💓 Day 4 Of 100 Days Of Productivity 💓

14/03/19 - Some more technology notes and diagrams. A slow but productive day today! 

If you spend a lot of time on your laptop for work, study, etc., you should definitely check out this app called Noizio. It provides ambient background sounds that help calm you or keep you focused. You can even make and save your own combination of sounds. My personal favourite is winter wind + wind chimes + sea waves. Each sound’s volume can be adjusted individually as well!

this is a breakdown of how i go about doing research for my essays! do keep in mind i am an arts student, so i don’t know how well this method carries over into other disciplines. check out my other guides to writing essays here and here!

a little revisit of my notes on commonly known invasive species :-)

Sunday, February 21.

I took these pictures last wednesday and forgot to post. 🌵 Today I have so much work to do, but all I want to do is watch the x files all day. That’s what you get when you procrastinate, Alicia.👽

College Textbook Lifehacks

Okay so it’s not the beginning of a semester but whatever. While I’m thinking about it, let me, a bonafide degree holder learn you some knowledge about college textbooks so you don’t have to take out a mortgage or try to short the market just so you can have a $1,000 paperweight that you never read.

Rule #1 I don’t care what your syllabus says or what your pre-semester welcome email from your professor says or what the bookstore website says, don’t buy the book before classes begin. Show up the first day and ask the professor if the book is necessary for passing the class. Sometimes, it’s not. Sometimes the professor teaches from his or her own memory and never consults the course textbook. If this is the case, unless you just love reading textbooks or want to keep them for whatever occupation you pursue once you have your degree, don’t get the book and save yourself some money. If he or she can teach the course without a book, you can pass it without a book.

Rule # 2 If your professor’s response is yes, you absolutely do need the book, ask them how different the required issue is from previous issues. Book publishers are dirty swindlers and will release a new edition of each book every year or two. Often times the new edition has minor changes like maybe now chapter 14 is split up into two chapters or they changed a couple of the review questions. If an older edition will suffice, just like iPhones, they will be a lot cheaper than the newest edition and you have a better chance of finding an even cheaper used copy which brings me to rule 3.

Rule # 3 Don’t buy the books from your university. Like publishing companies, universities also tend to be dirty swindlers. Copy the ISBN listed for your textbook and paste that shit into a site like half.com valorebooks.com or amazon.com where you will find discounted versions of most every textbook. You could also try to torrent them off of those sketchy russian sites that are listed under that post with the “Leak college textbook PDF’s not nudes” tweet but when that doesn’t work, you go to those sites I listed. Now you have to choose what quality you want, this is important because it can affect the resale value which I’ll talk about later. Obviously the higher the quality (New, Used-Like New etc.) will give you book without creases, markings etc. but will be more expensive. If you don’t care about this (again I’ll explain why you might care in rule 4), maybe go for the rental if the rental is cheaper than purchasing a high quality book-ONLY DO THIS IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT RESALE AND DON’T TEND TO MARK IN YOUR BOOKS. Otherwise, the choice is yours. Now you might ask, what will I do for the two weeks it takes to ship my book? This is where making friends in class comes in handy, just ask them to borrow their book for the time being, or better yet, if you have a close friend already in the class, split the cost of the book 50/50 and share it. If neither of these options work for you, visit your professor in his or her office hours, give them some BS like “I’m so sorry professor, I think I mixed up the shipping and billing address so it’s taking forever for the book to get here boo hoo feel bad for me.” Usually, professors have no problem photocopying the first chapter of the book for you or will be a little lenient with deadlines for the whole class if you’re not the only one. This is fun because not only do you get away with not buying the book right away, but you’re a hero for your class.

Rule #4 Even though it’s the beginning of the semester, think ahead to the end of the semester. Your university is going to offer to buy back your books at the end of the semester. Do not sell them your books, I repeat DO NOT SELL THEM YOUR BOOKS. Those dirty swindlers that sold you an overpriced book a few months ago? Yeah they’re going to buy it back for $5.00 or less. I don’t care if it’s a 10 lb, 700 page biology textbook that’s still in the plastic wrap, you will get cheated. Sell them on amazon. Seller accounts are free and though you aren’t likely to get 100% of what you paid for it back, you will make much more money selling there than you would to the school. If you bought the higher quality book and kept it in decent shape, you’ll get some good beer money. If you went with the $0.99 acceptable condition book, maybe don’t try and sell it on amazon because you’ll pay more to ship it than you’ll receive profit this is why it’s important to take into consideration whether or not you think you will mark up your book. Rentals are cheaper than buying new but you can’t mark them and can’t sell them but don’t worry, there’s other places you can sell your book if you bought a crappy one. Find out if your school has a student run for sale Facebook group (hint, it probably does, especially if you’re at a large state-school), advertise your books on the page and sell them for cash to a fellow student. 

Rule #5 Sorry to say, but these rules don’t work for every course. You might have that professor that wrote their own book and makes you buy it which means you can’t find it on any third party website. When this happens, the most you can do is see if someone who has already taken the course still has their book so you can buy it from them. You can also leave a scathing review during evaluations at the end of the semester and on RateMyProfessor.com which may not do much but is good for the soul. 

Also, especially for labs and beginning language courses, you may need to buy a workbook. Used ones are hard to come by but they do exist thanks to people like me who do their assignments on a separate sheet of paper so they don’t have to mark up the textbook and can resell it later (I advise doing this). This works for language courses, I don’t know how well it works for labs since I am not a science student, if it does work-sweet and if not-I’m truly sorry.

These are my rules and I promise they work. If any one else has additional hacks that they’ve figured out I’d love to hear them! Seriously, doing these things saved me a load of money. 

this is a dumb question, but how on earth does one get an interpretive thesis? everything I've come up with just sounds like it's describing stuff that happened, and I'm starting to think I'm just not cut out for writing this stuff....

oh man, okay, here is how to write an interpretive thesis:

find a but.

the easiest way to make your thesis interpretive is to have a “but” moment. It’s where you set up a particular picture of what other people might think is going on, and then you point out why that picture is incorrect, because X.

like my friend’s thesis which was “you may think that bioethics came into being in the wake of the the nuremburg trials, BUT the tuskegee syphilis experiments showed that these standards had yet to permeate the wider scientific culture”

or my thesis, which was “because of the way medical ethics developed as a discipline, it tends to focus on medicine through the lens of the clinical encounter BUT in our changing healthcare system, that is no longer a valid approach to take on the question of ethical practice”

it’s helpful if you find a lot of scholarship, or an influential scholar who you can disagree with; if you’re pushing back an established view within your field, or general knowledge. Most theses begin with a disagreement of some kind, and it’s a very fruitful place to begin.

I would also say there’s nothing wrong with….not writing a “but” thesis? One of my friends wrote his thesis on the intersection on current brain research, education, and those online services that claim to boost your brainpower. There’s not a lot of research in that specific area, so his was an exploratory thesis, suggesting a theory of its own based on what he had found.  If you’re already in a well-trod field with lots of literature around your topic, though, that might be harder.

Talk it over with your advisor! They should be able to point you in the right direction, or at least suggest some more avenues of research.

2017 US Medical School Application Timeline

Hope you all find this helpful! Good luck chickadees! My inbox is always open if you have questions!

Download my printable 2017 application cycle checklist here

Sometimes, when we are presenting, our bodies act completely irrationally. Sweating, stuttering, or just shutting down completely are all things I have encountered during public speaking; behaviour that is usually connected to extreme danger and fleeing behaviour. Completely unnecessary, as your teacher won’t kill you (hopefully), but trying to convince your body to be just as rational is a tough task. Turns out that this is exactly what we’re going to do. 

The basis for this (personal) advice all lies in my musical training, where posture is extremely important. Performance practice lessons have taught me one important thing: you can trick your body into thinking it’s okay, and with that, your audience. disclaimer: I have posted this information before in a slightly different way. Regard this as an updated version. Hopefully one with better spelling.

hoooooow???

Stand up and try to follow these instructions. I’m your only audience right now, so mistakes aren’t a problem. 

Start by relaxing your shoulders. Many people tense their shoulders when they’re anxious, which is a very natural reaction. However, tension in your shoulder automatically reaches through to your back and arms, and even your neck, tensing up your entire upper body. It’s confirming to your brain that yes! this is scary! Well, brain is wrong and we’re going to prove it wrong by relaxing our shoulders. Just let them hang down (make sure you don’t start leaning forward though, it should be just your shoulders). Doesn’t that immediately feel more relaxed?

Keep your feet a little bit apart, firm on the ground. This sends the message to your brain and audience that a single push will not have you fall over. Standing with your legs closely together simply isn’t as stable, and you want to radiate stability and confidence. Even if you’re feeling dizzy, this simple way of pretending will keep your feet on the ground. Literally. 

Chin up, back straight, eyes at the audience. I used to tend to look at the ground, or to lean forward. No, no no! You want to maintain an open posture, and to address the entire audience. When you do this, you’ll look more secure, and maybe you’ll even notice people will listen to you more closely. Make sure you address the entire room, and not just one spot. if you’re scared to look at faces, look at the back wall. But not just one spot, find some nice different wall spots to look at. 

What to do with your hands? I know I used to put my hands in my pocket, or fidget with something. Instead, try to talk with your hands more. When you’re using gestures, people will usually pay more attention to what you’re saying, and they’ll sometimes understand more easily (if you’re interested as to why, message me). 

Do not hide. This is special advice to musicians, too. I used to hide behind my music stand because it was nice and safe. During public speaking it’s easy to hide behind some notes or to stand behind other people of your group, maybe. Don’t. Remember, fake the confident posture till you make it. 

When you’re finished, don’t stop pretending just yet. When people ask how it went, always say it went okay. This is so so so important! Because if you’d say “ugh it was awful!! So many things went wrong, I suck at presenting!” they’ll start thinking hmm, yeah, there were indeed some mistakes… Could have been better. Whereas if you just say it was okay or good, or even decent, they’ll hardly even question it and will most likely remember the positive aspects, as humans tend to do. 

I promise this works, at least to some extent. It may not help you get rid of anxiety right away, especially in really severe cases, but it can help you feel more at ease in front of a group. After that, you can start working on other things, such as volume, intonation, powerpoint use etc. 

Just take a few seconds before you start talking to breathe, focus on those muscles, and to follow this with an amazing presentation (and a good grade). 

You can always send me an ask for advice on public speaking! Even though I’m not a professional coach or whatever, I have overcome my speaking anxiety and maybe I can be of any help at all <3