Short post this week, firstly due to the week being uneventful, secondly because I want to try a more laconic writing style. Holidays are over -- it's both a bit sad and exciting.
Mainly covered physiology, particularly immunology, particularly innate immunity (how the body fights/prevents infection in the initial stages). A standout tidbit of knowledge was Tumour Necrosis Factor alpha -- a protein that allows white blood cells to travel to a local infection site and clot small blood vessels to prevent spread of pathogens to the rest of the body. However if a bacterial infection is body-wide, the same response happens but it causes cause shock, organ failure and death. Bit of a double-edged sword there and pretty interesting.
Also experimenting with a new form of notetaking -- I try to divide sections of a page into "Process" and "Components", eg. proteins, cells. It helps show which processes lead into which and gets a nice "big picture" thing, plus the Components section shows which specific things I should make flashcards for/remember. For the UCCC I experimented with notetaking that had sections for key statistics, key ideas/findings and implications for our model, which worked a treat.
Apart from that I did study HKS -- reviewed Indigenous healthcare. However I didn't get as much done with HKS as I would've liked to, mainly because I saw a lot of content in the immunology textbook. However I did do a few practice exam questions for HKS that were mostly simple apart from technicalities eg. what requirements one has to meet to acquire refugee status in the US.
I found I was procrastinating slightly less -- before starting studying for the day I was consciously procrastinating, and it felt terrible. However once I got started, starting up the second block was very easy. What galvanised me halfway was logging onto a voice call and having a friend call me a machine with studying ... I felt both encouraged and like a fraud because I don't work as much as people think I do. No biggie though, I've lived with impostor syndrome all my life and I can see beyond those feelings.
On the days that I didn't do work -- Saturday and Sunday -- I either spent playing video games or spending time with family. Usually I'd feel intensely guilty about being unproductive but I decided that since sem 2 will be very busy, it's alright to give up just two days, right. Something inside me says this is a mistake though, but we'll see.
Spent Friday not studying uni content, but rather reading research papers for the University Cancer Comp. I was assigned to read about the psychosocial issues cancer survivors face by the group -- particularly the fear of recurrence, the lack of formal care/referrals and the generally concerning rates of distress/depression/anxiety. Depressing but great stuff. Had a 2 hour meeting for the Comp., too, which was great but also quite tiring as now we have to somehow quantify (cost) the model we've come up with. Respect to those working from home.
My sleep schedule's getting back on track -- usually sleeping around 12:30-ish and waking up around 10.
Coming up next week is anatomy of the upper limb. I noticed sem 2's content is a lot more anatomy/physiology-focused than sem 1. I'm doing some pre-reading immediately after posting this -- particularly on the anatomical metalanguage/terms -- and maybe watching a lecture. Although it looks challenging, I feel like I can handle it. After all, first sem's content seemed confronting to fresh-out-of-highschool me, and now I'm very comfortable with it.
In the broader term, I'm going to try and aim for a 80% average with my assignments/exams/quizzes in sem 2. I think I'm a bit better at learning content than I thought so no harm raising expectations, right? Things are looking up, my mental health is slowly recovering (it will inevitably crash in sem 2). Let's see where I'll be 1 week into sem 2.