We’re at the end of week 5 now. It is Friday, 3rd of July 2020.
University coursework and assignments are piling up. We are going to have a few minor exams, but minor they may be, they are going to be GRADED.
I am going to sit for my first ever graded exam for Chemistry in university next Wednesday, at 6.30pm – 8pm!
(Yes, you heard that right. And we will still have 3 lecture classes in the morning before that. I will be so exhausted by then. I have never in my life done and exam at 6.30pm.)
Then, I will also have biology, physics and math exams in the following weeks.
I cannot afford to flunk these exams, not when I am aiming for a CGPA of 3.5 for the entire foundation year to get into MBBS (medical degree). I shall be sure to work hard, and do well all the way. To tell the truth, I am lagging behind a bit in catching up with my assignments, and everyday the pile grows larger and more difficult to handle.
Somehow, I must find a way to coordinate all my assignments and revision such that I can keep up daily with my work.
As for online learning, I am beginning to recognize my disembodied coursemates by voice, which is funny. I am also becoming more familiar with some of the names in the online meetings – names of my coursemates, who don’t talk during class, so unfortunately I’m sad to not be able to get to know them! Our time will come… next year, probably.
Our university has announced classes on campus will resume only next year, even though the Malaysian government has very recently declared that primary and secondary school students will be going back soon, universities will be allowed to reopen soon, and even cinemas and theme parks will reopen their doors soon. But our university has declared online classes for the May and October trimesters. We’ll have to wait. 😥
(*28th of January, 2021 update: With the COVID situation now, it seems my 3rd semester (January trimester) will be online, too. Looks like my entire foundation year will be online. But I don’t mind, I think online lectures are quite an experience as well. )
I will be working very hard on time management and understanding certain topics for the next few weeks.
When I’ve established a organized system for my learning and I have gained control, I will come here and announce it here!
Being able to keep up would also mean I have finally gotten my university life in order, and that would allow things to feel steadier.
HEY! Where did all the time go? Is the second week of university done and gone already?
Week 1 mostly consisted of ice breaking and briefing sessions. (Click here to read about myvery first week at university!) I am now done with week 2 of foundation in science, and this week has been a reasonably manageable one, and the pace has not picked up so much that I cannot catch up – not just yet.
This week, we have just been given some assignments to do, and I am learning to adapt to this different part of uni life that is having to complete tutorial questions and practical lab simulationsbeforeattending tutorial and practical classes respectively. In high school, we seldom had to complete anything before entering the classroom – homework was always given to us to do after the class.
This week may have felt a bit short because Monday was a public holiday for Malaysia, so there were only 4 days of lectures. Our lecturers did not hesitate to set replacement classes throughout the week and the next, to make up for lost time.
Due to a replacement class for math on Thursday morning and a combined scientific report writing and APA citation & referencing workshop on Friday, the last two weekdays of Week 2 were FULLY BOOKED. That is effectively 6 hoursof (four) lectures on Thursday, with breaks in between, and more than 5 hours of lectures on Friday, with no break in between – I was literally seated in front of my computer, attending live sessions from 8 – 1.40pm back-to-back. Non-stop.
“Welcome to medicine,” said my father, when he saw me hurrying upstairs after lunch, to continue with the third lecture on Thursday. “That’s probably how studying for your medical degree will be like.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Medicine must be way busier than the second week of our foundation year.” I huffed and puffed as I bounded up the last of the steps, not allowing myself to be deterred by my busy schedule – but only because I knew studying medicine must be a ton lot more hectic than this, and if I could not survive this now, then there was no need to talk about going up to the degree level. So this little bit of busyness has to be beneath me. I do not mean that in an arrogant way, but simply because with the start of my path in medicine, I know I must shift my very definition of “busy”.
Still, I am thoroughly enjoying the new experiences of online classes AND the different way of studying required at university, despite being stuck at home 24/7.
It’s Saturday and I am using the weekend to do some self-studying of Cell Biology. Time to throw myself into the third week!
Mr Yeo* (name changed), my math lecturer, said after a while, when no one was willing to turn on their cam (camera) and an awkward silence followed his questions. “I want to hear your voices, to make sure you’re still alive.” I checked to make sure my mic was muted, and laughed out loud. That is totally not the typical thing your lecturer would say in a classroom.
But there was more. “Remember, you can eat or drink during your lectures,” he said, not even an inch of mischief in his voice. He said it matter-of-factly, like it were printed rules from the university code of conduct rule book. “And please, you can go to the toilet without my permission.” I heard someone cough, then a laugh come from my speakers.
What weirdness.
In a blink of an eye, I have already attended a whole week of university lectures!
The first week started off quietly, but it has begun swiftly nevertheless, and I did not even have the time to write a first day of university blogpost for you! 😛
From what I can gather from my lecturers, things will really pick up its pace from week two onwards. Ready your engines… it’s going to be a one-year spurt, charging head on toward the defining moment where I may or may not meet the requirements for my medical degree.
My online lectures are being conducted on Microsoft Teams, a tight-knit community platform which can be used by school or work accounts. Due to the COVID crisis, our university will be conducting online live stream learning for the rest of the semester. All our assignment documents and online class schedules are easily accessible through this special platform.
This week has been a busy yet fun one, as I tried to adapt to balancing lectures and the daily sessions with my father as he tried to guide me with my foundation syllabus. Having two parties trying to occupy your time and teach you, in their respective ways, is not easy to handle. But I have been managing it so far, whilst having fun, enjoying myself and learning new things. I hope to return to campus soon after this COVID situation improves, as I am quite eager to experience campus life!
“We have such a pretty teacher!” A student gushed during our first cell biology lecture class, right below our teacher’s nose – or, to be more precise, right below our teacher’s screen.
“Hahahahaha….” our teacher, Ms Nadiah (name changed), laughed loudly. She found this student so amusing. “Some of the students here are retaking the paper,” she explained to about a hundred of us, listening behind our screens in our own homes. Clink! The sound of a coffee cup was heard… this was probably a shared house for online teaching that the lecturers were sharing, or this could perhaps even be on campus grounds.
Suddenly, Ms Nadiah’s face turned serious. “My line… is lagging a bit ah! I might have to turn off my cam.” She was even so nice as to ask us if it was alright for her to turn off her camera, despite ALL ONE HUNDRED of us having our cameras disabled. No one wanted to show their face.
“Never mind lah, teacher,” said one student, safe behind a disabled camera. “All we need is to see your face.”
Still, online learning is not very much less of an experience. Your hair is messy and you’re still munching on the last of your breakfast. There is the new normal that constitutes an “e-classroom”, where your mom slides open your door every once in a while, and your dad barges in to listen to your lectures, out of curiosity, every ten minutes.
Your new excuse for being late to class is a bad internet connection…. and no one can really blame you for that. If you’re shy to answer a question in class, you can say your mic is not working, and type in the chat box instead. Most the time when you speak, your profile icon pulses, which can be set to a default blank image with your initials in bold on it. But sometimes it doesn’t even pulse, which means you can ask a question without fear of being judged; no one, not even the lecturer will know who you are. You can change the tone of your voice to avoid being recognized by voice; if anyone is even as observant as that.
Of course, I haven’t actually done any of that. This is my chance to gradually ease my way into uni, so I don’t want to let online learning get me too comfortable. Throughout the week I kept trying to push myself out of my own comfort zone, ask some questions, use the ‘raise hand’ function. It’s healthy, it’s good practice, for introverts like you and me (if you’re one). If you’re wondering, I’m actually an introvert in real life. However, I am very verbal and confident online. I am comfortable expressing myself through written or typed out words where I can backspace and prepare.
The workload for the first week has been quite light, though I am sure it will increase sharply in the coming weeks. The chemistry and physics questions mostly touch on the basics, topics we have learnt about in form 5 during our preparation for SPM, but just a few months of not studying has caused out minds to become rusty, and I have forgotten even how to solve the most basic mole ratio questions. Well… not to say forgotten, but perhaps I have to get used to the concepts and formulas I used to remember for SPM again.
I have printed out some of my notes for all the courses I am taking this semester, namely Chemistry, Physics, Biology, English and Math; all of which are either very neatly prepared or very colourful and full of comprehensive diagrams to facilitate fun and effective learning. I have begun to do some self-studying and find it quite fun and interesting! Some of our lecturers are also very nice and helpful, using Kahoot, a simple online multiplayer game, to engage with us; or telling jokes once in a while to brighten up the mood, or telling us not to panic about the assignment deadline on week 7, since they will remind us again when the date approaches. Still they never fail to bring the focus back to lessons, which is what makes them such great lecturers.
In the middle of the week, while browsing through my countless Microsoft Teams groups meant for different classes, I was shocked to find that I had actually missed a class on Monday. It was the first practical class for Physical Chemistry! My student portal stated flat out in red BLOCK LETTERS that I did not have any records of attendance for Monday, 1st of June 2020.
Oh dear. Very luckily, online learning gives us the ability to go back and watch the replay! Of course, the attendance record cannot be changed. I squeezed the time to watch this replay in the midst of the other lectures I already have for Wednesday, which made my eyes hurt quite a bit, as I am not used to sitting in front of the computer for long hours. However e-learning is like that, and I should learn to get used to it.
One thing I have done quite a lot throughout the week is also… guess what? Yeah 😛 Printing my lecture notes and tutorial questions. They come in bulk! I say, the best way to stay fit during MCO is running up and down the stairs to print your lecture notes. Really.
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To date, I have collected quite a lot of lecture topics, neatly in files, and have begun to prepare ahead a bit before everything starts picking up its pace. I never thought I would get to say this before the rush begins, but shockingly, at this very point of time, only SOME HOURS before the second week of lectures begins, I can tell you that the pace has NOT picked up yet. (Whoa. Unbelievable.) (No. I’m just joking.) This statement could possibly be true only for a few more hours… or maybe a couple more days, not sure yet. We’ll see.
For now, I need to get back to learning how to draw a glucose molecule.
You know, drawing glucose is definitely more fun that I had imagined! Especially when your lecturer guides you slowly in learning the steps, and describes the how the actual structure of a glucose molecule really is.
Remembering, the bane of all doctors and a highly significant contributor to their success in medical school and beyond.
How often do you try to recall something, only to realize the memory is already long faded and too late to trace back? Even worse, sometimes it feels as if it’s at the tip of your mind and you just. Can’t. Remember.
How often do you make silly mistakes, or do your brain cells feel completely drained, as you struggle to remember?
It certainly must be more difficult to remember.
But is it really?
Say I give you a polynomial equation: 9x^5/9+6x^4/2+x^3/5+7x^2/4+9x+8 = 0, and I ask you to memorize and repeat it back to me in five seconds. Then I ask you to try and forget a formula you’ve known from before – say the root-finding quadratic formula, in five seconds.
Does that first polynomial equation look easy to digest at all? Yet try as you might, you will find it ironically easier to memorize at least partially that polynomial jargon than trying to forget the quadratic formula that you have learnt before.
I am sure the concept of the above paragraph is nothing new to you. However, I am trying to put into concise terms to explain why we cannot give a blanket (general) answer to the question: “is it easier to remember or to forget”. We don’t remember things better just because it’s shorter and less complicated. It also depends on period of exposure – in other words, how long you’ve known it.
We are only human and are not able to over-compromise sleep or take in more knowledge than we possibly can a day. To excel in life, we must make connections with the things we learn. In this case, the transferable skill here is applying what you’ve learnt about memory from this blogpost to your study strategy!
It is learning to expose yourself, regularly but at the appropriate time, to the information you need to absorb. This is done through the well-known method called “spatial recollection“.
Spatial recollection is a scientifically proven method of recalling information through a series of carefully timed re-viewing of the information you need to absorb. It is said that when you’re trying to memorize something, you need to read and reread it the most times in the beginning, then once a week, then once a month perhaps. The neurons in our brains somehow process information in this manner.
Therefore in the beginning, it is crucial to pick your material up and go through it more than once at least. After that, your brain has a stronger hold on the information and it becomes less likely that you will forget it.
I have tried this method and found that it works greatly for me. Try this out in your study strategy, and I’m sure it will do wonders for you!
So you’re finally a university student? Fret not, let me be here to start uni (or med school) with you and walk alongside you on this journey, whether you’re starting uni this year with me in 2020 or many decades later.
Not everyone can afford a laptop to bring to school at first, and then there are tons of assignments and projects that you wish you could get a headstart on in between classes. Perhaps your phone is cluttered with the heavy storage load multiplayer FPS games you played in high school, emails with 99+ notifications due to too many trashy subscriptions, and 10 social media accounts (you can’t have it all, friend!)
In between certain mobile apps your university may or may not require you to install on your phone – a university owned app, a video conferencing app, e-learning platforms etc, and your phone bugging you every day with “storage is full, please deep clean” messages, you may need to concede and help out your phone who is in pain. If you intend to become a true doctor displaying empathy, you’d better not abuse the health of your phone, who may play a significant role in ensuring you can catch up with your assignments when you’re out on campus!
As a matter of fact, my phone has also been complaining about stomachache for a long while now, and yesterday I finally took the initiative to try and transfer at least my photos and videos to new my computer. Read about me getting a new computer during the coronavirus season here!
All the while, my family has been transferring important documents using wires and pen drives. Recently, perhaps owing in part due to my university and my new computer which had One Drive pre-installed on it respectively, I had learnt of this thing called One Drive that can sync your documents throughout your connected devices: whether it be the computer or your phone. One Drive is basically the Microsoft owned version of Google Drive.
Syncing my old photos to my computer 22 May 2020 Credits: Rachel Tan HX
I had always been a bit lazy in terms of clearing my phone by transferring some stuff to the computer, since I never quite understood the whole wire + USB pen drive concept. Yesterday, I tried uploading my phone photos to one drive (I have included the steps to transfer folders using One Drive app to your computer). Since One Drive is a syncing platform, almost as soon as one photo finished uploading onto the One Drive app on my phone, it appeared in the One Drive – Personal section on my PC! It takes only about 1 second per photo! For a video, it can take up to 10 minutes, but you can leave your phone there to do its work while you busy yourself with other productive things.
Before One Drive, I had attempted to transfer my files using Bluetooth, but although I had accepted the Bluetooth connection on both the phone and PC, nothing went through and an error occurred. Why that happened I cannot be sure, but I think One Drive is a great way to transfer documents to your PC and keep other work or school documents synced on both devices. Although there has been no order yet from my university to do so, I foresaw that this would be useful for on-campus studying and went on to prep my phone for this stage.
Now not only has One Drive cleared some of my phone storage to facilitate focused learning, it has also given me a platform (with limited storage) to sync some of my coursework. It will not beat a laptop, however, we can make do with what we have. If you don’t have access to a handphone, that might be a bit inconvenient, but you can still use the university computer lab once in a while. Don’t see these little things as major obstacles. There is always a way round them.
If you’ve been wondering what is the difference between One Drive and Google Drive, they basically do the same thing. I have used both before, and both are very useful. If you want more information on their differences, I have already done some research for you! Go to this website and scroll right down to the “Conclusion” section. I believe those last three paragraphs can give you concise picture of which syncing app to use.
Enjoy your university life while it lasts! 😉
Steps to upload photos from One Drive mobile phone app onto your computer.
Note: One Drive needs network access. It is an online syncing app.
Download the Microsoft Drive (Google Play Store) mobile app onto your phone, and the One Drive app (Windows Store / Microsoft Store) onto your PC.
In the One Drive app on your phone, click on the + icon at the top right of the screenshot I attached above to upload any documents from your phone.
Upload your documents/ folders and click open at the top right of the screen.
Your files will begin uploading as shown in the screenshot!
Open up the One Drive computer app on your PC.
Select the folder you want to transfer out of One Drive into the computer itself. This is because One Drive has limited space and you cannot store everything in there. Use the storage wisely!
When you select the folder, there will be a set of dropdown options to choose from. Click download, then go to the download section of your PC and transfer it to your preferred section of the computer (Documents, desktop, etc. Or you can choose to leave it in the Downloads section.)
Rachel's Truth 