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A Typical Atypical Introduction

Who are you?
Who am I?
Why blog?

Here, I provide answers to some of life’s most guarded secrets.

“…when you’re older, absolutely everything makes sense.”
— Olaf

If you’ve somehow managed to wander onto my blog, you likely already have a vague idea of what it’s about.

Indeed, I’ve decided to write a blog outlining my experiences as a UBC student in hopes of offering some insight to you, the reader.

This brings us to our first question: Who are you?
Unfortunately, I cannot answer this question on your behalf. I’m not sure who you are, nor do I know why you are here. However, I imagine that you must either be a past/present/future UBC student or you are very, very lost. No matter which of the categories you fall into, I welcome you to my blog and I hope you enjoy your stay!

Now, you might be wondering: Who am I?
This, I can answer. As this blog’s name might suggest, I am just another UBC student who has decided to take up blogging. Like over 1700 others, I entered the Faculty of Science as a first year BSc student in 2018. I hope that my experiences at UBC can help you make informed decisions as you navigate your life… because unlike Olaf’s claims, we all know that absolutely nothing makes sense no matter how old you get.

Finally: Why blog?
I have always loved writing blog posts, and this is definitely not my first time writing one! That fact shouldn’t surprise you given the absolutely amazing, professional quality of this blog. (I’m sorry, my experiences with blogging at the tender age of 12 didn’t really teach me too much, so bear with me.)
Really, though, I was inspired by other UBC students’ blogs that I found while doing research on my future enrolments. They provided me with a wealth of information regarding course expectations and exam styles. I would love to return the favour by providing my own insight into the courses that I have taken and give advice to students who may be enrolling in such courses in the future!

That wraps up our typical atypical introduction to this blog.
Hopefully you feel enlightened with your newfound knowledge. 🙂

Staying Focused

Relaxation is essential to productivity, too

“You can always be more productive— but I still think that you did a good job, and you should be proud.”
— A highschool teacher (2018)

With a pen in hand, I sit down at my desk and open my textbook. Almost immediately, I become hyper aware of everything except the task in front of me. My computer screen is dirty… maybe I should give it a wipe down. Ugh, my pens are scattered everywhere; I’ll go put them in order. Did that professor respond to my e-mail from last week? I better check, quickly.

When I finally do get around to reading that first page of the textbook, my head fills with thoughts about how long it will take me to finish the chapter. At the same time, I reflect upon the fact that I could’ve finished reading this chapter if I had just followed my schedule and read it last night. Then I proceed to berate myself for being undisciplined.

Does this sound like you? If not, then it sounds like you’ve got your life much more together than me!

In the case that this does sound familiar though, I recently have come across a few useful pieces of advice that I’d like to share with you.

Rationalization and Acceptance

I likely have discussed this in a blog post before, but it’s worth repeating.

Oftentimes, I find that it helps to take a step back and realize that, yes, the task at hand might take some time… and yes, perhaps I could have finished it sooner. These are facts. But it also stands that ruminating about these facts won’t get me any closer to completing the task.

Even if it seems like a small drop of water in a huge pool to read a single page of the textbook, it’s still one page close to finishing the chapter! One step is progress, no matter how small the step. Something to show for your efforts. I tell myself, “One page is one whole page. A whole page of information for me to learn, absorb and integrate into my life. There’s just so much wonderful knowledge within this book for me to grasp, so I will savour each and every step of the way.”

Keeping your focus upon completing the small task, and reminding yourself why completing this small task is incredibly meaningful, is more motivating than thinking about what you could’ve done, or what you should’ve done, or about the mountain of stuff that you still have to do.

Also, be proud of your progress! I often become my own enemy, as I beat myself up for not being more productive or more disciplined. My teacher once complimented my work ethic, and I replied, “Thank you, but I feel like I could’ve been more productive over the break.” The teacher looked at me and scoffed, “Well, yes, of course you could’ve been more productive. You can always be more productive— but I still think you did a good job, and you should be proud.”

I realized that I had a tendency to downplay my accomplishments, and to constantly think about what I could’ve improved upon. Instead, I now try to remind myself that what I have managed to achieve is worth celebrating. Strive for constant improvement, but also take the time to be proud of how far you’ve come. You are worth celebrating!

A side note, for those who might be thinking, “Okay, great, you tell me to stay focused on the small tasks… but how?”

If you have trouble keeping your mind from wandering, I highly recommend practicing mindfulness. It can help you improve your focus, while also reducing your stress and anxiety! I use an app called MyLife Meditation, but there are plenty of other options out there, and I encourage you to take a look.

If you’re truly having issues with concentration that you cannot overcome yourself, you may want to consider visiting the doctor and inquiring about attention-deficit disorders to check for any underlying issues. Also ensure that you’re taking good care of your physical health! Sleep, water and nutritious food are all essential!

Urgence versus Importance

I read a fascinating (in my opinion, at least) article about time management for students. In this article, the author groups tasks into four bins. (1) Urgent and important, (2) important but not urgent, (3) urgent but not important, and (4) neither important nor urgent.

An example of something in the first bin might be a fire igniting the building you’re in. It’s both urgent (because if you don’t act quickly, there will be consequences), and important (because the aforementioned consequences are quite serious and include injury and property damage). Another example might be a term paper due at 11:59pm today. It is recommended that you aim to spend as little time as possible on tasks that fall into this bin. Of course, that doesn’t mean to neglect these tasks. Please address the fire and the paper that you procrastinated on!

Rather, what this does mean is that you should take preventative measures such that you don’t wind up with tasks falling into the first category to begin with. You should spend the bulk of your time working on tasks that fall into the second category: important, but not urgent. That is, studying, even if the test is a distant event, and working on your assignment well before the deadline. By spending your time on these tasks, you can complete them before they become urgent and move into the first bin.

In the last two bins are tasks that should receive the least attention. An urgent, but not important, task might be an e-mail or a text message. You may feel the need to be constantly checking your phone or e-mail, and replying right away. Ultimately, of course, this is a distraction. Though I don’t do this myself, so I’m being rather hypocritical, the author suggests that you schedule a time for checking and addressing your e-mails/messages. The author also suggests that you try to defer requests for help as much as possible such that it does not interfere with your productivity. Perhaps I should be doing this.

Finally, neither urgent nor important. This is probably self-explanatory. The article gives video games and TV as examples, and says that we should just dump it. I think that’s a bit harsh. If you can go about your life without watching any TV or ever playing video games, that’s amazing… but I think I need some time to decompress once in a while. Do what works for you, I guess.

The key takeaway is that we should shift our efforts, as much as possible, from completing urgent and important tasks to completing important tasks that are not yet urgent. For those interested, the original article can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292657437_Crux_of_Time_Management_for_Students

I admittedly have not read the whole thing, but it seems to have a lot of information in it, so perhaps you’ll find other useful tips!

Relaxation

The last thing I want to talk about is relaxation. This is, actually, what inspired me to write this article.

Today, I was browsing the internet when I came across a post. The original poster describes their difficulty in focusing during their scheduled 5 hour work blocks, but when they’re out relaxing with their friends, they find sudden motivation and desire to work on their project. I thought this sounded awfully familiar, so I clicked into the comments section.

The top comment said:

The answer is hidden in your own question: “when I am relaxing”, when you are relaxed, you think clearly and are more focused on whatever you have to do. I guess you just have to learn how to relax and not stress yourself during those five hours. Good luck mate
– dizasteraz, a Redditor (2020)

Something so simple, and yet something I never realized— I never realized just how tense and stressed I was while studying. I would be psyching myself out and thinking about how much I’d rather be watching a cat video than reading this chapter about the immune system. Upon reading this person’s comment, it made sense why I’d start falling asleep after the second paragraph. I was associating productive tasks with being stressed out, annoyed, and tired. And this was causing me to dread the task and in turn feel even more negative emotions towards it. A vicious cycle.

So, the solution is to relax. But how? I am now consciously putting in an effort to push the negative thoughts away while studying, and reminding myself to stay calm. As I suggested before, mindfulness is helpful. It’s not just pseudoscience; studies have suggested that it offers health benefits, according to my textbook and my professors. I hope they’re not lying to me. (If you’re skeptical though, feel free to fact check with Google!)

Learning to keep a positive mindset, stay relaxed, and block out distractions is likely not something that can be mastered overnight, but these skills can be fostered and strengthened with some effort over time.

Let’s all work on constantly improving ourselves, and being proud of how far we’ve come! 🙂

May Updates: MCAT Prep, Summer School, and Animal Crossing

“No, wait— it’s at least a C+!”
— Me, every time I catch a sea bass.

Hey, so it’s been 2 months since my last post, and needless to say, a lot has happened since then!

One change is that my family went from being a Nintendo-Switch-free-household to owning two Nintendo Switches and two copies of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Yes, this is very important to me. I’ve been a huge fan of the Animal Crossing franchise for as long as I can remember. I started with Wild World on the DS, then played City Folk on the Wii, and finally New Leaf on the 3DS. I’ve even tried the GameCube version, despite that version being slightly before my time. (I am old, but not quite that old.) If a fellow ACNH player happens to be here, let’s play together sometime!

In other news (I think I stole this line from Isabelle), exam season has come and gone, and I’ve managed to raise my overall average to 90%! I will continue to work hard to maintain and improve my grades over the remainder of my degree. Hopefully. I wonder how much of my observed improvement was due to COVID-19, and how much was due to my own efforts? I will likely never know.

A further consequence of COVID-19 is that my plans for this blog have fallen apart. I’m not sure if writing a course review/outline would be helpful for most of my term 2 courses now, due to the unconventional online format and exam weight changes that occured. There are two courses that I think I can comment on accurately despite these changes, however: PSYC 315 and ATSC 113. Perhaps I will write posts on them in the future, when I have time between playing ACNH and prepping for the MCAT.

That brings us to the MCAT. Wow, wasn’t that a nightmare! Was anyone else up at 3am PDT refreshing Twitter? Of course, I’m referring to that fateful day— May 7th, 2020. I’m half-proud and half-ashamed to say that my first (and hopefully last) time pulling an all-nighter in my entire life as a student was to change my MCAT time. As luck would have it, I would be randomly assigned the 6:30am appointment. The only logical solution, then, was to stay up from 3am until 9am hoping for a chance to reschedule it to the high-demand 12:15pm timeslot.

Oh, except that the registration website crashed and didn’t end up going live by 9am as promised. You can imagine the frustration of us all (especially those of us not in the East coast). Thankfully, after ~26 hours of being awake, ~11 hours of which I spent staring at Twitter and the MCAT website, I finally managed to get that noon MCAT time! So it was worth it, I guess. I felt terrible the next day, but with the whole COVID-19 situation, it’s not like I had anywhere to go anyway.

Now with the scheduling part out of the way, it’s time to focus on the actual MCAT prep. I opted to take a prep course, which is starting in about a week. I went with the expensive route, rather than self-studying, because I don’t trust myself to stay on track… especially not after getting ACNH. I hope that this course will help me pace myself and learn everything that I need to learn in time for my exam in August! Time will tell.

Doesn’t the time seem to go by quickly, these days? Maybe it’s just me. It feels like my exams just ended, and yet… today marked the start of Term 1 Summer Session here at UBC. Thankfully, my course (CAPS 391) doesn’t start until tomorrow, so today was more of an extension of my rather short break. I think that I’m going to withdraw from the course, though. I do want to focus on my MCAT prep, after all, and taking this course doesn’t particularly benefit me. I think one important consideration when deciding whether to do a course in the summer or not, is the fact that some medical schools don’t consider your summer course grades in their GPA calculation. This could be a benefit (i.e., you might want to take a mandatory course that is difficult during the summer, so that it doesn’t tank your GPA), or a deficit (if you planned to take a fun/easy elective); but UBC is not among the schools that this applies to, anyway, so if your sole goal is UBC medicine, this is irrelevant.

In my case, CAPS 391 is not mandatory for my degree. The only reason why I signed up for this course initially was because it was a prerequisite for nursing. However, the more I think about it… I’m technically only in second-year still, and I have plenty of time to take this course in the future if medicine doesn’t work out for me! Plus, there’s still other options like PharmD and counselling psychology… I don’t need to impulsively take courses for the sake of qualifying for every single one of my many tentative career aspirations.

Similarly, I’m enrolled in MICB 202 for term 2 of the summer. Again, this is a prerequisite for PharmD. I’m not sure if I really need to take this course, but at least it’s relevant for the MCAT, I suppose. Plus, my friend is taking it with me and I would feel bad if I suddenly decided to ditch her. Luckily for indecisive people like me, term 2 is still a long ways away, so I can deal with this decision in a few months time.

I think that sums up my main points. There’s just been so much going on lately, and it can be overwhelming. Please continue to take good care of your health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all of it!), and be kind to one another. Let’s all get through this together! 🙂

March Updates: Blogging, Coronavirus, and Life

“You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan. No plan at all. You know why? Because life cannot be planned.”
— Ki-taek, Parasite (2019)

Ah, of course. The week after I write about commitments, I decide to break my commitment. How ironic. I doubt it matters much to anyone except myself, but since this is a self-commitment, I ought to be holding myself accountable.

Alas, I’ve realized that I don’t have much inspiration to write, which is rather odd since I’ve only been blogging for about a month or so— there’s no way that I’ve exhausted all of my ideas. I haven’t. In fact, I have quite a few unfinished blog post drafts and completely unexplored topics. I have brainstorms, I have notes, and I have countless introductions… but I have no inspiration. No inspiration on how to write a blog post that is actually meaningful or helpful to anyone else. But from here on out, I’ll try to stop overthinking it. After all, blogging is my hobby and not a source of income! If I were doing this for money, I would probably have $0 or less. (Hence why I am not doing this for the money.)

What happens to this blog in the future is uncertain, just as my own future is uncertain.

I don’t agree with Ki-taek that having no plan is the way to go, nor do I agree that life cannot be planned; but I do agree that things oftentimes don’t go the way you initially expect them to. I do have ideas for the future of this blog, as do I have ideas for my own future… but whether or not any of these ideas will come to be is something that nobody can possibly know with 100% certainty until the time comes. As much as I dislike uncertainty, that’s exactly what the future is. There are so many variables beyond our own control, and so being flexible to unexpected obstacles is essential.

But yeah, I haven’t forgotten about the blog. All is well, with me, though I really dislike daylight savings. You wouldn’t think that 1 hour makes a big difference, but I’ve gotten used to waking up at exactly 7:20am in the morning without feeling absolutely horrible. Waking up at 6:20am, on the other hand… It’s been a rough week of chugging tea and coffee. I guess I really just wanted to check-in to say that I haven’t died from the novel coronavirus, or anything else.

Though, the novel coronavirus is becoming an increasingly big concern here in BC. There are so many controversial debates about it, like whether UBC campus should close or remain open, whether wearing masks is justified…

I’m not too worried about myself— I’m in my 20s, and while I don’t have the healthiest lifestyle, I’m not afflicted with any other underlying illness that would put me at high-risk. I am, however, very concerned for the people I come into contact with. I live with my parents, and I volunteer at a senior home, as well as the hospital. I am constantly coming into contact with at-risk populations, and my worst fear is that I might cause an outbreak. What if I have the novel coronavirus, but I’m still currently asymptomatic? What if my runny nose isn’t allergies? I don’t know if I’m being paranoid… I probably am… but I just cannot fathom what I’d do if I ended up being the reason why someone else fell ill or died.

And this is why I wear a mask. It might be excessively precautious, but I don’t want to spread illness. Of course, don’t go out if you’re sick. But if the idea is to not go out if you have any reason to believe that you might have the novel coronavirus, then I suppose I’d never step foot from my house again. There’s a thousand ways that anyone might get sick. Implausible ways, sure, but not impossible.

I’ve received numerous e-mails on the topic, be it with regards to volunteering or to school, and I really do disagree with some of the views expressed. For example, I was instructed not to wear a mask to volunteering because it spreads fear, but I would rather spread fear than the virus. I was also told that people who do not display symptoms pose no risk to me… which is a convenient statement, but there’s evidence suggesting that the virus can be spread even if you don’t have symptoms. Honestly, no matter what your take is, I think we can all agree that we need to stay aware of what’s going on. I don’t need false reassurance in an attempt to counter the panic. I just want the truth and the facts. Unfortunately, there’s ultimately not much we can do now except continue practicing good hygiene and hope for the best.

Anyway, I don’t know when my next post will be— perhaps next week, perhaps next month. Until we meet again, though, stay safe!

Committing to a Commitment

“Break it down to this next breath, this next step; this next choice is one that I can make.”
— Queen Anna of Arendelle, The Next Right Thing

I have commitment issues. I don’t mean this in the relationship sense, though commitment issues might be a part of the reason why I’ve been single my whole life…

What I do mean is, I have trouble sticking to self-initiated projects. For example, during the summer between grade 8 and grade 9, I decided to go through 2000 kanji characters at a rate of 50 new characters a day via Anki. My initial surge of motivation allowed me to get through those first few days with ease, along with the fact that the first few hundred characters were pretty easy to remember… but quickly, I began to dread this daily study routine. If you don’t know what Anki is, it’s a free flashcard program that uses the idea of spaced-repetition to help you to most efficiently study material. Every time you indicate that you knew the answer to the flashcard, the duration of time before which that flashcard is shown to you again is increased. Thus, you only study the cards that Anki believes that you are about to forget.

While this is great in theory, the result is that your review cards will begin to pile up. You start with no review cards, obviously, and only new cards. Then, slowly, you get more and more review cards as you go on. While these review cards should be regulating themselves and declining over time, assuming you don’t forget the content on the cards, I found that my rate of 50 new cards a day was far outpacing my ability to “mature” my review cards. In the end, I ended up with something like 200~300 reviews a day, which took me 2~3 hours to complete.

Amazingly, I did not miss a day of my routine for the entire summer, and I actually reached my goal of getting through those 2000 kanji characters. The amount of willpower this took, however, made me hate Anki and never want to use it again. Soon after the summer break ended, and grade 9 began, I started to neglect my Anki flashcards. Now, 5~6 years later, all 2000+ of my review flashcards are due, and I honestly do not remember a lot of them. I continually have to relearn these kanji in my university Japanese classes. Ultimately, if I had gone at a slower pace and managed to stick with Anki for longer than one summer, I probably would’ve been better off…

Another example of my commitment issues is this very blog. I told myself that I would update it once a week on Saturdays, but I almost missed this week due to schoolwork and a lack of inspiration to write about anything. Ironically, it was this lack of inspiration that inspired me to write this post, so I guess things worked out?

Evidently, since I myself have commitment issues, I might not be in the right place to be offering the solution. However, I do have some ideas on how to combat these commitment issues that I use from time-to-time with varying levels of success. Hopefully, they will also help you with some level of success.

1. Do not be fooled by your initial excitement
When you first decide to take on a project, you are probably super motivated and hyped up to do it. It’s quite easy when you’re in this state to overestimate how much you’ll be willing to do once a month has passed, and life gets in the way. It’s completely normal to accomplish a lot in the beginning, and then slowly taper off until you give up entirely… but this is far from ideal.

I like to take a step back before I jump straight into a new commitment and think about what a realistic goal would be. And then I reduce that further. If you have a small, manageable commitment, then it won’t become as much of a dread-inducing task to your future-self, and you’ll be more likely to keep at it.

2. Stick to your routine
The longer you keep your “streak” going with your commitment, the less inclined you’ll be to break it. This is what kept me going with my kanji studies— I had already come so far, and I thought it’d be a waste if I stopped. (I am subject to sunk cost fallacy, but perhaps that is a good thing in this case.)

Once in a while, you’ll probably think to yourself… it’s okay if I just take this one time off; I can catch up another time. While these thoughts are seemingly rational, giving in to them is basically giving up on the commitment altogether. A commitment isn’t something that you just do when you feel like it— a commitment isn’t something that you can arbitrarily decide to take a break from even just this once.

Sure, if you have an emergency come up, I’m not saying that you should kill yourself to stick to the commitment. There exist justified reasons for taking a break (ie. mental health concerns, more pressing unexpected obligations for volunteering/work/school, etc.). But there’s definitely a difference between feeling a normal amount of dread, stress, and anxiety about doing something and having actual mental health issues, which I think is important to understand. Not doing something that you’ve committed to simply because you don’t want to is not exactly how a commitment works. If you truly no longer want to do your commitment, then you should probably uncommit.

I say this from experience, because I’ve fallen victim to this logic fallacy several times. I tell myself, it’s just a personal commitment… there’s no harm in giving it up for today. Except there is! The harm is that you will get into the habit of falling back to this same excuse, over and over again. You’ll see that your life has gone on fine after skipping a day of your commitment, and then the internal monologue goes something like, “there’s no harm in skipping just one more time… okay, I’m even busier today than last time so it’s justified if I skip… really, I swear, I’ll do it next time… oh, I haven’t done my supposed-commitment for a month, oops, I guess I’ll just not do it anymore!”

It’s like attending lectures. Once you start skipping, it becomes increasingly easy to skip… so don’t skip in the first place! Don’t fall victim to this trap!

3. Make adjustments if needed
If you find yourself truly struggling to stick to your routine, you might want to consider revising your goals. Instead of letting yourself take the day off, reduce the goal to something more manageable! This way, you can still keep your momentum going. Remember, once you start falling behind, it becomes easier to quit completely, and I’m assuming this isn’t what you want if you’re trying to commit to something.

For example, I eventually decreased my “50 new kanji a day” goal to “30 new kanji a day” which made my life a little less horrible. As I said, your ambition when you first start might lead you to formulate some unrealistic long-term goals, so it’s okay to reduce it once that initial motivation boost dies.

That being said, you don’t want to keep reducing your commitments until it reaches 0, since that clearly defies the purpose of your commitment. This brings us to our next point.

4. Remind yourself of the commitment’s true purpose
What made you commit to this in the first place? For me, it was my love for the Japanese language and my desire to one day become fluent. This underlying purpose has always existed within me, and will continue to exist. Likely, you have some sort of motive to pick up a commitment. Hopefully, it is a strong driving force, and not just a whim, as whims tend to not make good foundations for long-term commitments!

It’s easy when you’re feeling unmotivated to lose sight of what your true goal is. I became fixated on just finishing my flashcards and getting on with my life, forgetting that my goal wasn’t to simply complete a deck of cards… It was a step in my pursuit of my passion— Japanese.

So take a moment to reflect. Why did you start this commitment? What did you want to achieve? Do you still want to achieve that? Look towards that end goal, and understand that there will be some willpower required to get there, but it will be worth it! Hopefully.

5. Understand the possibility and consequences of mistakes
Okay, so despite all of this, let’s say you missed a day. Maybe you forgot, maybe you didn’t manage to convince yourself to do it before it was too late… now what?

Well, the past cannot be changed (yet); take this as an opportunity to honestly reflect on how things are going. Missing one day isn’t the end of the world, so try not to let this become the catalyst to your commitment’s demise. I’ve skipped one lecture in my life, but I forced myself to go to the next one to ensure that I wouldn’t create bad habits. I wouldn’t say that skipping that one lecture was a great idea, but I’m glad that it didn’t lead to something much worse.

This same idea applies to skipping a personal commitment. It’s not great and should be avoided, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen. That said, you must take care to get back on track as soon as possible. The longer you wait to return to your commitment, the less likely you are to return at all. Once breaking your good habit becomes a habit in itself, you have a problem.

A self-initiated project is reliant on self-accountability. Are you willing to put in the effort to continue, or do you want to quit? Rekindle that desire to accomplish your ultimate goal. Imagine your life after you achieve it. Does this bring you a sense of pride and happiness? If not, then perhaps you are working towards something that doesn’t really matter to you. You don’t need to stick with a commitment just for the sake of it. If there’s no longer anything that you are getting out of it, and there’s no point, then that’s just it: There’s no point. Only you can decide whether your commitment is meaningful to you or not.

Avoiding Last Minute Panic

Procrastination vs Productivity

A false dichotomy.

“Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow.”
— Something that you should never tell yourself.

I wake up at 7am, and the first thing I do after opening my eyes, stretching and groaning about how tired I am… is grab my phone. Perhaps I have a bit of a cell phone addiction.

I methodologically look through my notifications, starting with my e-mail inbox and ending with Snapchat; the number of snaps I receive in the wee hours of the night is concerning. I don’t sleep unreasonably early— I think that midnight is a good bedtime— and yet I never fail to wake up to a collection of snaps from my friends. About schoolwork.

“Late night midterm cramming :(“
“I have an essay due tmr & only 1000 words to go 🙃”
“Why does this 500 word reflection take so long?”

In a previous post, I discussed my strategies for overcoming the battle with energy (or rather, lack thereof). A lot of those points are relevant to the topic of today’s post, too, so I encourage you to take a look! However, this time, I want to focus more on procrastination and how to avoid the stress of writing a paper at 3am, the morning that it’s due!

Keep Track of Deadlines and Start Early
Obviously, if you want to avoid pulling an all-nighter to finish an assignment, you should start on it well before the due date! It’s easy to forget about things that aren’t due in the imminent future, so you should definitely be keeping a to-do list of some sort.

It’s amazing to me that I have friends who don’t keep a to-do list. They tell me that they just keep everything in their heads. My anxiety would probably kill me if I relied solely on my memory— I maintain at least 3 to-do lists at any given time, and constantly cross-reference them to ensure that I’m not forgetting anything. My first to-do list includes everything from my exam dates to my daily vitamin reminders, and I’m always adding to it as new assignments pop up. My second to-do list contains all of the tasks that I want to accomplish for the week. The last to-do list is actually on my whiteboard. I write out each of the days of the week and list the assignments due for each day. Having these to-do lists is essential to my routine, as it allows me to plan when to work on each task. To this day, I have never had to stay up late to finish an assignment, and I don’t plan to do so anytime soon!

Just because the due date isn’t until next month doesn’t mean that it’s too early to start! I find satisfaction in finishing an assignment that might be due sometime next week, and then watching my friends panic over it the night before it’s due. (This is probably a bit mean… but, of course, I do help them if they’re struggling! After laughing at them.) In fact, just a few days ago, I finished a paper due in April. It’s such a nice feeling to check something off your to-do list, and to have one less thing to worry about!

So definitely keep track of your due dates, and use your extra time to work on those future assignments. You don’t need to finish it— just start. It’s rather relaxing to write a paper at a leisurely pace, knowing that you still have plenty of time to complete it and no obligation to work on it for hours at a time (yet). If you start early, your future self will be grateful!

Set Realistic Goals
That being said, make sure that you’re being realistic! Procrastination is an almost universal issue. I don’t personally know anyone who can honestly say that they have never committed an act of procrastination. It’s simply unrealistic to expect yourself to work nonstop— you’re (probably) a human, after all, and not a machine.

Not scheduling procrastination (AKA a break!) into your routine is a great way to burnout and lose productivity. This is why I call Procrastination vs Productivity a false dichotomy. They are not mutually exclusive! (This is again illustrated when I touch upon pseudo-productivity later in this post.) Thus, when planning my day out, I take into consideration the time I need to set aside to stare at the wall, have an emotional breakdown, and contemplate my reasons for living.

Additionally, I have a tendency to grossly underestimate the amount of time it will take me to finish a given task. It’s better to overestimate and end up with extra free time in your schedule than to underestimate and cut into your dedicated crying break.

What I like to do is not only create a list of all the things I need to accomplish, but also add (over)estimates of the amount of time I need to dedicate to that task to complete it. Being able to see how many hours of work I have left is, for me, a much better indicator of how on-track or off-track I am than simply seeing a list of items I need to do.

Utilize Your Weekends
The weekends are so important. I always aim to complete my assignments for the week during my weekend, because I know that I will be exhausted during the school week. This is a habit that I started back in first year, due to the workload of Science One, and I haven’t looked back since! I get incredibly stressed out if I don’t manage to finish at least a good fraction of my tasks for the week during the weekend.

The weekends are your chance to pay your sleep debt, catch up on schoolwork and recover your sanity, so it’s essential that you take full advantage of them! Of course, if you have volunteering and/or work, the weekends might not provide such an abundance of opportunity and time. For example, I have volunteering on Saturdays, so I basically only have Sundays off. People who have obligations on both Saturday and Sunday may find themselves burnt out. Nonetheless, even doing a little bit of work is better than nothing at all.

The Pomodoro Technique
I’m sure you’ve heard of this technique before, but in the off-chance that you haven’t, it’s quite simple. The theory is that you set a timer (typically for 25 minutes) and you give a task your undivided attention for that set duration (called a Pomodoro). Once the time is up, you take a 5 minute break before beginning another Pomodoro. After 4 Pomodoros, you allow yourself a 15 minute break.

In order for this system to work, you need to have enough self-discipline to not cheat. It would be pointless to cheat, anyway. The goal of the Pomodoro technique is to increase productivity! There are plenty of apps available out there if you want something to track your progress, but the idea is straightforward enough that you could also do without.

The purpose of this technique is to break up your work into management chunks, and provide you with some sanity breaks. Also, over time, starting the timer comes to represent a vow to be productive, and seeing the timer tick down gives a sense of urgency to complete the task at hand. Though I haven’t had to use the Pomodoro technique much recently, it served me well during my high school years and my first year of university. Nowadays, I prefer to work uninterrupted for hours at a time.

Okay, wait, but how do I actually follow any of this advice and stop procrastinating?
Indeed, it’s way easier to give and receive advice than it is to put in the effort to follow the advice. Surely, most people are aware of what they should be doing, but then they end up not doing it.

This is also the case for me, and basically everyone at some point in time. I’ll spend time planning out my day, and then end up watching a movie, falling asleep, or playing video games instead of following my plans. Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to do things. Ultimately, you’re the one in control of your own actions.

The things that really motivate me are anxiety and accountability. I get anxiety when I think about the pile of work that I have to do, which typically motivates me to be productive. I like to write messages to myself when I notice that I’m falling off-track, to remind myself of why I’m a student and why I need to study to succeed.

As for accountability, having motivated friends to study with can be really helpful. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m a big fan of study calls and study groups. Even just announcing to someone what you plan to accomplish for the day can be a helpful starting point! If I tell someone what I intend to do, I feel more obligated to accomplish it.

Finally, the most important thing is that you just start. Don’t overthink it so much. Take a deep breath and start working on the task! The simple action of pressing the start button on my Pomodoro timer can help give me that extra push to actually start if I’m feeling particularly demotivated.

In the end, though, there might be times when you’re just not feeling it, and that’s fine too. We all have those days. Take a breather. During the times that I can’t convince myself to be productive, I like to be pseudo-productive, at least! Pseudo-productive tasks that I often use to procrastinate include studying Japanese (by watching Japanese videos, reading raw manga, or playing Japanese video games), cleaning my room, and— of course— writing blog articles! Really, though, the definition of pseudo-productive is up to you (I don’t think that it’s an actual term, but interestingly, quite a number of hits pop up if you search it up on Google). One of my friend’s favourite quotes is, “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” It’s okay to just take a break to do something you truly enjoy! Everything in moderation.

CHEM 233: Organic Chemistry for the Biological Sciences – An Overview

“Sometimes people take CHEM 233 and like organic chemistry. Sometimes people take CHEM 233 and never want to hear about organic chemistry again.”
— Professor Jay Wickenden

Let me introduce you to my least favourite course and my current lowest course mark: CHEM 233.

It’s funny. I hear a lot of people say things like, “This course wasn’t as bad as I was told.” and “People said this course would be super hard, but I thought it was fine?”

You know what I don’t hear? People actually saying that the course is difficult…

I’m not sure what you’ve heard about this course, if you’ve heard anything at all, but I definitely found this course difficult. Many of my friends will tell you otherwise… apparently, this was their favourite course. I don’t know. I think they’re all crazy.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a Science One alumna, and I learned practically nothing from organic chemistry. Thus, I went into second year organic chemistry without the expected background knowledge from first year. Don’t be me!

To start: A good professor is absolutely paramount!

I usually like to start with the course breakdown, but I cannot stress this point enough: The professor can really make or break a course— especially organic chemistry. There were 4 different professors teaching in my year. One of the professors had an 80% average, and another had a 65% average. That’s a 15% difference!

(Of course, correlation ≠ causation, and sure, perhaps all of the smart students happened to choose the same section, thus resulting in a higher average. Even if that’s the case, however, I think you’re still best off choosing the section with the higher average because then you’d be surrounded with other bright people!)

Unfortunately, we didn’t get informed of the professors prior to the start of the course, so it was all luck of the draw. I highly recommend Jay Wickenden and Jason Hein if you get the choice. They are both amazing at their job!

I, unfortunately, ended up with one of the professors who had a lower class average. I won’t point fingers, but be sure to do research on your professor. If you end up with a below-average professor, the best advice I can give you is to attend another section.

With the exception of quiz days, there’s nothing stopping you from simply attending a different section’s lecture… there were no iClicker questions for my section, so I quickly began skipping classes and attending another section instead. The difference is astounding!

I went through first year thinking that I was absolutely doomed for organic chemistry. While it is true that I’m not the best at organic chemistry, everything made so much more sense after I had the experience of attending a good professor’s lectures.

However, you might fall into a particularly unfortunate case where you cannot attend another professor’s lecture due to scheduling conflicts. In this case: good luck! The other professors’ materials are posted on Canvas, so I encourage you to take a look. You’ll likely need to do a lot of self-studying which is not ideal for a course like organic chemistry. Make good use of Khan Academy and YouTube!

Course Breakdown

20% Midterm 1
20% Midterm 2
45% Final
8% Homework Assignments
7% Section Specific

Midterms and Final

85% of your mark is quite a lot! No pressure! I did terribly (~72%) on the first midterm for a number of reasons… one of them being that I forgot to eat before it, another being that I didn’t study nearly enough. Most of my mistakes came from dumb things that I should’ve known the answer to: I really beat myself up after this midterm. I still have negative feelings about it.

So my first pro-tip to you is to eat something before your exam. Don’t stuff yourself silly to the point where you get tired and want to take a nap— but do remember to eat. Though, it’s unlikely that you’ll forget; I think this is a niche problem that I have.

Secondly, check over your answers. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t, but I was feeling a bit lightheaded and faint during my midterm so in my daze, I decided that I’d just trust my first answers. Bad idea.

Most importantly, however, is that you do all of the problem sets and the practice exams. Additionally, all sections’ professors posted their quizzes on Canvas (after the quiz was done in-class, of course), so those are also good practice! I didn’t bother with the textbook questions or the readings.

I spent many hours grinding out practice problems and exams, and did significantly better on midterm 2. You definitely need to know your mechanisms inside out. Look at Jay Wickenden’s slides, regardless if you’re in his class or not, and recite every mechanism until you’ve got them memorized. You also need to memorize pKa values provided in the course, and your nucleophiles and electrophiles.

There was a surprising amount of memorization in this course. Nothing too insane, but still more than expected!

Homework Assignments

There were a total of 10 homework assignments. These were weekly, with a few exceptions (ie. if there was an upcoming midterm). Only our best 8 homework marks counted, and made up 8% of our mark. You can do the math to deduce that each assignment is worth 1%! The assignments aren’t too long— they’re all one page double sided. They usually contain a mix of multiple choice, predict-the-products, and mechanism questions.

Section Specific

They call it “section specific,” but almost all sections were the same: 6% from quizzes, and 1% from iClicker participation.

However, if you’ve been reading this post carefully, you might recall me mentioning that there were no participation marks for my section. Indeed, I think my professor was the only one who decided not to have iClicker participation marks. Our quizzes were instead weighted 7%.

Anyway, regardless of your section, there were (supposed to be) 3 in-class quizzes. (Our year was a bit special because of the whole bus strike ordeal; our third quiz ended up being online.) The lowest quiz mark was dropped, so each quiz was worth either 3% or 3.5% depending on which professor you had. The quizzes differed between each section, so there was a bit of concern amongst students about differences in difficulty of quizzes. We were told that the marks would be scaled if deemed necessarily. The section that had a 65% average tended to, in my opinion, get more difficult quizzes. While I wasn’t in their section, I looked over their quizzes during my studies and found them to be tricky.

Final Thoughts

I hate organic chemistry and I never want to take this course again. However, with practice, patience, and a whole lot of frustration, it is possible to succeed in this course, even if you’re like me and enter the course not understanding resonance. I still think that I could’ve done significantly better, had I not performed so poorly on my first midterm. What is done is done, however, and I hope that you have better luck in this course than me!

Beating the Battle with Time, Energy and Motivation

“There’s not enough time!”
— Almost every student in existence

Most people are aware that time is an issue. Time is limited. Time is fleeting. Time doesn’t wait for anyone — especially not students drowning in assignments and exams. It’s no wonder that so many people rate time control as their most desired superpower.

In reality, though, I’m not so sure that time is to blame. Personally, I feel like I have so much extra time. I have time between my volunteer shifts on Saturdays and after I get home at 7pm on Thursdays. But somehow, this time goes to waste, as I end up falling asleep or scrolling through social media for hours. Is this really a time issue, or something else?

I became convinced that something was wrong with me. I blamed my unproductivity on my lack of motivation and discipline. However, I’ve come to realize that the problem is not only a lack of motivation, but also a lack of energy.

After a long day of lectures, I am simply exhausted by the time I get home. You know that feeling where your head feels fogged up and heavy, and your eyelids are closing? All I want to do is sleep, and yet I realize that I still have so much I need to do.

So what’s the solution? Unfortunately, there’s no single cure-all, but here are some of the strategies I use to stay productive!

1. Don’t go home after class

If feasible, simply not going home is my personal favourite. As a commuter, this means staying on campus and studying in a public area like a library or a café. The problem, however, is that it gets dark quickly during the winter and staying at UBC to study all night is not always possible.

Alternatives include studying at a café closer to home, or even establishing a dedicated study space within your own house! However, staying on campus is definitely the most effective for me.

If you live on residence, this advice is a lot easier to follow. Don’t go to your room — go to a study room or a library. You have so many options, and you often don’t even need to go far! There are spaces to study within the residence buildings (other than your own room).

Just being in the study environment helps a lot with focus and not falling asleep.

2. Take a shower

This might just be a me thing, but I find that if I’m feeling physically drained, a shower can be really refreshing. I like to take my showers in the evening, when I need to take a break from studying.

3. Drink coffee/tea

Caffeine is always an obvious option, but know yourself. Everyone reacts differently to caffeine. I personally like to avoid consuming caffeinated drinks in the late afternoon if I intend to sleep at a reasonable time. Drinking a small coffee in the morning got me through my 8:30am lectures last year, though, and having a cup of tea when I’m starting to feel bogged down at 2pm on the weekend does wonders. Just try not to become like my friend who drinks a pot of coffee in a day…

4. Try study calls and studying in groups

You might be wondering what a study call is. I’m not sure if this is a term my friends and I made up, but it’s pretty much what it sounds like: We voice call each other for the sole purpose of studying.

This works exactly the same as studying together in-person, except with the added convenience of not having to actually meet up! Of course, if you live on campus and/or have friends that are willing to meet up to study with you, studying in person is typically better.

In either case, group studying means two different things to me:

Studying the same material as each other and actively discussing it.
Studying independently of each other, silently.

I think (but I might be wrong) that most people assume that group studying refers to the first case. In fact, some people find it awkward, boring, and/or pointless to study silently with a friend.

Both types of group studying have their merits, but I typically study call with my friends for the purpose of silent studying. The reason for that is that a lot of us are in completely different faculties/schools, and definitely not studying the same material. Nonetheless, just being in the study call makes us feel more accountable for our actions and encourages us to actually study instead of taking a nap. Plus, sighing together as we struggle to comprehend a concept is fun!

Again, this is definitely not something that works for everyone. You not only need to know yourself, in this case, but also your friends! I have studied with several different friends and have come to realize that many do not do well with silent study. They get bored or feel awkward and will start making conversation. Remember: the purpose of studying together is to actually study, not to discuss Trump’s latest antics!

Although I engage mostly in silent group studying, I do have a bit of experience with the more active style of group studying. Just like with silent studying, the effectiveness of an active study group is highly dependent on the people involved. I think that discussing the material and quizzing each other is effective, but only if everyone has the same level of background knowledge on the topic! Otherwise, people who are behind in their studies will not be able to follow the group discussion, and people who are way ahead will not be able to address the concerns they have with more advanced material. Also, it only takes one person to derail an entire group by asking something off-topic. Nonetheless, if you manage to find the perfect study partners, teaching the material to each other is a great way to learn and not fall asleep!

5. Tackle a small task

No matter how tired you are, you can probably get yourself to concentrate for 5 minutes. Set a timer and tell yourself that you’re going to work on something productive for just 5 minutes. This “something” can be anything from coming up with a topic for an essay, to replying to that e-mail you received last week. Once you finish those 5 minutes, see if you want to continue or not.

Oftentimes, the hardest part of being productive is convincing yourself to start. It’s much easier to convince yourself to work for 5 minutes than to convince yourself to write an entire essay!

6. Play study music and background noise

The simple task of opening up your study music playlist can get you into the study spirit— but only if the type of work you’re doing allows for it. I love blasting loud music while doing math, physics or chemistry practice problems… but I would definitely not do this if I were trying to read a psychology textbook. Listening to less distracting music (ie. piano covers) while doing pre-readings is much more effective for me.

Alternatively, I would recommend some white noise or binaural beats! As a science student, it’s probably bad for me to suggest potentially pseudoscientific things, but I really love using those virtual coffee binaural beats to help me concentrate and not fall asleep! Even if it’s the placebo effect, if it works, it works, right? No harm in listening to binaural beats! (Unless my parents are right that listening to them will screw up my brain?)

7. Take an exercise break

I do not get enough exercise. In fact, I get basically none. My weekday physical activity consists of walking between classes, and my weekend physical activity is getting up from my desk to retrieve food/water from the kitchen.

News flash! Exercise is allegedly important for your health. There are people crazy enough to wake up early in the morning to hit the gym or go for a run. When I ask them why they would want to torture themselves like that, they always reply that the exercise helps to energize them and get them going. Though I’m still not convinced enough to get up at 5am to exercise… the main takeaway is that exercise is energizing.

Also, a side note: as you learn in psychology, the left part of your brain typically controls the right side of your body and vice-versa in what is known as contralateral processing. I was told by both my counsellor and my biology teacher that moving your body helps to solidify information that you’ve studied by promoting the transfer of information from one side of the brain to the other. This seems like a cool concept, though I can’t speak to the validity of their claims. Regardless if it’s true or not, however, taking an exercise break is still immensely useful for the whole re-energizing component. It doesn’t have to be a full workout, either! Going for a walk around the house or doing a few jumping jacks is usually all I can convince myself to do, and it really does help.

8. DRINK WATER!

I’m a huge advocate of drinking water. Have a headache? Drink water! Feeling tired? Drink water! Having an existential crisis? Drink water to replenish those fluids lost from crying!

I often forget to drink water, and this leads to drowsiness. Drink plenty of water and eat well! Dehydration and hypoglycemia are surefire ways to void yourself of any energy to do your work.

9. Clear your mind

A large part of my exhaustion is a result of excessive worrying. There’s a lot going on in life — deadlines to keep track of, emails to reply to, friendship drama to sort out…

Do you ever find that you have so many things to do that you just have no idea where to start? And even if you try to start on something, you begin to worry about another assignment or exam and wonder if you should be working on that instead?

This always happens to me, and I end up switching between tasks every few minutes as I panic over what I should be prioritizing. This, however, is not very effective. I’d prefer to stick with one task and actually complete a substantial amount of it than to finish next to nothing on 100 different assignments.

The best way to tackle this problem is to take a moment to clear your mind. I do this by taking a piece of scrap paper and starting a mind map. In the center, I write “clear my mind” and then I draw lines extending outwards from there to broad categories like “personal life” or “biology” which then have lines that connect to more specific issues… you get the point. If you’ve managed to make it to university without having ever made a mind map, you can Google it to find many wonderful examples. You can categorize your issues in any way you want! Just make sure you write down everything you could possibly worry about. I put aside 5-10 minutes to do this thoroughly.

Once you’re convinced that your mind map is fully comprehensive of all your current worries and problems, you can set it aside and choose the one thing you want to focus on.

The purpose of the mind map is to reassure yourself that you won’t forget to do anything. I constantly have thoughts floating around in my head, and the more I tell myself not to think about it, the more I’ll end up thinking about it. After writing it down, though, I feel like I’ve properly addressed everything and have my thoughts sorted out. This allows me to put those worries aside for the moment, as I can always come back to them— they’re right there on the paper for me.

If, for some reason, you have a new worry or thought that occurs while you’re trying to focus, you can add that to your mind map and continue with the task at hand. I like to set a timer or a goal and tell myself that I will finish what I set out to do before allowing myself to switch tasks. (Consider checking out the Pomodoro technique!)

10. Go to sleep

If all else fails and you’re truly exhausted, it might be time to just go to sleep. I think that it’s common for us to search on Google what exhaustion is a symptom of and then start diagnosing ourselves with different disorders… but the first thing you should be asking yourself is whether or not you’re actually getting sufficient sleep. This may seem obvious, but sometimes it’s easy to overlook. If you’re not getting enough sleep and you’re feeling tired… well, that’s your body begging you to get more sleep. I know university life can get hectic, but let’s aim to get a good 7-9 hours of sleep every day!

The reason I put sleep last on my list, however, is that sleep has the potential to backfire greatly. It’s very tempting for me to climb into bed when I don’t want to do my schoolwork, but if I try to take a nap, I’ll invariably end up sleeping for 3 hours. The worst part is that I will wake up feeling groggy and not want to get out of bed. This is a complete waste of time that I could spend actually being productive!

Alas, I have friends who swear by naps. I’m not sure how they do it, but they take power naps between their classes (since they live on campus) and claim that they actually wake up feeling energized? If this is you, I am jealous.

That being said, sleep is great for memory consolidation! I discovered back in high school that drilling vocabulary flashcards before sleeping at night did wonders for my recall the next morning. As I later learned in my neuroscience courses, my experience wasn’t just some weird pseudoscientific idea I came up with— it’s actually supported by research!

Bottom line: Regardless of whether naps are effective for you or not, sleep in general is (as you already know) vital for life. There is ultimately no true substitute for sleep (yet). So if you’re feeling tired and the reason is that you haven’t gotten enough sleep, or it’s like 3am in the morning and your circadian rhythm is telling you that it’s bedtime, you should probably just go to sleep. If you’re up out of necessity, because you’re cramming for an exam or trying to write a 2000 word essay in one night, then that’s a whole other issue that I’ll be writing about in the future!

BIOL 200: Fundamentals of Cell Biology – An Overview

The mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell.

“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
— Students who have clearly never taken BIOL 200

Cellular biology! Who doesn’t love cell biology? (Apparently most of my friends.)

The majority of science students I’ve met fall into one of two categories:

A) Preference for life sciences (ie. biology) and statistics.
B) Preference for physical sciences (ie. chemistry, physics) and calculus.

Fortunately, in this case, I fall into category A. Thus, I found this course to be relatively straightforward and ended up with an A+. However, I’ve heard many scary comments about this course from otherwise very smart students. How is this possible? They probably fall into category B! But don’t worry. Even if you fall into category B, you are not doomed to fail this course. It just takes a bit of practice to understand what the professors want.

First things first: This course almost solely focuses on your ability to answer data questions.

Most people hear biology and think memorization. I’m telling you now, this course has practically no memorization involved. You get a cheat sheet for the midterm and final, which you probably won’t even need to consult because a lot of the information you need to answer a question is given within the question itself! You can decide for yourself whether this is a good or a bad thing— I personally loved it, but I know some who find difficulty in answering data questions. You do need to understand the material being taught, but the logic in biology is relatively straightforward and this shouldn’t be an issue. Plus, any logical connections you need to make to succeed on an exam are typically spelled out to you during lectures and/or tutorials. Try not to fall asleep during class and you’ll be fine!

Course Breakdown

25% Midterm
50% Final
3% Pre-Readings quizzes (6×0.5%)
4% Participation (iClicker)
18% Tutorial (8% for attending tutorials, 6% for the summary paper, 1% for the science communication assignment quiz, 1% for glossary, 2% for pre-tutorial 6 worksheet)

Midterm/Final

These exams, together, are worth three-quarters of your mark! That’s a lot, so it’d be wise to take them seriously. In the case that you do poorly on your midterm, there is a ‘Hard work pays off’ policy in BIOL 200. What this means is, if you happen to get 20% higher on your final exam than your midterm, then the midterm will be worth 15% of your mark (instead of 25%) and the final will be worth 60% of your mark (instead of 50%).

But of course, it’d be better to just do well on both of your exams in the first place! My advice to you is to do the problem sets and the practice exams! This is absolutely crucial! Some of the questions are near identical to the problem sets.

I made the mistake of not doing the problem sets for the midterm. While I still ended up with 89%, I’m certain that I could have done better if I spent more time doing problem sets and less time copying out the eBook onto my cheat sheet.

Yes, I spent hours copying out the eBook word-per-word onto my cheat sheet in tiny font. This was not a worthy investment of my time. Do not do this! Look at the kinds of questions in the problem set and practice exam to decide what information you need to include. For example, microscopy is always a necessity, along with drug names for the final.

The biggest problem that most students had on the midterm was the essay outline. Essentially, you are given a prompt (ie. write an essay outline about the importance of pH on biological processes) and then you have to write:

A thesis statement
Argument 1 + evidence
Argument 2 + evidence
Argument 3 + evidence

Many people ended up with less than 5/10 on this part of the exam… again, this is not because they’re not bright students, but rather because they didn’t understand the expectations. I personally find writing essay outlines to be a straightforward task, so long as you have the background knowledge needed to come up with three arguments + evidence! I got 9/10 on my midterm essay outline, and I’ll give you the secret to doing the same (or hopefully better).

Writing essay outlines is very methodological. You just need to follow a formula:

Read the prompt and make sure you address the prompt specifically. If the prompt asks about a specific protein make sure you mention that specific protein in your thesis statement and your arguments! Don’t be too generic, or you will lose marks. For example, our prompt asked us to write about a proton pump (a protein). Many people forgot to mention the proton pump in their answers, and simply discussed proteins in general.
Make sure your thesis statement clearly outlines your three arguments. If the prompt is to write about the importance of pH on biological processes, then your thesis statement should be: “The proper functioning of biological processes such as [example 1], [example 2] and [example 3] is dependent on pH.”
For each argument, start with a statement about your example, tying it into your thesis statement. “Digestion by lysosomes requires low pH to occur.” Follow it with a second point. “The digestive enzymes involved only function in the low pH environment within the lysosome, and become denatured at higher pH, to avoid damaging the cell if they manage to escape the lysosome.”

Just remember to specifically and completely address the prompt! If the prompt asks about both protein structure and function, you must mention both in your essay outline for full marks. Something I found helpful prior to my final was brainstorming potential essay outline questions and thinking of ideas ahead of time. Put this onto your cheat sheet! For the first midterm, some generic essay outlines about amino acids/polypeptides and the lipid membrane will probably be of use (unless the order that the topics are taught changes, of course).

A final note about exams: my midterm mark went up by 10%(!!!) after I requested a regrade. If you look at the answer key and think that you were graded unfairly, do not hesitate to submit it for a regrade! They do regrade the entire exam, but none of my answers went down in marks.

Pre-readings

There are a total of 8 pre-reading quizzes administered online on Canvas (aka open book). Only your highest 6 quiz marks count, with each one being worth 0.5%, for a total of 3%. You get two attempts on these quizzes, so there should be no issues getting perfect on at least 6 of 8! Think of these as a free 3% boost to your grade.

Participation

This, to the best of my knowledge, solely consisted of iClicker questions. As long as you participate in 85% of the lectures, you will get the full 4%. Make sure your iClicker batteries are working and you don’t fall asleep during the lecture! It doesn’t matter if you choose the right answer or not, so just click something before the poll closes. More free marks!

Tutorial

Sadly this one isn’t all free marks, but the majority of it is. There are 9 tutorials, and these tutorials are mandatory. For each one you attend, you get 1%. It’s basically a show-up mark. Your lowest tutorial mark is dropped so if you are late to one or miss one entirely, that mark will be dropped. In total, you get 8% “free marks” for attending your tutorials and doing the in-class worksheets.

But, if you recall, tutorials are worth 18%, not 8%! That leaves 10% unaccounted for.

Enter the Science Communication Assignment!

Your tutorial TA will choose a scientific paper for you to read and summarize. This paper will be the same for everyone in your tutorial section, but different from people in other sections (unless they happen to have the same TA). This means that, while you can discuss your paper with people within your tutorial section, you’re out of luck if all your friends are in other sections.

You can get 4% of your mark relatively easily. There is a Canvas quiz to complete regarding the assignment (ie. expectations, due dates, etc.) worth 1%. Then, you are made to write a glossary of the words that you found difficult to understand in your research paper; this is also worth 1%. Finally, 2% comes from completing a pre-tutorial 6 worksheet which is marked solely for completion. It involves explaining figures from your assigned scientific paper and answering some questions about it.

The final 6% is the tricky part. This comes from the actual summary paper that you have to write. I don’t have much advice for you on this, because I only got 80% on it. This was by far the most difficult component of the course for me, but thank goodness it’s only worth 6%, right?

Final Thoughts

Biol 200 is a course that I personally enjoyed. Most people I’ve talked to did not share my enjoyment. Whether or not you enjoy this course depends on… you. But if you manage to convince yourself that you enjoy the course, it’ll be a whole lot easier to get a good mark, I assure you!

The difficulties that people face in this course probably stem from a lack of understanding of what the professors want. Don’t be lazy and take shortcuts on your exams! If I learned anything from IB and Science One, it’s that it is totally worth it to end up with hand cramps from writing a bit extra, rather than lose marks because you didn’t include things you thought were obvious. Don’t assume that the reader knows what you mean— make it crystal clear! Spell out every single logical connection between one statement and the next. At the same time, don’t go overboard; time management is still important. You should have plenty of time to complete your exam and check over your answers several times.

Good luck and feel free to ask if you have any questions regarding this course!

My Experience Entering UBC

Will you make it out alive?

“So are you going to die today or make it out alive?”
— League of Legends, Phoenix

Entering university is, admittedly, not always a smooth, easy transition. This likely doesn’t surprise you. How many times have you heard someone exclaim, “Your poor study habits won’t work in university!” or “University is a whole other animal!” — if you’re like me, probably too many times to keep track of.

Nonetheless, I don’t think that the transition to university should be something to be afraid of. Everyone has a different experience, of course. Some find it laughably simple… others find that they have (either literally or figuratively) been thrown into the middle of a foreign country, left for dead.

As a Canadian IB alumna, I went into university expecting to fall into the former category. I came out of my first month realizing that I actually fell into the latter category. I had made the choice of entering the Science One program, a so-called intensive, double-term “course” worth 27 credits. Essentially, it was an all-honours physics+chemistry+biology+math+some research projects… course. The workload was unlike anything I had ever experienced, even in IB, and I must say that I was shocked. Yes, I had heard that Science One would be hard. Did I believe it? No. Because, of course, people had also told me that IB would be hard… and I survived it perfectly fine.

So psh, if the notoriously difficult IB was a breeze, then surely the same would be true for Science One, right?

Except I was wrong. Very wrong. The first few weeks were a breeze… almost as if they wanted to lure us in and give us a false sense of security. The withdraw deadline soon passed and then the storm hit.

Now, to be fair, I have no experience taking first year science courses outside of Science One. I cannot say for certain that my unpleasant transition into university was due to Science One. I have no point of comparison. Perhaps I would have struggled regardless. What I can say, however, is that my workload seemed significantly greater than my non-Science One friends. We had frequent math/physics WebWork assignments (which took several hours), written math/physics assignments (which also took several hours), weekly biology quizzes (which, as you guessed, took several hours to study for) and so on.

We also had the opportunity to learn some coding! This can be seen as either a good or a bad thing depending on your level of love for programming. Either way, computer science did not actually count for marks. Not directly, at least. However, we did need to apply what we learned to create graphs and very rudimentary programs for the other subjects (math/physics/chemistry/biology). It’s nothing too complicated and you get a fair amount of guidance.

Anyways, the purpose of this post is to convince you that transitioning into university isn’t scary. It really doesn’t have to be! Because while I could drone on and on about my bad experiences in first year, it’s quite telling that I’ve survived long enough to tell you the tale. You will survive first year.*

If it’s any encouragement, I managed to get a solid A in Science One despite feeling hopeless and lost for parts of the term. I even seriously considered dropping out of the program and cutting my losses; accepting the W (withdraw) status on my transcript and falling behind by a year. After having a series of existential crises, failing a chemistry test, and trying to convince my parents that becoming a university-drop out isn’t the end of the world, however, I ultimately decided to persevere to the end. And I’m so glad that I did.

The point is: No matter how bad things may seem in the moment, you will get through it.* Things usually work out, eventually. It might not always be smooth sailing— it could be, if you’re lucky!— but no matter what, your life will go on.* It’s okay if you make mistakes and face difficulties along the way. This doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, nor does this mean that your university career is over. Whenever I started to lose hope, I just thought back to all the other times I felt hopeless, and reminded myself: I somehow made it past those struggles to get to where I am now.

Of course, there were also so many wonderful things that happened during my first year. I don’t want you to get the impression I spent the entire year continuously falling into and climbing out of a pit of despair! I met numerous wonderful people with whom I still meet up with regularly during my second year, for example. There’s also much more freedom in university, and a beautiful campus to explore! (Unfortunately, the beauty of the campus is tarnished by the near-constant construction that is going on.) I tend to focus on the pessimistic side of things, but there’s definitely a great deal of positive changes that came with my entrance to university.

So I hope that you, whoever you are, have an exciting, fun, not-scary-at-all transition into university. And if you’re already in university, then I’m not sure why you read up to this point— stop procrastinating and get back to work! Just kidding, I welcome everyone to my blog: future, present, past and non-students alike. Thank you for taking the time to visit!

*Disclaimer: This statement is probably true, but YMMV so please don’t come back and haunt me if you end up dead.