MedFreak

November 17, 2019

The bearing of having positive people around you is very much vital in medicine.

Everyday, there’s this enormous load of transes and books to study. I realized lately, that medicine is indeed for the insane. The stress acquainted from medicine is not derived from the study load but from the emotional turnups, the internal breakdowns and the numerous self-doubting phenomenon if this path was indeed for me. Hence, you need people to share the same sentiments as you do.

Hello, citizens of tumblr!


I’m currently in my second year of Medicine in the middle of this pandemic. Two weeks in with my online classes and I’m having love/hate relationships with online learning. So if you guys are also struggling trying to get through the day— I have some motivational juices and tips if you need some inspo on developing your study habits during quarantine. 


PRODUCTIVITY


I have tried dozens of productivity apps and even made a bujo journal on goodnotes but nothing quite works like magic like Microsoft’s To Do app. For lazy people like me, this one snaps just fine because you can organize your to-do lists by subjects. What attracted me the most was the remind features and the satisfactory sound effect when you get a task complete. Interestingly, this app is available for free. If this doesn’t spice up your productivity idk man…. It also syncs in all your devices which makes it easier for you to track.



TIME MANAGEMENT


There’s a lot of things that we need to cover in second year, so studying smart and time management is the ultimate solution to this. I study shorter and easier lessons first because this gets my productivity setting the day—seeing that I get a lot of stuff done makes me push harder. I study around 15 hours day and I know it sounds boring but I managed to turn it around with a bit of discipline. I’m an active lifter and once I achieve my goals for the day, I reward myself with a workout as some sort of brain break, or watch an episode or two of Grey’s anatomy. It pays off because you start studying efficiently once you know you have to earn something. I don’t recommend cramming unless it works for you because the information retained is short-term.

 
STUDY HABITS AND TIPS


The first thing I make sure in the morning is waking up with a fresh mind. If something is bothering the moment you wake up—face it first or else it will bother your for the rest of the and disturb you in your peak productive hours. Organize your time by studying the essentials parts first and then if you have time, supplement with good-to-knows. If you have a hard time trying to comprehend a topic, watch a youtube video. It’ll help you retain information easier too. Remember, essentials first before flexing good-to-knows. Take short breaks to refresh your brain from all the things you learned today. If you continue to push studying, you retain nothing and just have a severe headache. Remember that it’s important to rest or else you will hardly comprehend anything. 
I’ve stuck with my study habit since college – I read my notes and books and list down information that are either:


Need to know


Hard to Remember


Confusing to remember


Values


I reread my lessons twice if I have time in preparation for an exam. If not, I just simply read my flashcards and I know I’m good to go. I prefer writing it down because it’s sort of easy to remember as well for me. 



HEALTH


Medical students with mental health issues are just as good as medical students without mental health issues.

Doctors with mental health issues are just as good as doctors without mental health issues.

All healthcare professionals with mental health issues are just as good as healthcare professionals without mental health issues.

Digital notes: Go Big or Go Home

I stepped into medschool throwing off the primitive ways of note-taking.

Buying an iPad seemed to be a huge take-off since I am the type of learner that easily gets distracted. My first weeks in, I actually underwent an adjustment period where I had to construct a new study habit.I had always been a lover of stationary notes, highlighters and colored brush pens. Seeing a bookstore nearby triggers chemical rushes— I JUST HAD TO BUY ALL THE GOOD COLORED PENS AND HIGHLIGHTERS.

Upgrading into digital note-taking was the best decision. I’ll give you reasons why as I elaborate further into my experience.

I saved the time of printing my notes. I didn’t need to worry about an uncooperative jammed printer. Some of the lessons in medschool can run up to 25 pages and in a week, you get almost 10 lessons or more.

The burden of carrying plenty of kilograms of books had been taken off my shoulder.

Applications like GoodNotes allow you to explore your creativity with numerous templates ranging from bullet, grid or lined papers. It also allows you to create planners and the like eliminating the need to collect stickers for a Starbucks planner (Lol, Christmas season is totally in)

You can save a lot of bucks from buying rims of bondpapers, highlighters and pens because *drumroll* they’re all in the same app!

Imagine this too—all the notes and books are in one tablet—there is no need for you to carry on the weight of having in your backpack.

The new update of iPads have allowed multitasking functions which is a really powerful upgrade.

So if you had this immense need for saving time, this is the sign.

I just have to clarify though, this is not entirely for everyone because some feel that the “paper feel” is part of their study habit.

Have you ever wanted to pursue a dream and while in the process of doing it, lost some of the drive?

In pursuing medschool, you experience it in a daily basis. You stare at the pile of notes that you haven’t halved yet. You argue at the pinnacle of your emotions whether you should allow yourself to give in to your body’s cry for sleep or to give the books another run. The next day, you take the examinations and found out that no matter how hard you studied, the number of items that you were sure hasn’t even reached half of the passing score. And then you go home trying to shove the depressing thought out of your head as you slowly fall asleep to the rhythm of your sobs. The moment you wake up is another cycle for the week. Then people ask me, “how is medschool?” In your head, you have that list of responses you have prepared even though you weren’t sure of the chances you could make it. You choose the best possible response without conflict.

It takes a lot of determination to get through pracs and examinations weekly. Everyday, I’d constantly have to remind myself that I wanted to pursue this. That this dream—has some tough patches as well. If this road doesn’t have challenges along its way, then everyone will pursue it. A screening process. As the older people have said, only the insane is sane enough to pursue medicine.

Soooo I have been doing some experimentation and switched into the dark templates! Turns out I’m very much pleased as to how my notes look although it takes longer for me to finish it. I find the Liver very interesting and have been overstudying it, I think?

I’m sorry, this isn’t Jojo at all but I think I’ve had it for today. As a pharmacy tech, I’m tired of hearing “Well, I started to feel better so I didn’t finish them.” I always knew this but now as a Molecular and Cellular Biology major, I not only know why but how. If you’re willing to heed my advice from the title, good; be on your way. If you need to know more, keep reading.

It’s widely known–to some extent–that not completing a regiment of antibiotics can result in resistant bacteria, or even super bacteria.

But in an infection, you already have resistant bacteria lurking. Not taking antibiotics doesn’t literally create resistant bacteria. So how, then, do the antibiotics take care of the resistant ones?

A lot of antibiotics aren’t bacterialcidal: They don’t actually kill them. Many inhibit growth by some mechanism depending if the bacterium is gram negative or gram positive. For example, penicillin inhibits growth by disrupting the formation of a peptidoglycan layer on gram positive bacteria. Others target the LPS layer on gram negative ones. This keeps the non resistant bacteria at bay. So what kills the resistant ones? Your immune system. Antibiotics buy time and energy for your immune system to recognize and destroy the resistant strains. Your immune system is intelligent in that sense and can form antibodies for new illnesses. It’s important to give your immune system this time because bacteria grow, mutate, and transfer genetic material at astonishing rates. If you wanted to look at a microcosm of the mechanics that go into evolution, you’ve got it with bacteria. 

There are three methods aside from binary fission in which they transfer genes (I won’t get into the minutia of the form of informational material): Transformation, transduction and conjugation.

In transformation, a bacterium can pickup lost genes from a ruptured and dead cell.

Transduction is a way to transfer information via a viral vector.

In conjugation, genes are transferred through something called a pilus: It’s a bridge between two cells that pipes a copy of the information from one cell to another receptive cell and is the only method that doesn’t involve killing either cells. Resistant bacteria like to give around that resistance information like they’re burning a CD for their friends.

So please finish your antibiotics if you’ve been given them. It doesn’t matter if you’ve started to feel better or even great. Finish them.

How to glam your college dorm:

Get a tapestry that speaks your mind

Choose a color scheme that fits your room! I usually buy neutral colored stuff so it’s easy to pair when I change my beddings

Sometimes you sit there, comprehensively absorbing thoughts about things that have occurred to you before. All those breakdowns, obstacles and mishaps have lead you to where you are standing now. They may have been awful but no great view comes without a sense of struggle only to make you realize that it was the pain that made it beautiful. 🖤✨

secretly reading novels, other books under your desk while a teacher is teaching