Does Zapping Your Brain Increase Performance?

Matchmaking : Creating the perfect college list

One of the most important parts of the college application process is actually choosing the college you want to go to. This can be especially nerve-wracking if you have absolutely no idea where you want to go (or where you’ll get in!). Your college list may take ages to perfect and lock down, but here are some few tips that will help you get started. College lists are all about matchmaking, and this is how you get it done! 

Get realistic  Growing up, we all have dream colleges that we want to attend. Now, it’s time to get realistic about your chances at that dream college. Compare your scores, GPA, and ECs with the Freshman profile of the college you want to attend. If your stats are similar, you might have a good shot! 

Reach, Match, and Safety  Regardless of how many colleges you have in your college list, segregating them will make your job easier. Reach colleges are the colleges that will be, essentially, a “reach” for you. Match colleges are the colleges that you have a VERY good chance of getting in with your grades and stats. Finally, safety colleges are the ones that will be fairly easy for you to get into. 

Percentiles  When researching colleges, make sure to look at the college’s 25th and 75th percentile on test scores. If your test scores fall between the 25th and 75th percentiles, you have a great shot! Make sure that all your “match colleges’” percentiles are in tune with your scores. Consider eliminating / adding colleges to your list depending on your grades, stats, and scores!

Excel sheets  Excel sheets are life savers! Make an excel sheet with columns that read : Name of college, 25th to 75th percentiles, Tuition fees, Acceptance rates, Rankings for programs, Reach/Match/Safety, etc. Making this excel sheet will have all your data in one place making it easier for you to add or eliminate colleges to make your perfect college list. 

Ask important questions Finally, ask yourself some really important questions. For example, ask questions about your GPA and what the college you’re applying to is looking for. Like I said, college lists are all about matchmaking. And matchmaking is a two-way process! If you’re convinced that the college you’re applying to isn’t what you’re looking for, consider eliminating that college. 

This is a picture of a human brain that is entirely smooth – free of the ridges and folds so characteristic of our species’ most complex organ. The patient had a rare condition called agyria; a lack of gyri and sulci, the ridges and folds formed by the normally wrinkled cerebral cortex. This disorder often leads to death before the age of ten, and can cause muscle spasms, seizures and a range of learning difficulties due to the considerably reduced surface area of the brain.

Things I learned during my first year of medical school

I cannot believe I’ve finished my first year of medical school already! Wow! 

Warning: long Parks and Rec gif-filled post ahead (90% of these are cheesy but I am pizza levels of cheesy when I’m reflecting):

1. Do your thing

The first semester of med school was a weird time of looking and seeing what other people were doing to study and wondering if I needed to do that too. 

I wondered, should I get a bunch of colored highlighters? Make a million flashcards? Am I behind because I haven’t studied that lecture yet? Should I stream instead of go to class because that’s what other people are doing?

My advice? Try new things out but once you figure out what works for you, don’t be afraid to stick to it. Some people found out that they study best in groups. I found out I study best by myself. I don’t like highlighting but I do like writing down things I need to know in a spiral so I can review/remember them better. I also like doing as many practice questions as I can get my hands on. I like going to class and taking notes on my computer. 

I didn’t know any of that until I got here. And that’s okay. But don’t stress about what other people are doing - you’ll find what works for you. 

2. Don’t try to study 24/7 

Seriously. Don’t. It’s not worth it. You’ll burn out and realize you could have been more relaxed and focused if you took a break. I try to take a couple minutes of break every hour and a bigger break every few hours whenever I’m studying. I also try to take at least one day off per weekend and do something fun (even if it’s small). I also know I study best during the day so I usually take the evenings off as well unless it’s like crunch time. 

3. Investing in dress clothes is a good idea

Inevitably, you’ll forget that you have yet another clinical skills class that requires white coat attire (aka business casual) and only remember last minute, without time to do laundry. It’s way less stressful if you have a few possible outfits. Even easier? If you wear dresses, get some nice professional dresses. Nothing better than only picking a single thing out of your closet to wear! Also, along with that, make sure you have dress shoes that fit and are comfortable. I learned that I need to break in new flats sometimes before I wear them or I will get really bad blisters. 

4. Laughter is the best medicine

As cliche as it sounds, I could not have gotten through this year without laughing. Laughing with new friends, laughing at ridiculous situations, laughing at silly gifs posted in our med school’s FB group specifically created for that purpose (it’s the best, highly recommend. Our class has 3 facebook groups - one for class announcements/club things, one for study materials, and one for laughing. The silly one was started by an MS2 (now MS3 I suppose!)). Laughing is seriously therapeutic for stress. Also some of my classmates just happen to be hysterically funny. Also A+ to tumblr for keeping me giggling. Also, Broad City (put it on your list of shows to watch!) 

5. The days are long but the weeks/months are short

I still cannot believe it is May and I’m already done. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to reflect on my experiences on my tumblr so I can remember them (because sometimes it feels like my memories are getting squeezed out to make room for new knowledge). Journaling here allowed me to process this year in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I would highly recommend it to anyone about to start school (of any kind!). 

6. Make new friends but keep the old

Yes, I am quoting a Girl Scouts song. Because it’s true. I am so very thankful for the technology that has allowed me to (try to) keep up with my college friends. Life is busy for all of us but it’s always nice to chat with old friends (and hang out, location permitting!) Also my med school class is filled with the most amazing people and it’s been so fun getting to know them :) I love my girls so much, they truly are my ride or dies. Med school is quite a bonding experience.

7. You’ll do things you never imagined you could

For me, that was anatomy and clinical skills. I was a bit nervous about dissecting and the whole experience but I was pleasantly surprised. It was not as weird as I thought it would be. In clinical skills, I was terrifyingly nervous about standardized patients and being filmed and getting feedback and learning how to do all the exams. We all got through it and now I feel much more comfortable. There are still hard days (like a couple of weeks ago) but I am not as nervous. I also learned how to do the male GU exam and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. 

 I also can’t believe that I went from knowing nothing to taking a history and doing a physical on a real patient all by myself AND presenting them to my preceptor. I still have a ton to learn and say stupid stuff sometimes but it feels like I’m on the right track. 

8. While sometimes first year feels like this:

You’ll have moments where you feel like

And one last bonus lesson:

Can that be the medblr motto? Also shoutout to medblr for being such an amazing and supportive community. Could not have gotten through this year without y’all!!!! 

Congratulations to all the other first years who are finishing up school or already done :) And welcome medblr class of 2020!!! So excited for y’all. 

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs (via xwg)

Writing an essay without any structure is like trying to find your way around an unfamiliar place without a map; frustrating, ineffective, and a bit of a garbled mess. Structure gives your essay a clear voice and coherency and makes marking a lot easier for your teacher or tutor! Here are a few general tips I often use when writing essays to maximise the effect of my argument and achieve the best results I can both in high school and university.

Text structure While the content of essays varies, the skeleton structure never changes. In order to clearly articulate an idea, an essay needs a beginning, middle, and an end. 

Introduction

Start with a macro sentence - use an interesting quote, fact, or idea which gives the reader a broad sense of what your essay will cover. This is the reader’s first impression of your essay and can determine their whole attitude while reading it, so make it effective!

Briefly outline the main ideas and thesis - in absence of an abstract, your introduction will need to show the main ideas you will be covering so as to support your thesis, or answer the essay question. You will need to clearly express your position and how you intend to argue the point.

Set the limits - sometimes, the scope of an essay question can be very broad, or perhaps there’s a focus to your thesis not all ready indicated. Define the limits of your essay, whether they be a set of years for a history topic, or looking at specific artists who contributed to an art style.

Define key terms - if a term is important to the understanding of your essay, or perhaps you’ve taken your own approach to its meaning, be sure to define it in your introduction!

Body

Separate each idea into a paragraph - ideas can generally be separated chronologically or conceptually. The section below explores this in more detail! 

Start every paragraph with a topic sentence - introduce what the paragraph will discuss and how it relates to your thesis. Signpost it with critical words to make it easier to understand exactly what you are addressing. Ensure it is clear and to the point!

Make a claim and the support it - like in reality, when you make a claim you need to provide evidence to support it so it can be taken seriously. Make your claim early on in the paragraph, generally in the topic sentence, give relevant detail and explanation, analyse it, and then justify it with authoritative quotes, sources, examples, etc.

End every paragraph with a linking sentence - refer back to your thesis or question and make sure what you set out to cover in the paragraph actually addresses it! This is an opportunity to draw a link between this paragraph and the next.

Conclusion

Do more than just restate your points - your conclusion is more than just a rehash of your introduction. Link ideas together and demonstrate how they are interconnected on a less superficial level. An English teacher once told me, your essay is like a mountain. You put in all your hard work to climb it in your introduction and body paragraphs, your conclusion is a chance to look back, make connections where there were none before, and solidify your argument. 

Establish the overarching theme and idea - what idea underlies all the points you have made? How does it relate to your thesis?

Draw a profound and insightful conclusion - what are the implications of this? Is there relevance today? This can transform a standard essay into a more profound and overall, more interesting essay.

Don’t introduce any new information - your essay is complete! All your information should have been expressed in the body paragraphs, so nothing new should be introduced here.

Reaffirm your thesis - restate it with some finality! Your body has provided all this evidence to support it, remind them of this.

Chronological or Conceptual? For the most part, an essay can take one of two approaches; a chronological approach, where each body paragraph follows the text, history, etc., sequentially, or a conceptual approach, where the main idea is broken down into its constituent elements, each addressed in their own paragraph(s).

 In my experience, conceptual essays usually score higher, showing a greater sense of understanding of the topic and its inner workings. You can demonstrate a funnel effect more easily, where each element funnels down from its body paragraph to the conclusion, contributing to the overall idea of the essay. A chronological approach, however, can be easier to follow and is occasionally implicit within the essay question. Choosing which approach to use depends on which you are comfortable writing with, the demands of the essay or your teacher, and can vary from essay to essay. 

Continuity and Cohesion Something I think is highly underrated, yet critical to holding an essay together, is transition words and phrases. They create continuity and cohesion between ideas and paragraphs, and serve as a bridge of sorts within your overall structure. Here are a few posts which have comprehensive lists of transition words and phrases:

Transition Words for Essays - @staedtlers-and-stabilos Essay Transition Phrases - @study-like-you-mean-it Transition Words For Your Essays - @soniastudyblr

I hope this can help with structuring your essays and getting the best marks you can! Please message me if you have any questions :)

Other essay writing posts: How to reduce your word count Understanding the Question How to Write a Killer Unprepared Text Essay

HOW TO STUDY A WEEK BEFORE AN EXAM

Day 7

List out all your topics, and highlight those you are least familiar with. I also love listing out the resources/materials I have to study. 

You should start reading and annotating the materials you are unfamiliar with.

Day 6

If you have not started making notes at all, it wouldn’t be wise to start making notes now. 

Instead, try to annotate things, write down explanations next to the things that you don’t understand, or definitions that you think can be elaborated.

Remember to be exam-oriented. Don’t spend time on things that are very trivial, or things that won’t be covered in the exam anyways.

At this stage, you should be focusing on annotating and enhancing your understanding of the materials.

Day 5

You should make sure you have most of your notes ready and that you have digested everything.

If you haven’t done a summary card, you should probably do it at this stage. This is a great way to consolidate your information.

Get a bunch of index cards. Write out the title of each chapter on each card.

Write the outline of the chapter. Alternatively, you can make a question attack plan for each chapter.

Turn over and write down some key terms that you don’t know. Or, you can write down some common mistakes, formulas etc, depending on your subject.

Day 4

With 4 days left, you should start memorizing things now. Focus on spellings and key terms. 

By memorizing, you can do the following:

Read the notes out loud, and repeat them by not looking at the paper (this is the way I personally use!)

Try to memorize, and cover the sheet and rewrite everything

Teach yourself, or to an audio recorder, or to a friend

Draw a mindmap without looking at your notes.

Day 3

You should go for some practice questions by chapter. 

You may also try to complete the exercises at the back of the chapter in your textbook. 

Don’t just do the practice question and throw them away. Make full use of it:

Check the answer. Find out what you failed to get right and failed to write down on the answer paper.

Understand your mistake. Understand why you make the mistake, and how you can avoid it.

Take notes of your misunderstanding and mistakes (as well as the correct answers). This will help you to avoid making the same ones.

Day 2

Repeat what you have done on day 3. 

Some teachers may also offer some mock papers or practice papers, or you may also try to complete past papers here. 

Day 1

You should do your very last review here. You should make sure you read through the following this day:

Your summary cards

Your notes

The notes you have made while doing the practice questions and papers

If your exam involves some formulas or difficult keywords or definitions, you may need to memorize them again this day.

Day 0

Now that’s everything. With all the preparation above, you should be very confident since you have got everything covered! All you have to do is to take a good breakfast and focus during the exam! Good luck!

For more details, check out the article on Students Toolbox!

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Promo for promo

Student loan default is $849 billion and rising

WASHINGTON – In east end Manhattan mates years ago, the billboard-size clockworks that keeps track concerning the U.S. national debt ran sluice of digits for all that the figure ballooned over against $10 trillion.

Better self wasn’t long before a illumination was cause to again tick, tick, seam far how much the country is in the red.

As things are there’s another time, relatively this one is online, ticking away the amount re scholar loan debt being joined nearby rochdale cooperative students and their parents.

Mark Kantrowitz, book salesman of finaid.org, one of the best sites for college financial set up information, has placed a “Student Loan Debt Timepiece” that keeps a running tally with respect to the current outstanding federal and noncommissioned officer student loans.

If you check today, the grand purposefulness be more than $849 zillion. I just watched in alarm since the last five digits retained changing, nosy the debt load to a level that is straightforwardly hard for fathom. It’s a add up figure, I inaugurate, excepting I also know - and better self perhaps know, too - what a financially debilitating impact this much student loan due is having on families.

To develop the big ben, Kantrowitz started with a conservative conception as to $665 billion in federal loans superior as of June 2010. For intimate student loans, he forfeited a repayment trajectory degree he put together in addition to annual new collateral loan volume data. Those calculations yielded $168 a zillion for private student loans. Combine all this debt and you get the starting estimate of $833 googol.

The total debt figure is earlier increased by $2,853.88 for each lunar month long since midnight June 30, he said. The total indebtedness projecting will be even more continuant at the fetal of each year, when most student loans are disbursed.

Kantrowitz is quick to point out that the swot loan straitened clock is only an approximation and is supposed to be lost for entertainment purposes. DA, but there’s nothing entertaining up and down this deterrent big ben. It’s proportionately strong a statement as the ethnic debt fix the time.

“Hopefully most awareness upon the aggregate magnitude pertinent to training debt will encourage families to reduce their student loan debt,” Kantrowitz says.

Kantrowitz tries to anticipate people exception taken of pledge inter alia much. Most new on finaid.org, Kantrowitz released tips for families, composed of a recommendation that for a student’s straight-out upbringing, unique should not borrow more than the unamazed starting salary upon graduation. Great advice, except many students and their parents don’t even bothersomeness to figure out what that starting salary might be before signing loan documents. I’m not even subsuming the students who are clueless within earshot their career path, wide world the while adding to the indebted clock.

Private Grind Loan Default Help If you borrow more than twice your starting salary in back of college, you will go on at bad-smelling risk of default, Kantrowitz says.

Kantrowitz has another reason for posting the clock. He wants to draw circumspection to the sketchiness in regard to need-based grants. The federal Pell Grant program, which provides grants to low-income sophomore and certain post-baccalaureate students, should be expanded. Student Loan Settlement A Pell Grant, unlike a loan, does not have up to be repaid. Kantrowitz suggests doubling the maximum grant, which for the 2010-11 offering year (July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011) is $5,550.

“Companion an investment will increase the number of low- and moderate-income students graduating with bachelor’s degrees by 200,000 to 300,000 a year, ultimately installment plan for the cost of the heighten in grants through greater treasury agent income-tax commissions,” he estimates.

In a notice to Congress and the Department of Education, the federal Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance predicate that inadequate need-based grants brink the ability of students from low- and moderate-income families to attend four-year colleges and universities. Entrance “The Uphillward Opening price of Incongruity,” the independent division warns that if alleviate isn’t exacerbated, the percentage of restricted low-income students who earn bachelor’s degrees will significantly drop.

We all know there is a increasing draw between the haves and have-nots. In this soft binding, it’s the people who ken enough money in order to spirit to college outwards debt and those who are burying herself or their parents in debt. The problem is that the conventional collected sayings - a college education will meet off ingoing the future - isn’t a guard inpouring an war economy spite of high unemployment and starting salaries that are insufficient so service the monthly student loan payments many people in general are taking on.

So if you’re borrowing on behalf of college, last to finaid.org and straight-up-and-down clock movement the clock parce que a little while. Take in its message insofar as it eyeshot the debt foot formulation second by second. It’s haunting. It’s crazy. It’s sad. Clerk Long-term loan Forgiveness

400 years after his death, William Shakespeare has kept his cool

The playwright's work still seeps into pop culture — and resonates with performers of all ages and backgrounds.

“I would love, love, love to play Hamlet,” said James Norton, who was plucked from the Cambridge student body for Trevor Nunn’s production of “Cymbeline” nine years ago and is melting hearts as a jazz-loving vicar in PBS’ “Grantchester.” “But I’m already a bit too old.”

The 30-year-old Norton may think the role has passed him by — although maturity didn’t stop Mel Gibson from doing a 1990 film version at the creaky age of 34 — but there are plenty of other choices in his future.

Student Loan Forgiveness

An email I got this morning from the government regarding my student loans:

We recalculated your monthly payment for your Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan. We used the income documentation […] to determine your monthly payment of $334.66 [….] If you do not recertify or you no longer have a partial financial hardship (PFH), your payment amount will be $641.77.

The power of Income-Based Repayment plans for student loans: I am literally paying half what my monthly payment would be if I didn’t have “income based” forbearance.

The downside of course is that it would take me well over twice the length of time to pay off my loans (given the payment size plus interest), but I am enrolled in Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which means if I am employed with a not-for-profit for another four years, to make ten years total, the balance of my loans, roughly $30K, will be forgiven.

Furthermore, I believe (qualifier: this may no longer be true, I haven’t checked recently) if you are enrolled in IBR and paying based on income, after 25 years your loans will be forgiven regardless of where you work. If you are unemployed, IBR can reduce your loan payments to zero even once you’ve used up your grace period. If you are long-term unemployed, that means in 25 years you will no longer carry student loan debt. 

It’s 25 years of payments instead of 10, but it’s better than no help at all.

If you are in a low-earning job (I make just over $50K per year which in Chicago does not go far), IBR can help you keep your head above water and build savings by not charging you through the nose for your loan repayments. IBR is making it possible for me to afford to buy a home.

If you are employed with a charity, public school, private not-for-profit school, government agency, or other 501( c)(3) organization, you also qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which means after ten years of payments all of your qualifying loans will be forgiven.

A few years ago I wrote up how to apply for IBR and PSLF here. I just went through and updated all the links; it should be a good primer on the kinds of loans and jobs that the setup involves.