The One With The Brains

hi!!

does anyone have any useful literature review printables or literature review guideslines/resources they can link me to??? i'm struggling here big time.

Achievements of 2021 (both academic and non-academic)

I'm still very much on break (basically just eating, sleeping, reading and swimming, it's delightful), but I want to sum up this year. It's been a fucking rollercoaster of a year and I still can't believe like half of the things that happened, both good and bad. Nevertheless, I want to focus on the positive ones to kickstart the new year in the most uplifting manner I'm able to pull off. Which is not very optimistic nor uplifting, but I can be at least not full of doom, haha.

I want to do this chronologically, just because I tend to forget the good stuff that happened more than two months ago.

Let's wrap this up!

Academic Achievements of 2021

presented at my first international conference (February)

prepped two PhD dissertation projects (April) and successfully defended them during the PhD programs interview (June)

wrote my diploma thesis while cooperating with the best mentor ever (January till June)

got accepted to two PhD programs and currently doing both of them! (June)

co-written three papers over the summer - two already published, one under a promising peer review (June-September)

defended my thesis and passed my state exams with straight As, meaning I got my master's degree! (September)

wrote a book chapter that got accepted (November)

Non-Academic Achievements of 2021

quit the job I hated (January)

got rid off so much stuff I didn't need (mostly July, August)

read 130 books, yaaay

stopped saying yes to meetings with acquaintances just because I felt like I should see them (big one!)

found a functioning skincare routine (September)

started swimming again (and loving it) (September)

A lot of this year has been mostly about surviving, to be honest. I was battling a lot of anxiety and depression, I was extremely stressed at times and couldn't sleep. Swimming and taking proper days off helps, close friends help. I'm gonna do a post with some goals for 2022, so I won't spoil here that, haha.

It was a good year after all.

Take care!

M.

How to Defeat Procrastination

How to Defeat Procrastination | A Mini Guide

Use your intrapersonal intelligence. Ask yourself when and why you procrastinate. Use your insights to identify the appropriate strategy to deal with those issues. 

Identify a purpose or meaning. Sometimes, it simply isn’t enough to do something for the sake of doing it. Know why you want to do it, it’ll be easier then. List down your goals, and beside it, identify the benefits. So that, when you feel your spirits drooping, you can look at the list be reminded of why you have to do it. 

Take charge of the situation. Gather up all the supplies and materials you need to get started. Choose a work environment where you can really really focus on what you are doing. Take responsibility!

Prioritize and stick to the order. When you feel overwhelmed, make a list of tasks that needs to be done. Tackle the high-priority tasks first. 

Relax your personal standards. If you’re a serial perfectionist (like me), lower your unrealistically high standards and expectations. You can still continue to produce quality work without it always having to be the BEST. 

Face your fear of failure. Focus on your positive traits. I’m hella sure you’ve got plenty of those! Focus on your accomplishments, and the skills you’ve acquired! Go in front of your mirror and tell yourself affirmations and positive pep talks! 

Visualize success. Visualize yourself working through the task, feeling positive about your work, and complete the task on time. Believe you can do it and you will! 

Alaska ☀️

dünyayı güzellik kurtaracak..🍀

dostoyevski

@buglem-k

Astronomers are the funniest people on earth actually

US Elevation.

by @cstats1

The art director JP Boneyard ’s favourite park is Montana’s Glacier national park. “It’s breathtaking, I’m smiling just thinking about it ,” he says. For his screen-print project Fifty-Nine Parks, now collected in a book, he asked modern artists to reinterpret America’s classic national park posters, commissioned by the government in the 1900s.

“I hope they inspire people to visit the parks and connect with nature, but, heck, it’d be awesome if the book inspired folks to pick up a squeegee and start printing too,” he says.

[via]

Schedule: work on that paper, mayb-

Brain: see how many superscripts and subscripts you can make before LaTeX throws a shit fit

Spectacular 🤩

I don’t think there are words or pictures adequate enough to describe how absolutely spectacular Møre og Romsdal is. This is Trollstigen, my favourite viewpoint of the entire trip :)

Learning to like Physics

I actually cannot believe how much I used to hate Physics until last year, but then I actually took the time and effort to understand it and?? it’s so cool and fun and easy?? unreal.

It literally seemed impossible for me and I legit thought I wouldn’t be able to graduate because I was never gonna pass Physics (I’m a Math major so we actually have 4 required Physics courses). I don’t know what the point of this is but, don’t be afraid of Physics guys!! (or any other subject!!) yes it’s frustrating as hell and you feel dumb for not having a clue about what is happening or how to work out the problems but I swear once it clicks for you (and it will) it’s gonna be great.

So if anyone needs a step by step (for college/uni), here’s one:

Google is your best friend, the internet has plenty of videos/papers/worked out problems for you to check out. The most important thing to look for is drawings and videos that help you visualize what’s going on. In most of general physics, the key is to see what forces are acting, and from that follows everything else.

Know your core equations. Honestly it’s always the same ones in the end.

For mechanics: you absolutely gotta know Newton’s Laws, Work and its relation to Kinetic/Potential Energy. Momentum is also important.

For thermodynamics: pV = nRT, Boyle/Gay Lussac etc (note that they’re all connected), Carnot’s Cycle.

For electromagnetism: Maxwell’s equations. This is as far as I’ve gotten in my studies.

Understand where the formulas come from, rather than learning them by heart. For me, this was necessary because my memory is absolutely shit so there was no way I could remember every variation. But most of the formulas actually do make sense, and once you’ve drawn out a diagram of what’s happening, you can work them out yourself.

For the previous point, I suggest you watch and rewatch your professor’s explanation until you get the gist. Don’t get discouraged if it’s not immediately crystal clear, seek out other explanations if you need to. Then try to do it yourself.

ASK. FOR. HELP. I cannot stress this enough, do not feel ashamed about asking questions in class or during office hours. There are no stupid questions, and you’re paying thousands every year for people to teach you. Also physics is hard, so you’re pretty much expected to not understand immediately. Moreover, I can guarantee there’s at least one other person in the room with the same question who’s too afraid to ask. I was that person, and I failed the class because of it. Don’t be me.

Practice until you’re able to do most variations of standard problems. Once you’re able to do a certain problem, try to change it and see what happens. You don’t have to crunch the numbers all over again, go with your intuition first. Then you can calculate everything and see if you were correct.

This is all I’ve got at the moment. It applies to General Physics because I’m still pretty shit at Mathematical Physics (Rational Mechanics?) lmao, which is why I don’t talk about Lagrangians and such here.

If anyone has any other tips (for Mathematical Physics as well!) , please feel free to add them. Note that I’m from Italy, and this is what it was like for me. Other countries might have different ways of testing or focus on some formulas that I haven’t included. Do what works for you, obviously.

Good luck STEM students, I know it’s hard, but hopefully worth it in the long run :)