a study blog for collected references, advice, and inspiration
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Latest Posts by swirlspill-study - Page 5
we’ve all been in this situation for different reasons, anxiety, procrastination, work, way too many assignments in a week. but fear not my friends, hopefully, this masterpost will help you get A’s and organize your study schedule.
also please only do this every time you need to study for a test, cramming is not good for learning and pulling all-nighters frequently isn’t healthy.
study tips
cramming
how to cram for a big test by @studyign how to cram efficiently by @study-studymore-studyhard test and cramming tips how to cram the night before a test and pass 10 ways to cram successfully
all-nighters (the last resort)
how to pull an all-nighter and pass your exam all-nighter survival tips by @rookiemag how to pull and effective all-nighter stay all night without feeling sleepy: pt1 / pt2 expert-approved guide to pulling an all-nighter pull the most efficient all-nighter how to pull an all-nighter how to pull and all-nighter : from the special forces do’s and don’ts of pulling an all-nighter
really do them if it’s absolutely necessary:
is it bad for you to pull and all-nighter why you should never pull and all-nighter
the night before the exam
study the night before by @renaissence study the day before by @getstudyblr night owl study tips by @lawjournalsandwine the night before the exam by @studyspoinspo how to study the night before a test the night before the exam tips top tips for the night before and the morning of the exam how to pass an exam if you forgot to study the night before study the day before the exam 10 things you should do the night before a test 7 mistakes you make on the night before an exam you’ll never make again
i have less than a week to study
five day study plan by @brandi-studies how to study for an upcoming exam by @noteblr how to remember everything for a test in 3 days by @getstudyblr when you have a test really soon study well in short time study for exams in limited time ace an exam that’s around the corner
tips
25 study tips by @studyign how to study more efficiently fastest way to memorize by @studyign common study mistakes by @studyign tips on study last minute by @milkystudies how to get things done by @lattenotlate study smart not hard 10 tips to study smart and save time useful tips to study in short time how to study for an exam effectively prepare for a exam in a really short time study for an approaching exam the secrets to study effectively in short time nice time management advice how to study in groups how to stay focused by @elkstudies finals week masterpost 22 science based tips to study for an exam 20 study hacks to imporve your memory
exam tips
tips for during the exam
15 tips to boost your exam performance
how to answer exam questions
7 last-minute exam tips
28 top tips for exams and tests
top 10 tips for taking exams
last minute revision tips
exam prep
how to mentally prepare for a test by @eruditicn
anti procrastination masterpost by @elkstudies
beat anxiety and stress in 1 hour and start studying!
how to stop procrastination
deal with exam anxiety by @attackonstudying
scientifically the best ways to prepare for an exam
motivation
how to get motivated
my motivation tag
more masterposts
app masterpost
DIY masterpost
food masterpost
how to: group work
printable masterpost
language masterpost
music masterpost
my study methods masterpost
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.
i'll be having pharmacology next sem, any tips?
HI! :)
Pharmacology is the heart of pharmacy. You need to have a good memorisation skill but understanding it will be the key. Sad to say, there is no shortcut. You need to take a lot of your time to study it by heart.
In studying the drugs:
Study the normal mechanism of the body
Study the abnormal mechanism of the body
Compare the normal & abnormal mechanism of the body
Study how the drug works to correct the abnormal mechanism of the body
for example you are studying cardiovascular drugs: 1. study the normal physiology of the heart 2. study what happen when a person has a cardiovascular disease 3. study the difference between a normal heart & a heart with cardiovascular disease 4. study how cardiovascular drugs will correct the condition
Use flashcards, notecards & the likes
Use one side of the card and write the drug & other side with is mechanism of action
Use one side of the card and indicate its pharmacologic category & the other side with the list of drugs under that category
This are very handy & you can bring it anywhere you go. :)
Be creative, Use Mnemonics
In this way, the information will be easy to remember.
For example,
the non-specific beta blockers are NSTP (Nadolol, Sotalol, Timolol, Propranolol)
specific beta blockers are BEAM (Bisoprolol, Esmolol, Atenolol, Metoprolol)
beta blockers, mostly but not all the time, ends with -olol
angiotensin II receptor antagonist usually ends with -sartan (Losartan, Candesartan)
HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors usually ends with -statin (Simvastatin, Atorvastatin, Rosuvastatin)
ACE inhibitors usually ends with -pril (Captopril, Lisinopril)
Proton pump inhibitor - ends with -prazole (Pantoprazole, Esomeprazole)
H2 receptor blockers -ends with -tidine (Famotidine, Cimetidine)
Be productive during internships. Use that as an opportunity to be more familiar with the drugs.
The arrangement of medicine either in the community or hospital setting is mostly by their therapeutic category. Observe. Read. Write. Repeat. In this way you will be familiar with the drugs more.
Guide books & Apps
there are a lot of guide books like Pharmacopeia, but due to technology it is easily accessible to everyone today. :) There are several apps that are downloadable for free in the Apps Store & Google Play like…
Epocrates
Micromedex Drug Information
Monthly Prescribing Reference
The course itself is not easy but if you have the determination to study & to learn, nothing will come difficult. Good luck to you! I know you can do it. :)
what do u mean "From what I know, getting into med school/law school/similar programs is actually harder for students who got their undergrad in pre-med/pre-law/pre-that field." that makes no sense? u get into a med school by taking pre med classes in undergrad?
I totally understand your confusion. The idea that pre-med isn’t the best thing to major in to get into med school flies in the face of logic/conventional wisdom.First off, I’d like to correct myself by saying that (for example) getting into med school with a pre-med undergrad isn’t harder from what I understand, but it’s not necessarily any better than majoring in something else. There’s two major reasons for this.One, med schools/other grad programs want to be able to claim diversity in their population when it comes to their students undergrad majors. They want to be able to point at their grad students and say “Look! We have students from every field of undergrad studies!”Two, schools care a lot more about how you do as a student rather than the classes you take. They want hard working dedicated students, which there are plenty of outside of pre-med/pre-law/whatever else.I hope that made sense! If you have more questions you can keep asking.
Learning Medical Terminology
Source: Medical Terminology Made Incredibly Easy by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Best study tip EVER!
Not only will you find problems using this trick. You’ll find a tonne-load of notes, exam questions WITH answer keys, and even lecture notes in pdf format and powerpoint presentations!
It’s a great idea to use the resources you find this way to study AHEAD, even during the summer holidays. This will ensure your college success! Remember: stay on top of your game!
adapted from this response
1. Write your notes in a way where you can test your retention and understanding.
Many people write notes that do a great job summarizing their materials but their notes are not designed to promote learning, retention or diagnosis of their weaknesses. But my notes can – and so can yours. Simply put my notes can be used like flashcards because I write them in a form where I separate a “stimulus” from a “response.” The stimulus are cues or questions (think: front side of flashcard), while the response is the answer to the cue (think: back of flashcard). But the stimuli are to the left of a margin, while the responses are to the right. The key advantage of this is that just by putting a sheet of paper on top of your notes, you can hide the responses, while leaving the stimuli visible. You can have multiple margins and multiple levels of stimuli and response for greater information density. When you get good at this you can write notes in this form in real-time. To get some idea of what I’m talking about google for “Cornell Notetaking method”. My notetaking method is a variant of this. I usually use completely blank paper to do this because regular lined paper has too small a margin. To give you an idea of how powerful this notetaking method can be, I learned several courses just hours before the exam and still got an “A” in all of them during a difficult semester where I had too many competing priorities to spend long hours studying. Had it not been for this notetaking method I don’t think that would be possible. 2. Develop the ability to become an active reader (this is the perhaps the most important advice I have to share).
Don’t just passively read material you are given. But pose questions, develop hypotheses and actively test them as you read through the material. I think the hypotheses are part of what another poster referred to when he advised that you should develop a “mental model” of whatever concept they are teaching you. But a mental model can be much more than simple hypotheses. Sometimes the model resembles a story. Other times it looks more like a diagram. But what they all have in common is that the explain what is going on. Having a mental model will give you the intuition and ability to answer a wider range of questions than would be otherwise possible if you lacked such a mental model. Where do you get this model? You creatively develop one as you are reading to try to explain the facts as they are presented to you. It’s like guessing how the plot of a movie, before it unfolds. Sometimes you have to guess the model based on scarce evidence. Sometimes it is handed to you. If your model is a good one it should at least be able to explain what you are reading. Having a model also allows you to make predictions which can then be used to identify if your model is wrong. This allows you to be hypersensitive to disconfirming evidence that can quickly identify if your model is wrong. Oftentimes you may have two or more models that can explain the evidence, so your task will be to quickly formulate questions that can prove one model while disconfirming the others. To save yourself time, I suggest focusing on raising questions that could confirm/disprove the mostly likely model while disproving the others (think: differential diagnoses in medicine). But once you have such a model that (i) explains the evidence and (ii) passes all the disconfirming tests you can throw at it then you have something you can interpolate and extrapolate from to answer far more than was initially explained to you. Such models also make retention easier because you only need to remember the model as opposed to the endless array of facts it explains. But perhaps more importantly, such models give you intuition. Of course, your model could be wrong, but that is why you actively test it as you are reading, and adjust as necessary. Think of this process as the scientific method being applied by you, to try to discover the truth as best you can. Sometimes you will still be left with contradictions that even your best models cannot explain. I often found speaking to the professor after class to be a time efficient of resolving these contradictions. I discovered mental modelling as a survival mechanism to pass my studies at the University of Waterloo – where their teaching philosophy is misnomer because their teaching philosophy is to not teach as well as they could. You can see this from their grading philosophy. Although they don’t use a bell curve or other statistical grade adjustment, they make their exams so hard that the class average is usually between 68 (C+) and 72 (B-) in spite of the fact that their minimum admission grades are among the highest in Canada (you need more than A+ to get into several of their engineering programs). The only way they can achieve such low test averages from otherwise high performing students is by holding back some of what they know, and then testing what they didn’t explain well in lecture on their exams; or by not teaching to the best of their ability. This forces students to develop the ability to teach themselves, often from materials that do not explain things well, or lack the introductory background knowledge needed to understand the material. I realized I could defend against such tactics by reverse engineering the results into theories that would produce those same results; i.e. mental model induced from scarce facts. Then when I got to MIT I found myself in a place with the opposite teaching philosophy. Unlike Waterloo, if the whole class got an “A” the MIT professors would be happy and proud (whereas at Waterloo an “A” class average would be the cause for a professor’s reprimand). The mental modelling skills I developed at Waterloo definitely came in handy at graduate school because they enabled me to learn rapidly with scarce information. 3. Be of service to your fellow classmates.
I’ve personally observed and heard anecdotal stories that many students in highly competitive programs are reluctant to share what they know with their peers; a good example being the vast number of students in a top ranked science programs competing for the very few coveted spots in med school. I’ve seen people in such situations be afraid to share what they know because the fear it could lead to the other students “getting ahead” while leaving them behind. I would actually recommend doing the opposite: share liberally. You can’t expect help from others if you are unwilling to help others yourself. I spent hours tutoring people in subjects I was strong in. But, conversely those same people were usually happy to help me with my weaknesses when I needed it. I also found it easier to get good teammates – which is essential to getting good grades in team-based classes. I found I learned a LOT from other people. And their questions helped me to prepare for questions I may not have thought of – some of which would appear on the exams. 4. Understand how the professor grades.
Like the real world, the academic world is not always fair. You need to understand who is grading you and what they are looking for. Oddly, if you actually answer questions as written, you won’t get full marks from some teachers. Some professors expected more than the answer. Some only accepted the answers taught in class as opposed to other factually correct answers – which coincidentally can easily happen if you rely heavily on mental models. Some expected you to not even evaluate whether the answers to their multiple choice answers were true or not; only to notice which answer choices aligned or did not align with the theories taught in class. Some highly value participation in which case you ought to have a mental model of what they are teaching based on their assigned readings. The sooner you know who you are dealing with, the sooner you can adjust to their way of grading. Thankfully I considered the vast majority of my professors to have graded in a fair manner. 5. Get involved in research while still in undergrad.
Academics is a means to an end. To me that end was “solving problems” and “building stuff” specifically systems and organizations. Depending on the school you apply for, your research may be just as important, if not more important, than your grades. In fact if all you have are good grades your chances of getting into a top ranked CS program with a research component (e.g. MIT, CMU) are slim to nil; though you might still be able to get into a top-ranked courseware-based Masters (such as Stanford where there is no masters thesis). I did an Artificial Intelligence research project in undergrad and posted it on the internet. Not long after it was cited in three patents from IBM, AOL and another inventor. Then 40 other people cited my work. I feel this helped me get into MIT because they saw that I could come up with theories with practical applications. It also led to internships with top research teams whose work I am still in awe of. This research also helped my graduate application. None of this would have been possible if I didn’t do research in undergrad. 6. Attend classes.
I do not understand the students who claim they did well without attending class. Many professors will only say certain things in class. Many classes only present some of the material in class. If you don’t attend class you simply won’t get that material. You also won’t be able to ask immediate follow-up questions. I also found speaking to the professor after class was an efficient way to resolve contradictions I had found with my mental model. 7. Time management is key – especially in undergrad.
In my competitive undergrad program I once learned that a friend who achieved top 5% status actually timed how long he ate. While I do not suggest going to such extremes I offer this modest advice. I suggest spending no more than 30 minutes trying to solve a problem you can’t solve by yourself before appealing to office hours or another knowledgeable student. I also suggest you ask questions of your professor during or after class as opposed to leaving the class confused. This reduces wasted time in an environment when time is a very precious commodity. 8. Going out and having fun is conducive to good grades.
In my early undergrad years I studied as hard as I could. And I thought this meant putting in as many studying hours as possible. But I later realized that going out and having fun refreshed the mind and increased grades. Unfortunately it took at least 2 years for me to understand this lesson. 9. Learn how to do advanced Google searches.
This is an essential skill that enables you to answer your own questions, quickly. At a minimum I suggest you learn how to use the following Google search operators ~, -,*, AND,OR, and numeric ranges via the double dot (“..”) operator. The “site:” operator is also often helpful. I also found adding the word “tutorial” to a Google search often yields great introductory materials.
10. Turn weaknesses into strengths.
While studying for standardized exams I learned the importance of addressing one’s weaknesses as opposed to ignoring them. If you make a mistake on a question, it is because of a weakness within you. If you do not address that weakness it will follow you to the exam. I learned this lesson when studying for standardized exams. I was able to legally buy 30 old exams and thought the best approach to studying for the exam was to do as many old problems as possible. But as I completed each exam I kept getting the same score (+/- 5%) over and over. I had plateaued! But then I made a tiny tweak and my scores kept going up. Specifically, after each old exam, I would identify my weaknesses that led to each wrong answer, prioritize the weaknesses according to the degree to which they affected my score, and would address them in that order. When I did that, my scores increased steadily all the way to the highest possible percentile (99%). I later realized that such standardized tests are designed to provide consistent scores (if the student does not study in between the subsequent exams to address their weaknesses). In fact that is one of the statistical measures used to measure the quality of a standardized exam and it’s called “Reliability” (Google for “psychometric reliability” to see what I’m talking about).
ACADEMIC PHRASE BANK MASTERPOST: CONNECTING WORDS FOR ESSAY WRITING
Addition
To begin with,
In the first place,
Firstly,
The first reason
Additionally
Furthermore,
Another reason why
Secondly, Thirdly,
Next,
Pursuing this further,
Also
Lastly, Finally
In the same way,
Comparison
Similarly,
In the same way,
Likewise,
As with,
Equally,
Contrasting
On the same contrary,
However,
Nevertheless,
On the other hand,
Even so
Alternatively
At the same time
Otherwise
Instead
Conversely
Result
Hence
Therefore
Accordingly
Consequently
Thus
As a result
In consequence
For this reason
For this purpose
Time
Meanwhile
Presently
At last
Finally
Immediately
Thereafter
At that time
Eventually
Currently
Subsequently
In the meantime
Importance
Importantly
Especially
Above all
With attention to
Example
For example
For instance
That is
Such as
As revealed by
Illustrated by
Specifically
In particular
For one thing
This can be seen by
An instance of this
Literary
Clarifies
Conveys
Depicts
Demonstrates
Determines
Displays
Emphasizes
Establishes
Explains
Exemplifies
Highlights
Illustrates
Indicates
Potrays
Represents
Shows
Signifies
Suggests
Beginnings/Causes/Effects
Affects
Generates
Ignites
Impacts
Imposes
Influences
Initiates
Introduces
Involves
Launches
Leads to
Presents
Promotes
Prompts
Results in
Summary
In conclusion,
To sum it all up,
To summarize,
In the final analysis
You can see why …
Finally,
To wrap it all up,
Therefore,
In summary,
In short,
In brief,
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)
Medical Textbooks (PDF versions)
Hi Everyone!!
I was asked by @dankamphetamemes to share my holy grail textbooks and I did, but I thought I’d do you guys one better. I recommended that you should check them out in PDF versions before you buy them because honestly they’ll burn a hole through your pocket - so I gathered all the books I use and a couple of others for you to check out!!
Heres a list of books you’ll find in my google drive:
- Robbins and Cotran’s Pathological Basis of Disease
- BRS Pathology
- Lippincott’s Biochemistry
- Lippincott’s Pharmacology
- Physiology by Linda Costanzo
- BRS Physiology
- Moore’s Clinically Oriented Anatomy
- Gray’s Anatomy Flashcards
- Unfortunately I couldn’t find a PDF version of Medical Microbiology by David Greenwood - Ill keep looking and upload it when I find it
Extra books/flashcards:
- Guyton and Hall Textbook of Physiology
- Clinical Microbiology made ridiculously simple
- Netters Anatomy Flashcards
- Snells Clinical anatomy by regions
If you happen to face any trouble downloading them or accessing them shoot me a message and let me know
Here’s the link - enjoy!!
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByVv1ccrvWveUGVuZFRCQWp3MDQ&usp=sharing
100 Things You’ll Learn Fourth Year of Medical School
Every year I’ve been putting together a list of 100 things I learned in that year of medical school.
Here’s the (slightly belated) list for fourth year!!
Read the other years here:
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
Bonus: 75 Things I learned about Step 1
This list includes things I learned about sub-internships, applying for and interviewing for residency, matching, and graduating!
Sub-I is the smartest you will ever be in all of med school, enjoy it.
ERAS will crash the day you apply. Don’t panic.
Nothing feels as good as cancelling an interview. NOTHING
Airport wine is ridiculously overpriced and often not that good, but so worth it after a long interview.
Say thank you to all the people who got you here – it takes a village to make a doctor – you didn’t do this alone.
Keep reading
10 things to get before your first semester of medical school
I’m almost done with my first semester of medical school!
Thank all the stars.
In celebration that I have 2 weeks left, I’ve come up with a list of the things I should have had the moment I started to make my life easier. These are nothing more than suggestions to anyone who will be starting soon. Remember, it’s a personal experience, and everyone’s will be different, and it’s what you make of it. I just like sharing.
And if you’ve got something to add, please do!
1. Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards
If you even have the thought that you might want them, just get the stupid cards. These suckers have saved me anytime I have been stuck somewhere and I need to study. You can grab them between breaks, read them on the couch, make games out of them. Anatomy really doesn’t vary in terms of material and everyone takes anatomy.
2. A bunch of those 70 cent notebooks
But Sass, you say, I want the nice notebooks! And you get those lovely book bound notebooks with the heavy paper (if it so pleases you). BUT you’re going to need scratch paper, And yes you can use regular ruled paper or computer paper. BUT if you aren’t a fan of “holy crap I wrote something important on that paper” situations or if you’re a compulsive hoarder (we all become hoarders in med school) it’s just so much easier to have these cheap-os.
3. Some kind of calender
I don’t care how you do it, but do something. Use Google Calender, get a planner, put sticky notes everywhere, get a whiteboard calender DO SOMETHING. You may not realize it yet, but medical school says “hey we need every inch of brain power and long term memory you have” so believe me when I say, you will forget so many things if you don’t put it somewhere.
4. A good pillow
Despite how it might seem, sleep is a necessity, not a luxury. So why make yourself have a harder time getting to sleep? Quick answer, don’t. Do what you can to make it easy for you get whatever amount of sleep you’re getting (every second counts). A great pillow is the simplest solution, though comfy bed sheets or a fluffy comforter can help too.
5. Reliable internet
First of all, the majority of medical education now functions via the computer, you need internet. Secondly, I know we are living off “future money”, but current you will be a much happier person if your internet doesn’t constantly cut out. Even if you study at school all the time and are never home are you gonna lie and say you don’t lose your mind watching netflix (or any variation) because the video won’t buffer? If nothing else, invest in this.
6. An arsenal of writing utensils
You will need good pens that make you happy (you need happy). You will also need pens you know you will not miss you never see them again. You will need board markers because whiteboard learning is a gift. You will need highlighters because neon yellow is the calling card for need to know. You will need pencils because we live in a world of mistakes.
7. Vitamin D
*Disclaimer I am not a doctor, this is just a suggestion, ask a medical professional to know if you should take any supplements* Do you wanna know a vitamin most people are deficient in? Vitamin D. Do you know where we get Vitamin D from? The sun. Do you want to know how often first year medical students go outside? If you guessed “only when they remember” then you are correct. Some of us are lucky enough to be outside. The rest of us need a bit of help.
8. Snacks
Not just any snack. A good, reliable, filling and hopefully healthy snack. Med students come in three varieties when it comes to eating. Eats like a normal human, eats out a lot, and forgets to eat. I fall into the last category because I just don’t have food with me. So find a snack that makes you fall into the first category .
9. A phone that works and can access wifi
At the minimum, you need this. You need a way to stay in contact with the people who matter to you, to be notified when you’re in the library and their about to be a quiz, when you’re still new to this hole med school thing and you get your first text from a new friend. You’ll want to pull up grades on the fly, or see that they changed a class in your email. You just can’t avoid it, you need a phone that gets you connected.
10. Confidence in yourself
Let me tell you something about medical school. It’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done so far. It’s endless hours of learning words you didn’t even know existed, things you may never see again, and pictures you can’t even grasp. It’s a world full frustration and of feeling like you aren’t good enough, or as good as everyone else. But you are. You made it this far and you can do this. So if there is one thing you do get, let it be this. Let yourself believe you can do it, and that you have the ability to be successful.
Medical Student Resources 101
I’ve been thinking about this post for quite a while now, and I have finally decided how I want to approach it. If you have any suggestions, please comment or message me! So, when I started medical school 18 months ago all I had available to me was a crazy long list of textbooks recommended by the university. It has been an uphill battle figuring out what textbooks are helpful and which are less than helpful. So this is my masterpost of resources I’ve used for medical school thus far, organised by systems!
Basics
You’ll need a good anatomy atlas, physiology text and pathophysiology book as a bare minimum. Most universities also guide you towards a clinical skills book of some sort.
Anatomy:
Rohen and Yokochi “Color Atlas of Anatomy: A Photographic Study of the Human Body”
I used an old version of this book, and it was amazing for our human dissection block, I would strongly recommend it.
Physiology:
Boron “Medical Physiology”
Guyton and Hall “Textbook of Medical Physiology”
I used a combination of these two, Boron can be very heavy, so I only used it for topics I had a really good grasp of and wanted to know more about. I would recommend Guyton over Boron if you can only get one.
Pathophysiology:
Robbins and Cotran “Pathologic Basis of Disease”
This is one of the best books ever written. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Clinical and Practical Skills:
Talley and O’Connor “Clinical Examination”
This was recommended by my university. It is a good textbook, however I’ve recently discovered:
Thomas and Monaghan “Oxford Handbook of Clinical Examination and Practical Skills”
and I personally prefer this, but it is much more concise, so Talley is great for all the background information.
Cardiovascular
Lilly “Pathophysiology of Heart Disease”
This textbook is fantastic, very easy to read and covered all of our cardiovascular block thoroughly.
Respiratory
West “Respiratory Physiology: The Essentials”
This book can be a bit hit and miss. I really didn’t like respiratory physiology, so I struggled a bit with this one, I used a combination of Guyton and Hall, and West. For pathophysiology you can’t go wrong with Robbins and Cotran.
Genitourinary
I didn’t use a specialised book for this block. For physiology I used Boron, which was insanely hard as a first year student. I also used Guyton and Hall at the end of the block, which was much better. So I’d definitely recommend Guyton and Hall for physiology and Robbins and Cotran for pathophysiology.
Gastrointestinal
Chew “Crash Course Gastrointestinal System 3e”
I really liked this book for this book, I thought it covered the hepatic system very well, overall it was very easy to read and understand. This book and Guyton and Hall if you wanted to supplement it would be great. As always, Robbins and Cotran for indepth pathophysiology.
Endocrine and Reproductive
Porterfield and White “Endocrine Physiology”
This was one of my favourite blocks! The university recommended Greenspan’s “Basic and Clinical Endocrinology”, which for what we needed was probably too much. I found a fantastic little orange book at the library, which I will need to go get the name of, so keep an eye on this if you need a good endocrinology book. UPDATE: little orange book found!
Psychiatry
Kaplan and Saddock’s “Synopsis of Psychiatry”
This is actually a really great book for any psychiatry you might do. We only used it for four weeks, but I’d definitely recommend hiring a copy if you can!
Neurology and Neuroanatomy
Yogarajah “Crash Course Neurology, 4e”
Fix “BRS Neuroanatomy”
Young “Basic Clinical Neuroscience”
This has been an incredibly hard block to find a good text for, at a reasonable price. These two have been very helpful, and I find them easy to read. Only time will tell if it has been enough to pass! Update: Young’s book is also excellent!
Musculoskeletal
Jenkins “Hollinshead’s Functional Anatomy of the Limbs and Back”
This is the most amazing textbook for any block of all time ever. Literally. It is so good! I’ve used a combination of this book, and:
Moore and Dalley’s “Clinically Oriented Anatomy”
for our musculoskeletal block. It’s been absolutely fantastic. I’ve enjoyed it so much! I would also recommend investing in some quality flashcards. I have:
Hansen “Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards”
Which have been great, another really great resource has been WinkingSkull.com, which you do have to pay for, but it is helpful!
Other
So, there are a few other resources I’ve used that have been very helpful. Mostly online databases and websites but I thought it would be handy to have them. Many (most?) universities have subscriptions to them so try your university library website!
UpToDate: www.UpToDate.com
Everything you ever needed about anything in medicine
Best Practice: www.bestpractice.bmj.com
This is my favourite resource. Ever. It goes through signs, symptoms, risk factors, diagnostics, differentials, everything. It is a small slice of heaven in medical school.
Lancet Review Articles
There were a really great series on Immunology in The Lancet, I would strongly recommend trying to find them for a concise overview of immunology
Life In The Fast Lane: www.lifeinthefastlane.com
Great series on ECGs!
Radiopedia: www.radiopaedia.org
These guys are great for understanding what you’re actually supposed to be seeing on any radiological film. I’ve been using it a lot for musculoskeletal, looking at Le Fort fractures, etc.
Toronto Notes
So I just borrowed a friend’s copy of Toronto, but I believe there may be online access. Maybe an online version. It’s great for an overview and is a little more clinically focused. I really liked it for gastrointestinal, psychiatry and neurology.
Anatomy Zone
There’s a website and a YouTube channel with great tutorials and information for anatomy, particularly musculoskeletal. I’ve found it immensely helpful whilst studying for this block!
I know I’ve probably missed a few things, I’ll add them as I think of them but I hope this helps a few pre-clinical medical students out there! If it’s helpful I’ll keep you posted as I move into my clinical years on new texts and resources I find helpful!
How to Take Notes: from a Textbook
(Be sure to change the post type from link to text post when you reblog, if that’s what you want to do)
This method is best suited for textbook or article notes, and is a version of revised notes. It is also well suited for books you plan on returning to the bookstore or books you have rented, as it does not involve writing directly in the book itself.
First, you’ll need to find a notebook, and the pens you like the best. My favorite notebooks to work with for note-taking, especially for my “revised” notes, are the Moleskine, hard or soft cover, in size extra large. For this specific class (Intro to Gender and Women’s Studies), I decided that lined pages would suit my needs better. For my math, engineering, and science classes, I usually opt for squared paper, as I draw in lots of diagrams and graphs.
My favorite pens ever are Staedtler Triplus Fineliners, so even though they show through the pages a little bit, I still choose to use them. I just love the way they write. I usually write out my notes themselves with a Pilot G2 05 with black ink, as it writes with a finer line and doesn’t bleed through quite as much.
I usually try to set up my notebooks about a week or so before class starts, that way it’s ready to go on my first day of class.
You’ll want to start off by setting up your notebook. On my first page, I put my course code for my university, as well as the course title.
Next, and this is perfectly optional (I just like the way it makes the book look, especially at the end of the semester), I include some sort of related quote to the course. For my engineering courses (which are related to my major), I put a different quote at the beginning of each section. But as this is a two-month long course during the summer, I opted for one quote by Mohadesa Najumi at the beginning of my book.
Next I set up my table of contents and include a page with basic course information. As this course is all online, my course information just included the start and end dates of the course, what time content is posted and on what day, and the name of my professor. For my usual courses, I will include the days of the week the class meets on and where, TA names and contact info, as well as posted office hours for my professors and TAs and tutoring hours either in the library or in the College of Engineering.
Next is one of the things I’m most proud of.
While I religiously use my Erin Condren planner to map out my days, weeks, and months, I have found throughout my college experience that including monthly views for the months my class ranges has been helpful. This way, there’s no sifting through the multiple colors I have in my planner, and everything related to that class is in the same notebook.
On this calendar I include start dates of the class, the end date, the dates of exams or quizzes, assignment deadlines, office hours, etc.
For this course, as I just started a few days ago, I don’t have a lot of dates or information, so my calendars are still very empty.
Next up I go to my weekly overview. At the beginning of each week, I set up a weekly layout, and I include a list of assignments, tests, quizzes, tasks, projects, etc that need my attention throughout the week, and I place the days I plan on doing them or the days they need turned in onto the weekly layout.
Now you’re finally ready to get into taking the notes.
Gather your book, some sticky notes, and your favorite pen or pencil.
I color code my stickies so that the “revision” process later goes a bit smoother. In this case, I’m using blue to denote something interesting, intriguing, or thought provoking, greenish-yellow to represent the facts or important concepts, and pink for important vocabulary words and their definitions.
Read the selection once.
As you read along the second time, write notes on your stickies, and place them in a place of relevance directly on the page in the book. Just make sure you don’t cover up anything you need to keep reading.
Now, once you’ve read all the material in questions (you can choose to break it up however you want, but since Chapter 1 was assigned for the week, I’ve elected to break it into chapters), carefully remove your stickies one by one and lay them out on a flat surface. This is when having a separate color for vocab can be helpful, as I sometimes put all of my vocab at the beginning or end of a section, especially if the section of reading was particularly large.
Organize your stickies in an order that makes sense to you, and use this order as your basis for transferring those notes into your notebook. The order you choose can just be lumping them under similar headings. Some classes even lend themselves to a nice chronological order. Whatever you choose, just make sure it’s something that will make sense to you when you come back to it in the end.
Okay so up there I wasn’t following my own advice, I just thought I would include the picture because my handwriting looks nice…
Now organize the stickies!
Now you just start writing everything from the stickies into your notebook. I like to take each category or subgroup and put them in the book on the facing page, then put them back in my textbook as I finish with each post it.
Moving on to the next category.
Before you know it, you’ve written all of your stickies into your notebooks.
Now you’re revved up and ready to go. You can either keep going and make a note summary page (which I’ll show you next week), or you can leave it. These will also be helpful when reviewing for tests and quizzes. You can highlight or underline, or use even more stickies (which is what I usually do) as you review.
Well, that’s all I have for you right now. Happy studying!
(To view this post on wordpress, click here)
Organic Chemistry Masterpost
As a chemistry major, I’ve taken sophomore organic chemistry and advanced organic chemistry. I know it’s a highly popular class, so given the demand, I figured I’d contribute some materials I’ve used that led me to success in those classes.
Google Drive:
I have set up a Google Drive folder containing much of these resources I’ve used to study from, and eventually tutor, the class. They are organized in folders by semester.
Summary Sheets
Practice “Workshop” Problems
Practice Exams
Class Notes
Research Papers
Lab Reports
“The Six Pillars of Organic Chemistry” PDF (written by my professor!)
If I end up finding additional resources, I will add more to the Drive. But that should do you well! You can check the original post for updates here.
Study Tips:
Preparing for Organic Chemistry by @hexaneandheels
Survivng Orgo Lab w/ Awful Partners by @hexaneandheels
How I Study for Organic Chemistry by @thekimmydiaries
The 10 Commandments of Organic Chemistry by @theorgounderground
Survival 101 In: Organic Chemistry by @chemistrynerd2020
Helpful References from @theorgounderground
Basic Survival Skills
Intermediate Survival Skills
Advanced Combat Skills
Reaction Mechanisms
Master Chart of All Reactions
Substitution vs. Elimination
Printables:
Reaction Table & Reaction Chart by @colllegeruled
Line Reactions & Mechanisms by @studygene
Best YouTube Channels for Orgo:
Leah4Sci (she was my goddess; check out her website, too!)
Khan Academy Organic Chemistry
Master Organic Chemistry (also check out his website!)
The Organic Chemistry Tutor
Other Recommendations:
Organic Chemistry as a Second Langauge (THE BIBLE)
Klein Textbook >>> McMurry Textbook (IMO; my professor assigned McMurry)
Molecular Visions Molecular Modeling Kit
ChemWiki
Really, this class is not as hard as people make it out to be. If you put in the work, it’s easy to understand. Practice problems are your friend. If your professor assigns “optional” homework, do it anyway. My professor did a “mechanism a day”, which is something you should absolutely do on your own if your professor doesn’t! At times it might be frustrating, but be patient. Your hard work will pay off!
Good luck!
– Melissa (@hexaneandheels )
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Where do you recommend getting textbooks from? (renting, buying, online etc)
well textbook companies are evil and sometimes you have no choice but to buy a textbook new, but for other times where that’s not the case i’d recommend you check out slugbooks! ^_^ they compare a bunch of different sites selling the textbook you need so you can find it at the cheapest price :) it’s like the kayak of academia lol!
the no bullshit guide to getting your shit together: for the lazy student
Let’s be honest: time management and organization? They’re really hard. Sure, at first you might feel like you’ve gotten the hang of them, that you’re in control of your life. But how often have you fallen off the wagon? Procrastinated on one thing and the next moment, you’re behind in all your classes? I know that sometimes laziness feels like a part of who you are, but honestly, fuck that. Do you really want to give up your success for the disinterest of a moment?
If your answer is no (it better be no, or you really need to get your priorities straight), let’s get to it.
STEP ONE: BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF
“This class doesn’t even matter.” “I don’t care about my grades.” “I can finish this the day before.” Sound familiar? You might feel great now, but when you’re staring down at your report card later, it’ll feel like you just got punched.
This is a cliche, but the greatest obstacle to your success is yourself - especially the lies you tell yourself! Sit yourself down and be honest about what you need to improve on. Be as blunt as you can, but for god’s sake, don’t throw yourself a pity party! There’s no use agonizing over what you can’t change. Instead, set realistic, achievable goals, and make a game plan. Struggling with math? Go to extra help. Behind in all your classes? Stay in for a couple nights and actually work.
STEP TWO: STOP WITH THE FANCY SHIT
Now you know what your goals are, but maybe you want some inspiration, so you log on to tumblr and are instantly bombarded by all these beautiful, well lit shots of the most gorgeous bullet journals, planners, and notes. Impressive, right? Well, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: they’re all useless! A simple phone planner works just as well, if not better, than a fancy agenda, because you’ll always have it on you, it’s not a hassle to carry around, and you don’t feel obligated to make it look pretty.
Riddle me this, where are you going to find all this extra motivation to keep prettying up your bullet journal? To write all your notes in perfect, colour coded printing? There aren’t many times in life where taking the easy was out will actually benefit you, so take advantage! Stop wasting your time; get a phone planner and write your notes in your natural goddamn handwriting.
STEP THREE: CLEAN YOUR ROOM
Yep, your entire room - not just your study space! This one can be put on the back burner for a bit if you’re on a really pressing deadline, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m notoriously messy, and if I don’t watch myself, I’d find myself in dirty-laundry-and-old-notes hell. A little bit of organized chaos is fine, I even encourage it! But try working when your desk is covered in mounds of paper and you have nowhere to put your laptop – it’s just not conducive to success.
Keeping your entire room clean is a way to stave off stress, frustration, and even embarrassment, because nobody wants to show potential roommates how much of a mess they are.
STEP FOUR: ACTUALLY WORK
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “actually work? Who does this girl think she is?” I’d probably think the same thing, except I’ve learned the valuable lesson of sucking it the hell up, and you will too. When you get home from work, grab a snack and work. When you have a free period, figure out what’s due and work. Stop reasoning yourself out of work: you’re not going to finish this later, and that will be on the test. There’s really not much to say about this one, because it’s the step that requires the most raw effort, and you’re really only going to find that within yourself. Tell yourself what’s at stake, and realize that, by setting the standard for your mediocrity now, you’re potentially trapping yourself in a cycle that will last for years.
STEP FIVE: CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK
Maybe you’ve been on top of your shit for a day, a week, or even a month, and that’s really great. But then… you fail. You miss a deadline or you bomb a test. So what do you do now? Do you allow yourself to fall back into your old habits? Fuck no! Everyone fails, even that studyblr with those perfect bullet journal photos and a perpetually clean study space. I’m going to tell you something that’ll sound really strange: you should value your failures, especially if you worked hard to avoid them. What?! Be HAPPY about failing when I actually TRIED? Yeah, you heard me right. If you don’t know how to handle failure, then when you inevitably experience it, your reaction will be much worse.
Failing hurts, and boy, I know how embarrassing it can be. But learning how to deal with failure, and especially how to keep trying after it happens, is an invaluable lesson.
STEP SIX: TREAT. YO. SELF.
Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting you treat yourself after the most basic of tasks, because please. Treat yourself when you know you goddamn well deserve it. Remember that “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.” If all you do is study and do your homework, then, pardon my french, your life sucks. If you don’t have friends, play a video game! Eat an entire jumbo chocolate bar! Indulge in whatever the fuck you want, you deserve it. I’m someone that has trouble prioritizing future benefits over immediate gratification, so by allowing myself little pleasures, I save myself from crashing and burning.
Hope these tips helped, but remember to take them with a grain of salt - you’re you and I’m me, and different things work for different people. Good luck!
15 things I tell myself when I don't want to work/study
1. You are very lucky and privileged to have access to almost unlimited knowledge and you should appreciate that. 2. Be one of those rare people who step over their insecurities and succeed. 3. Only 5 minutes. Only today. (Repeat it 5 minutes later and every day). 4. You will know what to do as soon as you start. Ideas never appear from inactivity. 5. Make yourself proud. 6. One hour every day doesn’t feel much but it’s 365 hours a year. You can’t not succeed after so much work. 7. It’s not supposed to be easy. Nothing good is easy. 8. If you had a child to look after, you’d make them study because you want them to accomplish something. Don’t you love yourself? 9. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear” George Adair 10. Every mistake increases our chance to make progress. 11. If you give up now, you’ll have to return to this later anyway but from the very beginning. 12. Let the process be your result. 13. Every moment you thought your fears would suppress you has become the time you made it. 14. Maybe you think you can never find something to use your skills and mindset for. But if you continue investing in what matters to you, it will find its way out there. 15. I allow you to think globally. You have a right to the boldest dream.
a small guide on how i battle my essays! (click on an image to view it clearer)
(keep in mind: i’m an english major so a majority of my essays are literature-focused!)
these are just some of the methods i want to share that work for me when i write my innumerable amount of essays! i’m definitely a huge planner so it’s no secret that i spend a lot of time on an essay. if you’re a deadline fighter, these tips might not necessarily be helpful (especially the handwriting one). but i hope this gives you an insight on how i write my essays! 🌈
Actual good first-time college student advice:
Wear jeans/pants that “breathe” and bring a sweater, even if it’s scorching hot out, until you know which building blasts the AC to 60 degrees F and which feels like a sauna
Backpacks with thick straps are your friend! Messenger bags are cool and all but if you’re commuting with a lot of stuff, symmetrically styled backpacks are better for your back
You are your own person and you can walk out whenever you need to or want to, so long as you’re not disrupting the class. Meaning you can go to the bathroom without permission, take a breather if you’re anxious, answer an important phone call, etc.
If you don’t like the class on the first day, if you can- DROP THAT CLASS AND TAKE ANOTHER ONE! It’ll only get worse from there!
If you can, take a class outside your major; it’s a good break from your expected studies.
You are in charge of your schedule. Your adviser and guidance counselor is there to ‘advise and guide’ but if you don’t like certain classes and you can substitute for others, that’s your choice.
Consequently, if you are changing anything drastic in your plan, talk with your adviser and instructors.
Pay attention to your credit hours and grades. Never leave this to the last week of school, you will be sorry and stressed beyond belief!
Unless it’s a lab book or otherwise specified, go to the class for a week or so before buying an expensive textbook. Some classes, while having it on their required list, do not actually use the textbook a whole lot and you might find some of it scanned online. Rent if you can or buy used online (schools actually don’t give discounts). Use your best judgement on what you think you need.
Tell the people who go up to you selling or advertising things you are not interested in that you are in a rush to class and don’t have time to listen to them. It’s less rude and they’ll leave you alone.
The smaller the class, the better it is to have some sort of acquaintanceship with a couple classmates. They might save your ass if you are absent one day or need to study. And talking with them makes the time go by faster without it being so insufferable.
You don’t need to join a club or sport, but internships are cool and useful!
If you can afford it, take a day off once or twice each semester if you’re too exhausted. Just be aware of what you missed and if it was worth missing!
Your health is the most important, this goes for mental health too!! Note: College-age/upper teens is when mental disorders like depression and anxiety are most commonly diagnosed. Most schools have therapy services, especially during exam time. Look into it if you need to!
Communicate with your professor if you are having trouble with something. Anything.
Eat and stay hydrated. Bring a water bottle and snack to class.
All-nighters will happen but never go over 36 hours without sleep.
It’s going to be hard and there will be times you might think about giving up. This WILL happen. You just have to make sure what you’re doing isn’t making you absolutely miserable and/or there is something rewarding and positive to look forward to at the end!
No to Low Stress College Study Strategy
I started using this study method my 2nd month of college, when I realized that it was better for study-life balance and my emotional wellbeing. It makes me feel productive and alert all day, and gives me plenty of free time to pursue hobbies, clubs, and personal interests. It sounds kind of hardcore at first, but it’s seriously wonderful if you give it a try! Here’s the game plan:
After the first few days of the semester, I sit down with all of the syllabi from all of my classes and write down every single assignment for the rest of the semester into my planner. Include exams, readings, lab report due dates, worksheets, essays, etc. Everything.
Every weekend, I set aside however much time I need to knock out every single assignment for the upcoming week that is possible to do in advance. I do my textbook readings, textbook practice problems, my humanities readings, short essays or write-ups to accompany those humanities readings, etc.
Even though I’m doing more work, I generally spend the same amount of time in the library as my friends who only do their work for Monday over the weekend. This is because if you don’t commit to doing a large number of assignments, you tend to spend a lot more time on minor assignments than is truly necessary - do I really need to spend 3 hours on this 1-page essay for my English class if it’s only graded on a 10 point scale? Couldn’t I finish this in 1 hour and then devote more time to the rest of the readings I need to do for that class this week?
I still have enough time to sleep in, have long lunch breaks, go the gym, go to parties in the evening, etc.
You can do this, no matter your workload. I am a pre-med science major taking 20 credits (max course load) a semester, with two labs, and I can get it done. My roommate is an English major with heavy novel reading assignments and she can get it done. (Disclaimer: this mostly applies to undergraduates.)
Research papers and midterm exam studying generally get their own day separate from homework assignments. I like writing essays in 1 or 2 sittings, but if you like to spread it out just break up the essay into manageable pieces and do it over multiple weekends, or do the pieces between classes (see next bullet point).
After blasting through most of my assignments over the weekend, during the week I generally only have to do busy-work that is assigned at the end of classes and continue studying for midterms that week. I easily finish these assignments in the breaks between classes during the day.
With this strategy, I always complete all of my homework well before dinnertime, and often have days when I don’t have any assignments to do. I use this free time for club meetings, hanging out with friends, going to the gym, marathoning Netflix, pursuing hobbies, working a job, whatever.
I also use this extra time to be able to study for exams much more effectively - when you don’t have busywork assignments floating in the back of your mind, it is much easier to focus. You will study more productively and effectively, and with much less stress. Exams are worth way more of your grade than the homework assignments you blast through each weekend, so it’s best to be able to focus exclusively on them Monday - Friday.
The best part about this strategy is that your workload is heavy on Sunday and sometimes Saturday, but you get to relax Monday - Friday. You basically have a 5 day weekend every week, assuming you enjoy going to class.
If anyone also uses this method, I’d love to hear from you or hear your variants/study suggestions! If anyone tries out this method for 1 or 2 weeks and finds that it works for them, I’d love to hear about it! If you try it and hate it with a fiery burning passion and loathe me for even suggesting it, I’d love to hear about it!
I believe in you!<3 No matter what study method you choose to use, just do your best and exceed your own expectations.
Headaches are still largely a medical mystery. We have no pain receptors on our brain, yet we so often experience pain which seems to come from it. This infographic outlines the 3 main types of headaches, and their probable causes.
Hey so I'm not sure if you have any resources I can use to study chemistry? Thanks in advance!
Chemrevise
It’s actually my chemistry teacher’s website, and pretty much everyone in my school lives off the notes he posts. The notes are concise but include everything and are especially good if you’re in the UK system/doing A Levels because he tailors them to the different exam boards. Even if you’re not a UK student, it’s still a great resource because science is the same everywhere lol (and the tab that says ‘Textbook’ is more universal and not exam board specific).
Since I get asked a lot about where to learn more about the human brain and behaviour, I’ve made a masterpost of books, websites, videos and online courses to introduce yourself to that piece of matter that sits between your ears.
Books
The Brain Book by Rita Carter
The Pyschology Book (a good starter book) by DK
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin
The Autistic Brain by Richard Panek and Temple Grandin (highly reccomended)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (not really brain-related, but it is single handedly the best book I have ever read)
Websites
@tobeagenius (shameless self-promotion)
How Stuff Works
Psych2Go
BrainFacts
Neuroscience for Kids (aimed at kids, but it has some good info)
New Scientist
National Geographic
Live Science
Videos & Youtube Channels
Mind Matters series by TedEd
Crash Course Psychology
SciShow Brain
Psych2Go TV
asapSCIENCE
Brain Craft
Its Okay To Be Smart
Online Courses
The Addicted Brain
Visual Perception and The Brain
Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life
Pyschology Of Popularity
Harvard Fundamentals Of Neuroscience
I just watched a kid break down in the bookstore because his books for the semester totaled $600 and that’s the american university system in a nutshell
To all my freshman babies who are panicking right now about how much your college textbooks cost: Yeah, you’re right, that’s some highway robbery. No, you don’t have to lie down and take it. You have options. Follow my advice and fly on your own debt free wings.
1. Forgoe the bookstore entirely. Sometimes you can get a good deal on something, usually a rental, but it’s usually going to be considerably more expensive to go through official channels. Outsmart them, babies.
2. Does your syllabus call for edition eight? Get edition seven. Old editions are considered worthless in the buyback trades, so they sell for dirt cheap, no matter how new they are. It’s a gamble, sure; there might be something in edition eight you desperately need, but that never happened to me. However, I’ve only ever pulled this stunt for literature/mass comm/religious studies books, so I don’t know it would work in the sciences.
3. Thriftbooks.com, especially for nonfiction and fiction. Books are usually four or five dollars unless they’re really new, and shipping is 99 cents unless you buy over 10$ in books, in which case shipping is free.
4. Bigwords.com. It will scan every textbook seller on the internet for the lowest price available, and will do the same to find the highest price when you try to sell your books back at the end of term. Timesaver, lifesaver.
5. In all probability, your library offers a service called interlibrary loan which is included in your tuition. This means if your library doesn’t carry a book you can order it for free from any library nationwide in your library’s network and it will be shipped to you in a number of days. Ask a librarian to show you how to search for materials at your library as well as though interlibrary loan; you’ll need to master this skill soon anyway. If you get lucky you can just have your required reading shipped to you a week before you need to start reading, then renew vigorously until you no longer need to item. I’m saving over 100$ on a History of Islam class this way.
You professors might side-eye you for bringing an old edition or a library copy, but you just smile right back honey, because you can pay your rent and go clubbing this month. You came here to win. So go forth and slay.