

Relaxing doesn’t help anxiety by @merrybitchmas91

Meditation and focus

Study sounds

Others

What to do with notebooks by @tbhstudying

Podcasts for students by @studyquill

Period masterpost

Dealing with eye strain by @studylikeaslytherin

Listen by @studyblr

50 things you can do without looking at a screen

How to live a better life by @wilstudies

Fitness & health for student by @abby-studies-art

Friendly reminders taken from @cwote

Your mental health is more important than your grades

You are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, and strong enough

Don’t just be good to others, be good to yourself too

Embrace all that is you

You will be okay

Just breathe. It will be okay.

Be proud of yourself for how hard you’re trying.

Be nice to yourself

Don’t beat yourself up. You are doing the best you can.

Be gentle with yourself, you’re doing the best you can.

Better things are coming.

Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.

Remind yourself, you deserve to be happy

Respect yourself. Don’t let others tell you who you are.

Learn to say no to people and things that make you unhappy.

Enjoy your own company.

Forgive yourself.

Never apologise for how you feel

Give yourself some credit. You’ve come pretty far.

Mental health is just as important as physical health.

Surround yourself with good vibes

Stop worrying about people who aren’t worried about you.

If you find you are surrounded by toxic people… Cut. Them. Out.

Trust yourself. You’re smarter than you think.

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DEAR RESEARCHERS OF TUMBLR

You know what’s awesome?  Research.  You know what’s not awesome?  Not being able to get access to research because it’s stuck behind a paywall and you don’t belong to an institution/your institution doesn’t subscribe to that particular journal.

FEAR NOT.

Here is a list of free, open access materials on a variety of subjects.  Feel free to add if you like!

GO FORTH AND LEARN SHIT, MY FRIENDS.

Directory of Open Access Journals- A compendium of over 9000 journals from 133 countries, multilingual and multidisciplinary.

Directory of Open Access Books- Like the above, but for ebooks.  Also multidisciplinary.

Ubiquity Press- Journals covering archaeology, comics scholarship, museum studies, psychology, history, international development, and more.  Also publishes open access ebooks on a wide variety of subjects.

Europeana-  Digital library about the history and culture of Europe.

Digital Public Library of America- American history, culture, economics, SO MUCH AMERICA.

Internet Archive- In addition to books, they have music and videos, too.  Free!  And legal!  They also have the Wayback Machine, which lets you see webpages as they looked at a particular time.

College and Research Libraries- Library science and information studies.  Because that’s what I do.

Library of Congress Digital Collections- American history and culture, historic newspapers, sound recordings, photographs, and a ton of other neat stuff.

LSE Digital Library- London history, women’s history.

Wiley Open Access- Science things!  Neurology, medicine, chemistry, ecology, engineering, food science, biology, psychology, veterinary medicine.

SpringerOpen-  Mainly STEM journals, looooong list.

Elsevier Open Access-  Elsevier’s kind of the devil but you might as well take advantage of this.  Mainly STEM, also a linguistics journal and a medical journal in Spanish.

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This makes me sound stupid but what does a feynman diagram mean?

You don’t sound stupid! They can be pretty confusing at first, and I’m sure you’re not they only one that doesn’t fully understand them (myself included) so let’s learn how to draw Feynman diagrams!

You do not need to know any fancy-schmancy math or physics to do this!

I know a lot of people are intimidated by physics: don’t be! Today there will be no equations, just non-threatening squiggly lines. Even school children can learn how to draw Feynman diagrams. Particle physics: fun for the whole family.

For now, think of this as a game. You’ll need a piece of paper and a pen/pencil. The rules are as follows (read these carefully):

1. You can draw two kinds of lines, a straight line with an arrow or a wiggly line:

You can draw these pointing in any direction.

2. You may only connect these lines if you have two lines with arrows meeting a single wiggly line.

Note that the orientation of the arrows is important! You must have exactly one arrow going into the vertex and exactly one arrow coming out.

3. Your diagram should only contain connected pieces. That is every line must connect to at least one vertex. There shouldn’t be any disconnected part of the diagram.

In the image above, the diagram on the left is allowed while the one on the right is not since the top and bottom parts don’t connect.

4. What’s really important are the endpoints of each line, so we can get rid of excess curves. You should treat each line as a shoelace and pull each line taut to make them nice and neat. They should be as straight as possible. (But the wiggly line stays wiggly!)

That’s it! Those are the rules of the game. Any diagram you can draw that passes these rules is a valid Feynman diagram. We will call this game QED. Take some time now to draw a few diagrams. Beware of a few common pitfalls of diagrams that do not work (can you see why?):

After a while, you might notice a few patterns emerging. For example, you could count the number of external lines (one free end) versus the number of internal lines (both ends attached to a vertex).

How are the number of external lines related to the number of internal lines and vertices?

If I tell you the number of external lines with arrows point inward, can you tell me the number of external lines with arrows pointing outward? Does a similar relation hole for the number of external wiggly lines?

If you keep following the arrowed lines, is it possible to end on some internal vertex?

Did you consider diagrams that contain closed loops? If not, do your answers to the above two questions change?

I won’t answer these questions for you, at least not in this post. Take some time to really play with these diagrams. There’s a lot of intuition you can develop with this “QED” game. After a while, you’ll have a pleasantly silly-looking piece of paper and you’ll be ready to move on to the next discussion:

What does it all mean?

Now we get to some physics. Each line in rule (1) is called a particle. (Aha!) The vertex in rule (2) is called an interaction. The rules above are an outline for a theory of particles and their interactions. We called it QED, which is short for quantum electrodynamics. The lines with arrows are matter particles (“fermions”). The wiggly line is a force particle (“boson”) which, in this case, mediates electromagnetic interactions: it is the photon.

The diagrams tell a story about how a set of particles interact. We read the diagrams from left to right, so if you have up-and-down lines you should shift them a little so they slant in either direction. This left-to-right reading is important since it determines our interpretation of the diagrams. Matter particles with arrows pointing from left to right are electrons. Matter particles with arrows pointing in the other direction are positrons (antimatter!). In fact, you can think about the arrow as pointing in the direction of the flow of electric charge. As a summary, we our particle content is:

(e+ is a positron, e- is an electron, and the gamma is a photon… think of a gamma ray.)

From this we can make a few important remarks:

The interaction with a photon shown above secretly includes information about the conservation of electric charge: for every arrow coming in, there must be an arrow coming out.

But wait: we can also rotate the interaction so that it tells a different story. Here are a few examples of the different ways one can interpret the single interaction (reading from left to right):

These are to be interpreted as: (1) an electron emits a photon and keeps going, (2) a positron absorbs a photon and keeps going, (3) an electron and positron annihilate into a photon, (4) a photon spontaneously “pair produces” an electron and positron.

On the left side of a diagram we have “incoming particles,” these are the particles that are about to crash into each other to do something interesting. For example, at the LHC these ‘incoming particles’ are the quarks and gluons that live inside the accelerated protons. On the right side of a diagram we have “outgoing particles,” these are the things which are detected after an interesting interaction.

For the theory above, we can imagine an electron/positron collider like the the old LEP and SLAC facilities. In these experiments an electron and positron collide and the resulting outgoing particles are detected. In our simple QED theory, what kinds of “experimental signatures” (outgoing particle configurations) could they measure? (e.g. is it possible to have a signature of a single electron with two positrons? Are there constraints on how many photons come out?)

So we see that the external lines correspond to incoming or outgoing particles. What about the internal lines? These represent virtual particles that are never directly observed. They are created quantum mechanically and disappear quantum mechanically, serving only the purpose of allowing a given set of interactions to occur to allow the incoming particles to turn into the outgoing particles. We’ll have a lot to say about these guys in future posts. Here’s an example where we have a virtual photon mediating the interaction between an electron and a positron.

In the first diagram the electron and positron annihilate into a photon which then produces another electron-positron pair. In the second diagram an electron tosses a photon to a nearby positron (without ever touching the positron). This all meshes with the idea that force particles are just weird quantum objects which mediate forces. However, our theory treats force and matter particles on equal footing. We could draw diagrams where there are photons in the external state and electrons are virtual:

This is a process where light (the photon) and an electron bounce off each other and is called Compton scattering. Note, by the way, that I didn’t bother to slant the vertical virtual particle in the second diagram. This is because it doesn’t matter whether we interpret it as a virtual electron or a virtual positron: we can either say (1) that the electron emits a photon and then scatters off of the incoming photon, or (2) we can say that the incoming photon pair produced with the resulting positron annihilating with the electron to form an outgoing photon:

Anyway, this is the basic idea of Feynman diagrams. They allow us to write down what interactions are possible. However, you will eventually discover that there is a much more mathematical interpretation of these diagrams that produces the mathematical expressions that predict the probability of these interactions to occur, and so there is actually some rather complicated mathematics “under the hood.” But just like a work of art, it’s perfectly acceptable to appreciate these diagrams at face value as diagrams of particle interactions.  Let me close with a quick “frequently asked questions”:

What is the significance of the x and y axes?These are really spacetime diagrams that outline the “trajectory” of particles. By reading these diagrams from left to right, we interpret the x axis as time. You can think of each vertical slice as a moment in time. The y axis is roughly the space direction.

So are you telling me that the particles travel in straight lines?No, but it’s easy to mistakenly believe this if you take the diagrams too seriously. The path that particles take through actual space is determined not only by the interactions (which are captured by Feynman diagrams), but the kinematics (which is not). For example, one would still have to impose things like momentum and energy conservation. The point of the Feynman diagram is to understand the interactions along a particle’s path, not the actual trajectory of the particle in space.

Does this mean that positrons are just electrons moving backwards in time?In the early days of quantum electrodynamics this seemed to be an idea that people liked to say once in a while because it sounds neat. Diagrammatically (and in some sense mathematically) one can take this interpretation, but it doesn’t really buy you anything. Among other more technical reasons, this viewpoint is rather counterproductive because the mathematical framework of quantum field theory is built upon the idea of causality.

What does it mean that a set of incoming particles and outgoing particles can have multiple diagrams?In the examples above of two-to-two scattering I showed two different diagrams that take the in-state and produce the required out-state. In fact, there are an infinite set of such diagrams. (Can you draw a few more?) Quantum mechanically, one has to sum over all the different ways to get from the in state to the out state. This should sound familiar: it’s just the usual sum over paths in the double slit experiment that we discussed before. We’ll have plenty more to say about this, but the idea is that one has to add the mathematical expressions associated with each diagram just like we had to sum numbers associated with each path in the double slit experiment.

What is the significance of rules 3 and 4?Rule 3 says that we’re only going to care about one particular chain of interactions. We don’t care about additional particles which don’t interact or additional independent chains of interactions. Rule 4 just makes the diagrams easier to read. Occasionally we’ll have to draw curvy lines or even lines that “slide under” other lines.

Where do the rules come from?The rules that we gave above (called Feynman rules) are essentially the definition of a theory of particle physics. More completely, the rules should also include a few numbers associated with the parameters of the theory (e.g. the masses of the particles, how strongly they couple), but we won’t worry about these. Graduate students in particle physics spent much of their first year learning how to carefully extract the diagrammatic rules from mathematical expressions (and then how to use the diagrams to do more math), but the physical content of the theory is most intuitively understood by looking at the diagrams directly and ignoring the math. If you’re really curious, the expression from which one obtains the rules looks something like this (from TD Gutierrez), though that’s a deliberately “scary-looking” formulation.

You’ll develop more intuition about these diagrams and eventually get to some LHC physics, but hopefully this will get the ball rolling for you.

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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

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When algorithms surprise us

Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be solved, and through trial-and-error the algorithm has to figure out how to solve it.

This often works really well - machine learning algorithms are widely used for facial recognition, language translation, financial modeling, image recognition, and ad delivery. If you’ve been online today, you’ve probably interacted with a machine learning algorithm.

But it doesn’t always work well. Sometimes the programmer will think the algorithm is doing really well, only to look closer and discover it’s solved an entirely different problem from the one the programmer intended. For example, I looked earlier at an image recognition algorithm that was supposed to recognize sheep but learned to recognize grass instead, and kept labeling empty green fields as containing sheep.

When machine learning algorithms solve problems in unexpected ways, programmers find them, okay yes, annoying sometimes, but often purely delightful.

So delightful, in fact, that in 2018 a group of researchers wrote a fascinating paper that collected dozens of anecdotes that “elicited surprise and wonder from the researchers studying them”. The paper is well worth reading, as are the original references, but here are several of my favorite examples.

Bending the rules to win

First, there’s a long tradition of using simulated creatures to study how different forms of locomotion might have evolved, or to come up with new ways for robots to walk.

Why walk when you can flop? In one example, a simulated robot was supposed to evolve to travel as quickly as possible. But rather than evolve legs, it simply assembled itself into a tall tower, then fell over. Some of these robots even learned to turn their falling motion into a somersault, adding extra distance.

[Image: Robot is simply a tower that falls over.]

Why jump when you can can-can? Another set of simulated robots were supposed to evolve into a form that could jump. But the programmer had originally defined jumping height as the height of the tallest block so - once again - the robots evolved to be very tall. The programmer tried to solve this by defining jumping height as the height of the block that was originally the *lowest*. In response, the robot developed a long skinny leg that it could kick high into the air in a sort of robot can-can. 

[Image: Tall robot flinging a leg into the air instead of jumping]

Hacking the Matrix for superpowers

Potential energy is not the only energy source these simulated robots learned to exploit. It turns out that, like in real life, if an energy source is available, something will evolve to use it.

Floating-point rounding errors as an energy source: In one simulation, robots learned that small rounding errors in the math that calculated forces meant that they got a tiny bit of extra energy with motion. They learned to twitch rapidly, generating lots of free energy that they could harness. The programmer noticed the problem when the robots started swimming extraordinarily fast.

Harvesting energy from crashing into the floor: Another simulation had some problems with its collision detection math that robots learned to use. If they managed to glitch themselves into the floor (they first learned to manipulate time to make this possible), the collision detection would realize they weren’t supposed to be in the floor and would shoot them upward. The robots learned to vibrate rapidly against the floor, colliding repeatedly with it to generate extra energy.

[Image: robot moving by vibrating into the floor]

Clap to fly: In another simulation, jumping bots learned to harness a different collision-detection bug that would propel them high into the air every time they crashed two of their own body parts together. Commercial flight would look a lot different if this worked in real life.

Discovering secret moves: Computer game-playing algorithms are really good at discovering the kind of Matrix glitches that humans usually learn to exploit for speed-running. An algorithm playing the old Atari game Q*bert discovered a previously-unknown bug where it could perform a very specific series of moves at the end of one level and instead of moving to the next level, all the platforms would begin blinking rapidly and the player would start accumulating huge numbers of points. 

A Doom-playing algorithm also figured out a special combination of movements that would stop enemies from firing fireballs - but it only works in the algorithm’s hallucinated dream-version of Doom. Delightfully, you can play the dream-version here

[Image: Q*bert player is accumulating a suspicious number of points, considering that it’s not doing much of anything]

Shooting the moon: In one of the more chilling examples, there was an algorithm that was supposed to figure out how to apply a minimum force to a plane landing on an aircraft carrier. Instead, it discovered that if it applied a *huge* force, it would overflow the program’s memory and would register instead as a very *small* force. The pilot would die but, hey, perfect score.

Destructive problem-solving

Something as apparently benign as a list-sorting algorithm could also solve problems in rather innocently sinister ways.

Well, it’s not unsorted: For example, there was an algorithm that was supposed to sort a list of numbers. Instead, it learned to delete the list, so that it was no longer technically unsorted.

Solving the Kobayashi Maru test: Another algorithm was supposed to minimize the difference between its own answers and the correct answers. It found where the answers were stored and deleted them, so it would get a perfect score.

How to win at tic-tac-toe: In another beautiful example, in 1997 some programmers built algorithms that could play tic-tac-toe remotely against each other on an infinitely large board. One programmer, rather than designing their algorithm’s strategy, let it evolve its own approach. Surprisingly, the algorithm suddenly began winning all its games. It turned out that the algorithm’s strategy was to place its move very, very far away, so that when its opponent’s computer tried to simulate the new greatly-expanded board, the huge gameboard would cause it to run out of memory and crash, forfeiting the game.

In conclusion

When machine learning solves problems, it can come up with solutions that range from clever to downright uncanny. 

Biological evolution works this way, too - as any biologist will tell you, living organisms find the strangest solutions to problems, and the strangest energy sources to exploit. Sometimes I think the surest sign that we’re not living in a computer simulation is that if we were, some microbe would have learned to exploit its flaws.

So as programmers we have to be very very careful that our algorithms are solving the problems that we meant for them to solve, not exploiting shortcuts. If there’s another, easier route toward solving a given problem, machine learning will likely find it. 

Fortunately for us, “kill all humans” is really really hard. If “bake an unbelievably delicious cake” also solves the problem and is easier than “kill all humans”, then machine learning will go with cake.

Mailing list plug

If you enter your email, there will be cake!

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fiction is my addiction, and since it’s almost the summer, i thought i’d share some ways to get free ebooks or save some money to get more books so you could have something to get lost in over the summer. while this list has a lot of ya resources, there’s still something at the end if you’re looking for something more academic

free ebooks:

project gutenberg is always worth mentioning, because come on, it has 50,000 books in its collection. that’s a lot of books, and you can always catch up on the grimm’s fairy tales

riveted lit is run by the publisher simon and schuster, and they put books up that you can read for a limited time. if you’re looking for something more ya, this is a great place to start

bookbub has more discounted ebooks than free ones, but let’s care about the free ones. you get a daily email with a bunch of discounted or free books

free audiobooks:

sync is my absolute favorite thing. it gives away two free audiobooks, one clasic and one more contemporary, every week over the course of the summer. it starts on may 5 for 2016, and there’s an amazing lineup for anyone who loves to read young adult like i do (they’re going to have i’ll give you the sun, boy meets boy, and on the jellicoe road) and there’s even a nelson mandela’s history on week 12. it’s all free anyway, so why not?

audible allows you to get two free audiobooks in your trial, and if you always wanted to hear a celebrity narrate that classic you never wanted to pick up, you can find something to fulfill that. 

hey, it’s project gutenberg again. not only do they have audiobooks, but they have audiobooks in other languages such as chinese, korean, spanish, and many more. if you wanted to test your comprehension of a foreign language in a new way, well, there you go

cheap books:

the book depository and wordery have free worldwide shipping for all you international people looking for that amazing book that your bookstore refuses to stock

if you live in the uk, the book people has some really amazing deals 

if you live in the us, there’s book outlet. the prices are phenomenal and i want to cry because they don’t ship cheaply to me

saving money

if you buy something using ebates, you can get a rebate. buying something from book outlet? get a 10% rebate while you’re at it. it even has rebates for university bookstores like the stanford university bookstore. also, for your first time, you can get $10 back along with the original rebate. plus, it’s awesome how it’s for more than just books, because you can get a rebate for clothing stores or ebay. you can look at the full list of stores here.

if you have any questions, you could always drop by and ask. i hope these help you to get something to read!

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