A long time ago before I studied medicine, before even biomedicine, I used to volunteer in hospital. It was scary at first; most teenagers are out there having a life, meanwhile you’re wandering around on wards. At first, I was worried I would get in the way. I mean, important stuff happens in hospital, right? There are lots of busy doctors and nurses rushing around and doing important things. Things that actually matter to patient care. I didn’t want to get in their way. I was even worried I’d trip up an important cable or get in the way of a ward round or something! As volunteers we could do all sorts of little jobs that other people weren’t being paid to do. We would go around with the library trolley or shop trolley. Or help re-stock gloves, hand gel and things like that on the wards. We directed lost visitors around the site. We helped with lunches. If you were unlucky, you’d be asked to do something less exciting like stuff envelopes. But sometimes, after a tiring week of revision, it was actually a nice break. I challenged myself to be as efficient at the repetitive tasks as I could be; they usually ran out of tasks sooner than expected! Pretty often, we got to chat with patients, which I really enjoyed. I got to know a lot of the ward sisters, and all the staff were really welcoming and pleasant. I had little interaction with the doctors, though they were always polite and friendly when I was selling the poor juniors snacks from the shop trolley, which must have been a lifesaver in itself! I didn’t interact with the medical students. It never occurred to me to ask them questions about medicine; the mere thought of approaching anybody who was somebody was terrifying. I didn’t think what I did was meaningless, but I did feel it wasn’t that special. It was just all I could do at the time. And that was enough for me. When I was a student, I still felt like an outsider in hospital. It takes all your guts to wander into a strange ward or an operating theatre armed with nothing more than your ID badge and a clinical handbook of medicine, and say ‘I’m… I’m the medical student?’ when they ask you who you are. To which they usually reply ‘Eh? I thought they were coming next week…’. I can’t count the number of times I uttered the words ‘I’m just a medical student’. Because I couldn’t diagnose or treat or prescribe, it was easy to sometimes feel that whilst we were learning, we weren’t really doing anything to help. I remember our doctor tutors frequently telling us ‘you’re not just a medical student.’. It was pretty nice that they cared, but it didn’t stop us apologising constantly. It’s not that easy to change how you feel, after all. At some point, I resolved to stop using those words. And if I remember correctly, I mostly succeeded. But I only really gave them up when I had to: when those things actually became my job. The further along we got, the more we wanted to learn how to do everything, and the more we devoted ourselves to mopping up any jobs we could help with. I loved to devote time to talking to patients; I couldn’t ‘clerk’ as a student without being drawn into long rambling conversations. I didn’t feel as invisible as when I was a volunteer, but you feel so constrained by what you can’t do that it’s still easy to overlook what you can. Especially when you first start on the wards. But now, as a doctor, I can really appreciate that what I did back then wasn’t really insignificant at all. Not by a long shot. Because now, more than ever, I have to rely on every other person to do all the things I can’t do. Back when I was doing these things, I thought they weren’t that important because anyone can do them. Now I realise that although anyone can do them, most people in hospital can’t. Because there are so many other things that need doing. So many. When there aren’t gloves anywhere, and there is no hand gel in any of the dispensers, it makes doing my job safely that little bit harder. When the proformas aren’t in place or cupboards aren’t stocked or the ward is a mess, life is a little harder. When the OR isn’t cleaned, it takes longer for the next operation to happen. When my patients are lonely, it makes their stay in hospital more painful than it should be. When there’s nobody there who can do bloods or a cannula or even just fill out some blood forms, we can become swamped in lots of little tasks. Add all these little things up, and you’ve got some pretty stressed doctors and nurses! To anybody out there who feels insignificant because they’re ‘just’ helping with the little tasks; thank you. We couldn’t do it without you.
I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!
FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)
Alison
Coursera
FutureLearn
open2study
Khan Academy
edX
P2P U
Academic Earth
iversity
Stanford Online
MIT Open Courseware
Open Yale Courses
BBC Learning
OpenLearn
Carnegie Mellon University OLI
University of Reddit
Saylor
IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)
TED
FORA
Big Think
99u
BBC Future
Seriously Amazing
How Stuff Works
Discovery News
National Geographic
Science News
Popular Science
IFLScience
YouTube Edu
NewScientist
DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)
wikiHow
Wonder How To
instructables
eHow
Howcast
MAKE
Do it yourself
FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS
OpenStax CNX
Open Textbooks
Bookboon
Textbook Revolution
E-books Directory
FullBooks
Books Should Be Free
Classic Reader
Read Print
Project Gutenberg
AudioBooks For Free
LibriVox
Poem Hunter
Bartleby
MIT Classics
Many Books
Open Textbooks BCcampus
Open Textbook Library
WikiBooks
SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS
Directory of Open Access Journals
Scitable
PLOS
Wiley Open Access
Springer Open
Oxford Open
Elsevier Open Access
ArXiv
Open Access Library
LEARN:
1. LANGUAGES
Duolingo
BBC Languages
Learn A Language
101languages
Memrise
Livemocha
Foreign Services Institute
My Languages
Surface Languages
Lingualia
OmniGlot
OpenCulture’s Language links
2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING
Codecademy
Programmr
GA Dash
CodeHS
w3schools
Code Avengers
Codelearn
The Code Player
Code School
Code.org
Programming Motherf*?$%#
Bento
Bucky’s room
WiBit
Learn Code the Hard Way
Mozilla Developer Network
Microsoft Virtual Academy
3. YOGA & MEDITATION
Learning Yoga
Learn Meditation
Yome
Free Meditation
Online Meditation
Do Yoga With Me
Yoga Learning Center
4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING
Exposure Guide
The Bastards Book of Photography
Cambridge in Color
Best Photo Lessons
Photography Course
Production Now
nyvs
Learn About Film
Film School Online
5. DRAWING & PAINTING
Enliighten
Ctrl+Paint
ArtGraphica
Google Cultural Institute
Drawspace
DragoArt
WetCanvas
6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY
Music Theory
Teoria
Music Theory Videos
Furmanczyk Academy of Music
Dave Conservatoire
Petrucci Music Library
Justin Guitar
Guitar Lessons
Piano Lessons
Zebra Keys
Play Bass Now
7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS
Investopedia
The Chess Website
Chesscademy
Chess.com
Spreeder
ReadSpeeder
First Aid for Free
First Aid Web
NHS Choices
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Please feel free to add more learning focused websites.
*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ most useful.
at Liberty, Kentucky
Best Life Lessons To Prepare You For 2019
For more posts like these, go to @mypsychology
I remember first learning that you can cry from any emotion, that emotions are chemical levels in your brain and your body is constantly trying to maintain equilibrium. so if one emotion sky rockets, that chemical becomes flagged and signals the tear duct to open as an exit to release that emotion packaged neatly within a tear. Everything made sense after learning that. That sudden stability of your emotions after crying. How crying is often accompanied by the inability to feel any other emotion in that precise moment. And it is especially beautiful knowing that it is even possible to experience so much beauty or love or happiness that your body literally can’t hold on to all of it. So what I’ve learned is that crying signifies that you are feeling as much as humanely possible and that is living to the fullest extent. So keep feeling and cry often and as much as needed
Pure, Simple, beautiful quote!!!
“Two things to remember in life: Take care of your thoughts when you are alone, and take care of your words when you are with people.”
— Zig Ziglar (via purplebuddhaquotes)