In The Process Of Making A Cheat Sheet For Tomorrow’s Organic Chem Test!

self discipline tips

here are tips I discovered very recently:

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

second drafts / reviews can be done after.

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

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

build on your productivity, not your failures.

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

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

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

be patient with yourself, you’ll get there!

set smaller deadlines for your goals

have monthly and weekly-ish deadlines

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

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

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

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

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

spread daily tasks in the time necessary.

have a consistent sleep schedule.

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

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

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

behavioural and emotional patterns of living in abuse:

you spend most of your time shut in your room

you’re scared of footsteps approaching your door

you prefer not to come out unless there’s nobody home

when they come back you run to your room/safe place

you’re nervous and anxious if you have to spend time in presence of others

you try to get away from your home, you wish you could live somewhere else

your self-confidence is very low

you worry about making too much noise (have a feeling you’ll get yellet at or abused for it)

you try to move around as silently as possible and try to not be noticed by anyone

you feel uncomfortable and uneasy sitting at the same table as rest of family/housemates

you don’t feel like you belong here

you feel like a burden to your housemates

you don’t feel like you’re worth having around or supporting in any way

you don’t feel like anyone will ever love you or believe in you

you don’t feel like anything you do is good enough

you can’t stand someone watching you do things like cleaning or anything else you need to get done

you try really hard to still find good points about your life and cling to them

you strongly worry that you are somehow worse than anyone else

you feel like you’re behind on everyone and that you’re failing to live your life properly

you don’t feel like anything would have changed if you died, or even that it would be better if you did

if you’re experiencing most of this, you’re going through abuse. Your value isn’t in any way less than other humans, and you are absolutely not any kind of burden. You are human who is forced to live in a way humans aren’t meant to live. You are in living conditions that disable you from feeling happy, fulfilled, or even seeing yourself as a human being.  You are suffering. What is being done to you is not okay. You deserve better than this.

saga in black and white

Learning Medical Terminology

Source: Medical Terminology Made Incredibly Easy by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

12/21/15 || Last week’s spread ☺️ Loving my new cloud stickers. ☁️✨

I think a lot about what it is to be a woman in science, but I have the inherent privilege that comes with being a white woman to shield me from the worst of it. I had an absolutely eye opening conversation with classmate of mine last year, and I’d like to share it with y’all.

This other lab member of mine became a great friend of mine around the time I decided to switch labs. She had a different PI and was a year ahead of me, so I was comfortable bringing my concerns to her. Her support was instrumental in my decision and my current happiness in my new lab. She presented in a lab meeting the day I went to the director of our grad school and requested a change in PIs, so I missed it. I knew she had been nervous (it was meant to prepare her for for her preliminary exam) so I asked her the next day how it had gone.

Now. To put this in context, I need to explain my old PI. He was an almost eighty year old white man, and if it wasn’t his opinion, it was wrong. He was very, very bad at being a PI. He was also probably worse at being a co-worker. I recall at least three lab meetings that devolved into him yelling with another PI, and several student presentations that he was terribly mean and unnecessarily fixated on insignificant details. So it comes as no shock that he went after my friend.

My old PI (who was not involved in bacteria research AT ALL) had taken some issue with the strain of bacteria she was using, one that was selected based on clinical relevancy. This had resulted in a dissolving of my friends presentation into him interrogating her about this strain, interrupting her explanations and generally getting louder and louder and louder until her PI stepped in. Upon hearing all of this, I apologized profusely for his behavior and asked how she was doing now. She expressed to me how she had struggled to remain calm, and how she was ultimately grateful to her PI for de-escalating the situation.

Now here’s the part that hit me hard: my friend explained to me that she was grateful mostly because she wasn’t sure how much longer she would have been able to withstand his nonsense without raising her voice, to which I responded, “he would have deserved it. You were right and he was wrong, and it’s beyond time he was put in his place. He’s not your PI, and he’s not on your committee, so I think you would have been wholly justified in standing up for yourself.”

“If I’d had raised my voice at him, even a little, I would have been labeled an angry black woman, and everyone in that room would have written me off as a stereotype of my race.”

Oh. Ohhhhh. OH that hit me in the heart and the brain and the soul and I’m shocked I didn’t get a bruise. My sweet, strong, smart friend, who was a mom and a wife and a brilliant student and a kind soul, had to weigh every word out of her mouth with a gravity I couldn’t understand, and had never considered until that moment. And it probably says a lot about my white privilege and my bubble I’ve grown up in that I was 24 years old before this came across to me. But this conversation has lived in my head ever since, and my perspective of the world shifted because of it. I think what made this particular incidence so eye opening to me was that being interrogated by this man over stupid details was something that happened to me regularly, and had just pushed me over the edge. Realizing some level of privilege had protected me all along from it being worse was enlightening.

I’ve benefitted my whole life from white privilege (a thing my family doesn’t think exists). I’m nowhere near perfect as an ally or a friend or a person, but I want to be better at standing up for and alongside those who need the protection my privilege offers. I share this now in case it resonates with someone else the way it did with me.

Black lives matter. Black people matter. Your hearts matter and your ideas matter and your feelings and your dignity and hurt and anger and fear. It shouldn’t require stating but it does, and I am so so sorry for your pain, for every situation I wouldn’t think twice in that you have to navigate carefully. I’m sorry, and I stand with you.

TOP 5 SITES FOR STUDENTS (a)

Gathered a few websites that I think would help you academically and financially!

Money Saving Expert - Started by Martin Lewis in 2003. Money Saving Expert bills itself as “dedicated to cutting your bills and fighting your corner through journalistic research, cutting-edge tools and a massive community”.

Cite This For Me - This site writes a bibliography and checks references so there’s no chance of being unjustly accused of plagiarism. It’s very frustrating to lose marks on an assignment for incorrect referencing.

Springboard Survey Panel - Students can join SpringBoard America Survey Panel to make their opinion count, and earn real cash and prizes for filling out surveys along the way.

Unidays - This is totally free to join, and used by over 4.3 million students every day. Signing up provides discounts on fashion, technology, music, stationary, food and more.

Opinion Outpost - Students sign up to complete surveys and give their opinion on various products and services for cash and prizes. Great way to earn a little side cash for books or clothes.

heres a compilation of my bio 2.4, 2.5 and 2.7 notes (requested!) - this isnt everything and theres mistakes so dont rely wholely on my trashy notes ;-;

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

01.14.16 4/100 days of productivity

Making study notes for my Abnormal Psychology midterm on Monday~ My hand is cramping 😭