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Motivational LIfe Quotes

Death Comes Knocking

I’ve been thinking about death. Death in a hospital is so strange. Death to a nurse is even stranger.

We recently discharge a patient who had spent 116 days on our unit. She was crazy and hated everyone. Refused cares, assessments, vitals, everything. Called every morning at 3am on the dot for coffee. She was famous for hoarding anything and everything we took into her room. From boxes of gloves to mouth wash bottles to spoiled food.

We couldn’t wait until she was gone.

A few nights ago we found out that she had been readmitted to a different unit in our hospital. A telemetry unit. We all laughed and couldn’t believe she was back. She had only been gone for two weeks.

Then, a couple nights ago, we heard the call overhead. Code blue. Her room. Myself and the nurse I was working with stared at each other, dumbstruck. We couldn’t believe that the old, stubborn bat that had spent 116 days with us was dying two floors down.

She passed that night. And we did what nurses do. We joked. From the outside I’m sure we all sounded macabre and sadistic, the way we talked about all her outbursts and how she would be hoarding in heaven now. We joked about death like it was a friend. I guess it kind of is.

See, to us nurses Death is a friend. We walk the halls with him, joke with him. We have an agreement. He doesn’t get in our way and we don’t get in his. We let those who have made the decision to do so go peacefully. We stand vigil with Death. He waits patiently as we make sure they aren’t in pain. Drip after drip we fill their bodies with the poison that allows them to meet Death peacefully.

Then there are the other ones. The ones where Death has gotten a little antsy. He hasn’t stuck to our agreement. And we do what we are trained to do. We fight. Violently. We fight for the life that this patient wasn’t ready to give up yet. We yell and we scream at our friend, Death. We break ribs with our compressions. We burn veins with our drugs. And if we are lucky that patient lives and we go on with our friendship, our agreement, with death.

But sometimes we aren’t. Sometimes no matter how many ribs we break or how many veins we burn, it’s not enough. Death gets his prize. And in that moment we hate him. And we hate ourselves a little too. Because we know that we are going to come back tomorrow night, shake hands with Death, and reforge our agreement. Because Death is part of the job.

7 Ways to Work Towards Long Term Goals | psych2go 

““Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose… …Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.””

— Rainer Maria Rilke (via amargedom)

Largest Batch of Earth-size, Habitable Zone Planets

Our Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a rocky planet.

This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. In May 2016, researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system.

Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.

This is the FIRST time three terrestrial planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.

All of these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

At about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.

In this animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of the star.

Using Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.

For comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would be the size of a golf ball.

Based on their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.

The sun at the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.

 The planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.

The planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and extreme temperature changes.

Because most TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than Jupiter, yet much warmer. 

How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?

Spitzer, an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the system. 

Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long it takes for the planet to orbit the star.

The TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and other components of a planet’s atmosphere.

At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like: 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

“Now that I am in my third year of medical school, I have started to see how health care disparities can have significant impacts on the management and prevention of disease. It is my hope that as the culture of medicine changes ever so slowly more physicians will be aware of the disparities and develop cultural humility to better serve their patient populations.”

An article on health disparities in medicine, by Stephanie Dreikorn at University of California, Riverside School of Medicine

Back to school series #2 - HOW TO BE DISCIPLINED

Welcome to this new post of my #backtoschoolseries!! if you haven’t already checked my last back-to-school related post you can do it here :D

The main topic of this post is discipline and how you can learn to manage it. When I was repeating my first med school year I learned how to discipline myself and it let me have a life apart from my studies. I used to wake up every day at 5.45 am for my morning workout, go to uni, come back home and study, cook my meals and go to bed early enough. I was also able to spend some free time with my friends and family during the weekends. This routine helped me manage my time, gave me a sense of accomplishment and made me go to bed almost every day knowing I had my sh*t together. 

So how did I manage to develop this busy routine AND pass my first year? Continue to read! 

Know the difference between motivation and self-discipline. Motivation is what will get you started, and is powered by your WHY. WHY do you want to go to college? WHY do you want to lose 10 pounds? WHY do you want to run a marathon? All of the answers to these questions are the main motor of your motivation. And motivation is the motor of discipline. Discipline is what will make you study every day so you’ll have those grades that will make you get into the college of your dreams. Discipline is what will make you wake up at 6 am every morning to go for a run. In other terms, discipline is what you need in order to keep going and stay on track. Discipline can’t exist without motivation and motivation is nothing without discipline. 

We all practice discipline is some aspects of our life. For some of us, it will be waking up every morning at a reasonable hour in order to not be late for school. For others, it will be taking their medication every day in order to stay healthy. So stop telling yourself you don’t have any discipline or willpower because you won’t even be reading this post otherwise.

Discipline is a skill, and like every other skill, it has to be practiced every day. You have to put effort and focus in what you want to achieve and sometimes you’ll have to literally force yourself to get things done. Like I said in my previous post about motivation, no one really wants to wake up at 6 every morning to do a workout, especially if it’s dark and cold outside, and that your bed is begging you to stay.

Know yourself, and know what your weaknesses are. When you acknowledge these, you can find strategies to overcome them. If you want to go to bed earlier but you’re always on your phone till late at night, try to force yourself to put your phone in another room when you go to bed. If you’re always distracted by your Instagram notifications whilst studying, put your phone in airplane mode, or delete the app from it. If you just can’t control yourself over junk food, just don’t buy it. Remove every temptation so you’ll only focus on what’s important.

Plan your days ahead and plan your future. Again, ask yourself WHY you want to be disciplined, and WHAT the willpower you want to develop will bring into your life. The advantages of you being more disciplined have to overcome the reasons why you shouldn’t be, and that’s how motivation comes in the way.

Know that sometimes sh*t happens. That’s why you need a plan B. Having a backup plan doesn’t mean you don’t believe in your dreams, it just means that you are some kind of realistic about life and you know that it doesn’t always go as you wished it would. Having a plan B will make everything a bit more flexible and you’ll feel less anxious about your goals.

If you’re trying but you just can’t find any willpower in what you want to do, ask yourself if there’s something that’s preventing you from being disciplined. Are you sure you’re doing whatever you’re doing because you want it? Or are you doing it to please someone else? Are you scared of the outcome? Do you feel something is going wrong? It’s really important for you to have this little talk with yourself so you can focus on what you really want in your life because when your goals are genuine and clear, motivation comes by itself and discipline will follow. 

Remember that it’s ok to screw up sometimes. You are not a robot and it is totally normal to have days where you don’t feel like it. Resting is also part of the process and will help you clear your vision and regain all the precious energy you need :) Forgive and take care of yourself!

I honestly think this post should be related to my post about motivation (if you haven’t read it already, I invite you to do it now!) 

As usual, I hope these tips will be useful! I’m curious to know how do you guys practice discipline :) 

(PS : sorry for my english)

Studygram 

The New Yorker

The History of Loneliness

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonel

what an article. here are some of the parts that stuck out to me most:

10 Ways To Beat Procrastination And Get Things Done