Guide on How To University

When you're in high school, your teachers will be very clear on one thing: if you don't have your future planned from the moment you pick your subjects at the beginning of your last year of high school, you may as well kiss your bright future goodbye. For some reason, it seems to be every school teacher's life's mission to convince you of the fact that your life's destiny will be determined for you based on the decisions you make from the age of 16 onward.

I don't know about you, but at the age of 16, I could barely decide what I wanted to eat, (I have since figured it out -- it's probably pizza) let alone what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Thankfully, I have a family member who spent 30 years of his life doing one thing and then abruptly decided to do pretty much exactly the opposite, so I never whole-heartedly believed in this whole myth. But for those who did prescribe to the belief that the choice of their high school subjects which would lead to a narrowed field of university courses to choose from which would then lead further into a career they would be stuck in for the rest of their lives these decisions must have been truly terrifying.

Me? I have made a number of choices during the course of my university life, all of which have honestly reminded me of the fact that I am terrible at making decisions. Since my life's story makes therefore for great comedy, hell, it'd be a crime of me not to share! So here, have a timeline, starting from my last three years of high school.

How Silbena ended up where she is now

Third last year of high school
Silbena decides on a hodgepodge of subjects for the last two years of high school based on previous experience, picking subjects she likes and has previously been good at. She has no clue about what she wants to do with her life.

Second last year of high school
Silbena drops legal studies because fuck that noise.

An accurate depiction of Silbena's feelings toward legal studies

Third last year of high school
Beginning of the year - Silbena is absolutely convinced that she is going to become a Creative Person when she grows up. She is debating university courses like journalism and creative writing.

I imagine this is what creativity looks like

Halfway through the year - Silbena has an epiphany and decides to study science instead.

I imagine this is what epiphanies look like

Before final exams - After looking into several universities, Silbena decides on Monash University due to the freedom they give to their students to choose their own units without a prescribed core structure of a course. She is so adamant on being accepted to this university she does not even enter other universities into her preferences.

On release of results - Silbena finds out she has done much better than anticipated and hastily changes her mind to do a double degree in science and biomedical sciences, because she feels like she would be "wasting" her good grades otherwise.

First year of university
Beginning of the year - Silbena enrols in her double degree, gleeful and excited. She also gleefully falls into the trap of spending way too much money on textbooks she basically doesn't need anyway. She never buys textbooks again.

Don't buy the textbook until your lecturer starts assigning practice problems from it, and even then wait to see whether you get inundated in mandatory assignments first

Halfway through first semester - Silbena suddenly remembers that the last time she did biology was in year 9 AND she never liked it then either. Why the hell did she choose to do biomedical sciences again?

Nope, biology didn't get any more enjoyable in the time you didn't do it

End of first semester - Silbena switches courses faster than she can switch pants and drops the hell out of biomedical sciences to study simply science instead. She gets excited because now she can actually choose some electives for second semester that she wouldn't have had time for in her double degree. She chooses philosophy, because hey, thinking is fun?

Halfway through second semester - Silbena finds out that philosophy is the worst thing on the planet and begins to suspect that she really shouldn't be allowed to make her own life choices.

End of second semester - Due to her excellent grades, Silbena receives a letter from the science faculty asking her to enrol in a course that will allow her to do honours at the end of her course. Silbena switches courses for a second time.

Second year of university

First semester - Silbena can't take any electives. She is debating on whether she should major in chemistry or in geology. She really likes environmental chemistry and the idea of combining geology and chemistry, which could be done in environmental sciences. She begins to wonder about future careers.

Second semester - Silbena is sick of drawing rocks and gives up on geology, deciding to major in chemistry instead. She is still fascinated by environmental chemistry. She is adamant that she is much better at analytical than synthetic chemistry and is likely to end up in that sort of a field.

Third year of university

First semester - Silbena finds out that environmental chemistry is the worst thing on the planet and decides to focus her energies on synthetic chemistry instead.

And in the second semester -- who knows? There is still plenty of time for me to decide that this whole education thing isn't for me at all, drop out and do knitting for a living instead. I think the moral of the story here is that I'm really great at making decisions: but it's just that when I make decisions, they usually end up being wrong.

Don't stress, pumpkins. We'll find out what we want to do in the end, and we'll just do a whole bunch of terribly boring things in the meanwhile just so we can cross those things off. 

Chemistry feelings on a graph

You may have noticed that I haven't been on this blog for a while. You can have three guesses for why, but only if all of them amount to "third year chemistry."

Ah, third year chemistry. I could write odes to you. But then again, I could stab you in the eye. I could take you on a nice picnic! But I could also poison your drink when you're not looking.

Suffice to say, I have conflicted feelings about chemistry. Since it now takes up a majority of my time and brainspace, perhaps it isn't so strange that my feelings about chemistry are largely dependent on what time of day it is. To best illustrate this progress of feeling over the course of an average day, I have helpfully constructed a graph. But before I let you see it, I'd like to give you some background so that you can best understand this graph:

1) I'm doing a research project in chemistry this semester in place of a more academic unit. It involves doing real research work under a supervisor.

2) This research project, intended to replace a single unit out of the four we do per semester, probably takes up about the same amount of time as all of the other three combined. My day is therefore generally centred around being in the lab.

3) The project I'm doing involves slow reactions that are left alone for about 3 days before I can even check whether they've worked or not.

4) Out of 10 reactions I've put on to date, I've had two successes and eight failures. Ergo, failure is common.

5) Research work is never done. Whenever you think that you're done for the day, something else will come up.

And now you're caught up. Enjoy the graph.

Tutorial: Make-up for busy people

For whatever reason (probably because tumblr), I stumbled upon some make-up tutorials today. This gave me an acute reminder of how very complicated make-up is, and how unlikely it is that I, a poor, busy, glass-wearing nerdy girl (disclaimer: nerdy girls can wear make-up. This is not a statement about stereotypes. This ia a statement about facts about me. K? K.) me will ever truly properly understand how to use make-up. To illustrate this, I decided to give a tutorial of how I use make-up.

How to be a busy science* student and wear make-up

* Or other discipline requiring an inordinate amount of work

Step 1: Wash your face. If it's before 9 am in the morning, use cold water to shock your system to alertness. If it is after 9 am, you're probably still tired, so use cold water anyway.

Step 2: Dab a little bit of skin-coloured make-up (it doesn't matter whether it's foundation, some sort of powder, blush, concealer or whatever a primer is, as long as it's the colour of your skin) onto any blemishes or discolorations on your immediate facial area. If you wear glasses, don't worry about the bruises and bags under your eyes. Most glasses cover those up just by existing.

Step 3: If you wear glasses like me and people tend to remark on your glasses more than on your eyes, you might like to use some dark-coloured eyeliner (the dry, pencil kind, because you'd just smear the wet kind all over your face this early in the morning anyway) to highlight your eyes. Hell, you might even get adventurous and use some mascara. Just try to not get it all over your eyelids, because you're going to be late to your morning class if you spend too much time trying to clean it off.

In these three steps, you will manage a tired university student look in absolutely no time at all -- which is handy, because then you can spend more time on drinking coffee in the morning!

Note: if you're a chemistry major (like moi), don't bother with nail polish. You're just going to end up spilling acetone all over yourself anyway.

The Correct Dosage of Education

"It's actually a little bit more complicated than that, but at this point you only really need to understand this much."

My beloved readers, I can't begin to express how frustrated I am with consistently having to listen to these words. This is an almost exact word-to-word quote that I could attribute to any of the at least 10 lecturers I have had in the past four semesters. Every single class, without fail, a lecturer will feel the need to both remind us that we are lowly undergraduates whose understanding of the world is severely lacking, and that their field is much more interesting and/or complicated than they lead us to believe.

There's nothing wrong with starting with the basics. In fact, there would be something severely wrong if the basics were completely ignored and more advanced things taught out of the blue. It's difficult to understand a concept you have no founding knowledge in (which is a completely different problem I may return to later). However, when every single lecturer in our undergraduate course can be heard saying this, there has to be something wrong, hasn't there?

Again, I understand that a lot of the concepts that we study could be studied in much greater detail (but if you go down that path, you'd require everyone to have PhD's in everything, which would be an interesting thing in itself). I understand that especially processes related to the biogeochemical cycle have a million different variables and are just as complicated as the almost-nonsense name would let you believe. I understand that there are plenty of things in science that are poorly understood. I still believe that when I am taught something, especially in a science course, I shouldn't have to take it on face value; I should be allowed to understand where and how and why this concept has come into being -- and I don't mean the tedious lesson on the history of this and that technique that every lecturer feels the need to include in their lectures.

I'm not saying it's not interesting. It's just that it's hardly ever examinable, and I've got too much examinable material to worry about in order to be able to fully appreciate some interesting non-examinable material.

Now, you could say that this is an avenue for independent study and that it is my responsibility as the student to go and find out more information on it. Unfortunately, this solution is a bit of a would-if-I-could, can't-so-I-won't type of affair.

You see, I complain a lot about how many assignments I have due and how much work I have and all the other complaints that you've heard all about by now. Usually it's not the assignments that gets to me -- homework isn't a foreign thing to me -- but it's the sheer volume of knowledge that I'm supposed to ingest and then digest during the course of the shortest of the short 12 weeks we call a semester. It's a bit ridiculous when you think about it: in a total of 72 weeks involving lectures, tutorials and labs, I am supposed to be eligible to graduate with a Bachelor of Science. That's 72 weeks of tertiary education. That's it.

Sometimes I don't even wonder why graduates aren't employed without significant work experience.

In that amount of time, it is impossible for both lecturers and some students (because I know there are those people out there who aren't massive nerds and are happy to get by with the smallest amount of work possible) to go into the amount of detail that they would like. I have heard this complaint from two lecturers already this semester -- that they may choose either to cover as much breadth as they possibly can by compromising the detail of some more complicated concepts, or they can sacrifice the breadth of our education for some more detail.

That's a situation I'm not particularly happy with. Sometimes I wish that our semesters were longer than just 12 weeks -- that our weeks were freer, that there were fewer assignments (or the same number spread over a larger amount of time) and more time to digest all of the information we are given.

I feel like university -- where I initially came to gladly to continue my education, since I have always loved academia -- as it currently stands, is destroying my love in science. And that, my friends, really sucks.

Sometimes I suspect that some of the world has yet to be convinced of how much of a dork I am. In such moments, I get a burning desire to reveal to everyone that I am, in fact, the dorkiest person you will ever meet. Here, and today, my friends, I present you the evidence!

You're welcome.

In seriousness, mounting tiredness and an ever-growing pile of assignments makes you do strange things.

The One Thing

During the course of this semester, one of my units has a decreased number of contact hours on the condition that we post lecture-related blog entries on the unit website during the semester. I just finished writing my first blog entry (two days into the semester. I'm a bit of an eager beaver). I looked at it for a while, shrugged, and figured I could post it here as well. Be warned: the blog entry is on the subject of science, it takes a slightly more formal tone than I usually write in, and it's aimed toward people who study science and are likely to end up being scientists at the end of their education. I would also give this specific one a "WARNING: SWEEPING GENERALISATIONS AHEAD" sticker if I had one.

Still, the sentiment at the end is warm and fuzzy. Hope you enjoy it!

The question of what I would teach the world if I could teach them just one thing about science has been plaguing me ever since the question was raised. To me, there is an obvious answer in the scientific method, which we understand to be the philosophy and the heart of science. Clearly, the scientific method is the key to understanding the practice of science, and possibly a further gateway to critical thinking. For some reason, however, this answer just didn't seem to fit the bill. No matter how long I thought about it, and no matter how many times I came to the conclusion that this was it, this had to be it, I couldn't manage to convince myself that I had the answer.

At length, I realised that this is because such a lesson is unlikely to make any sort of impact. Having gone to a high school with many art and music-centric students, my experience is this: unless a given person studies science, has at some point studied and/or enjoyed science or has some other external influence (such as a parent or sibling) which pushes them to science, there is very little general interest in science, how it works or why it is great. Were people like this given the lesson on the scientific method, I am almost certain that, while some of them may even find it interesting, they would at some length shrug it off as irrelevant. Though I firmly believe that it is important for the general population to understand and appreciate the pursuits of science, I also believe that teaching someone who does not want to be taught is only going to be a waste of time. It is frustrating for both the teacher and student.

In my experience, the reason for this disinterest is found in a perception of what science is. Those who have little or no science education tend to perceive science as formulaic, tedious and boring, studied from large, dusty tomes, far removed from the exciting, imaginative world of books, movies and art.

My answer to the conundrum is this: teach the world something about the vast creativity it takes to understand and practice science. Emphasise the lengths to which one has to stretch one’s imagination to even begin to relate processes occurring in the world around us to each other or to create laws which bind together all objects in the universe. Illustrate the magic of the moment when the experiment and theory come together perfectly. Perhaps this lesson would require some elaboration on the history of science, and on those remarkable people who have literally dreamt up all the theories (or foundations thereof) that now live in those large, dusty tomes.

Perhaps if we can successfully stimulate the imagination of those who write science off as formulaic or boring, they could be inspired to learn more about science and its methods by themselves. There is nothing that I would like more than to share the love, passion and enjoyment I know so many scientists have for their fields with every person in the world, so that they, too, might actually care about it when someone next talks to them about the scientific method.

Those stickers I mentioned at the start are totally the greatest idea ever. I'd stick them on everything for shits and giggles. Who knows how to make stickers?

Declaration of busyness

It iiiiis day 3 of NaNoWriMo (remember, that crazy thing where we sit down for an entire month to bang out 50,000 words in the attempt to finish the first draft of a novel), and I am nearing a mental breakdown.

Not because of NaNo. NaNo is going surprisingly well, considering I'm still studying for exams. After two days, I already sat on a neat wordcount of 5,781. While I don't have a detailed outline and I only have a sheet with objectives for chapters only about until halfway through chapter 3, I still feel relatively confident that I can keep the novel going.

That is, if I actually have time for it. I have a statistics exam tomorrow, for which I don't feel completely prepared, but tough luck, because I have work on from 5:30-9:45 tonight. So there goes a good four hours of my possible study or writing time. I have another exam on next Wednesday for which I have BARELY started studying -- which will also be an effort, since I'm out for at least half of tomorrow because of this first exam, half of Saturday because of another shift at work (seriously, they wouldn't give me more than one shift a week when I wanted them, and now when I don't want them, I start getting them? Betcha when I'm on my holidays, I'll be back to just one), and all of Sunday because of this incredibly nerdy thing I have yet to tell you about. Then, I only have Monday and Tuesday to revise and clarify concepts in 31 lectures. That, and somehow manage to squeeze sleeping, eating, writing and staying sane in there.

Needless to say, I'll probably remain off this blog probably at least until Wednesday the ninth, the day of my third exam. After that, we shall see -- I might be just as busy with trying to catch up with my novel, having fallen behind in the next few days, and then revising for my Chemistry exam, since I've done little work with revising chem during semester to begin with.

And after my Chemistry exam (on the 16th)? We'll see if I'm still alive.

Wish me luck...


p.s. I apologise for the jerky writing style of this post. I may have overworked myself a little yesterday, leaving my brain muddled and confused today.

Random Research: Caffeine

Today was my first second (I can even procrastinate finishing blogposts!) day of study for exams. It was the first second of many, many days, leading up to the 16th of November, the day of my last exam. Between now and then, I will hardly have a day's rest, not only because of exams and cramming (as outlined a few posts previously), but also because November is already knocking on my door, and my NaNoWriMo novel is SO not ready to be written yet! I mean, I don't even have character names yet! I now have names for my most important characters, but the whole project is still more of a plothole than anything.

You guys know what this means, right? It means that, in order to keep my head above the water, I'm going to need LOTS AND LOTS OF CAFFEINE. Everyone who's ever done NaNoWriMo (or gone to university in general, I'm guessing) is very, very familiar with this solution. That, and sugar, but I'd like to focus on caffeine for now. And because for some reason, I seem to get the best ideas when I'm supposed to be doing something else, like studying for my philosophy exam -- actually, specifically when studying for my philosophy exam, because I'd rather be doing about a gazillion things than studying for it -- I decided that it was finally time to satisfy my curiosity about caffeine. And then, figuring that you guys are probably either also nerds or geeks and/or doing NaNo and/or going to university, I thought I'd share.

 Caffeine, or, between friends, 3,7-dihydro-1,3,4-trimethyl-1Hpurine-2,6-dione, is a psychoactive drug, meaning that it mainly affects your central nervous system and through that, your brain, altering your behaviour and state of mind. Apart from that ridiculously long IUPAC name, doesn't sound like a whole lot of new information, does it? The interesting bit of information follows: apparently, caffeine is able to do this to our brains, because it is very similar to a chemical that is already present in our bodies: adenosine.

Adenosine accumulates in your brain after long periods of concentration or alertness, and that is interpreted in our brain as a signal to rest or sleep in order to give your poor, hard-worked neurons some time to relax. But no, that really important thing is on tomorrow, you can't afford to lose any time on pesky rest right now! So you go and make yourself a biiiiig cup of coffee, the caffeine molecules swimming around in your cup, and, before long, in your brain, blocking the receptors that usually detect adenosine, keeping you alert and focused for juuust a little bit longer.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, doesn't it? Fortunately, too, caffeine doesn't appear to have that many adverse side-effects: though it is claimed to be a diuretic, thereby leading to dehydration, the generally accepted view is that this is not true, and that any such effect caused by caffeine is similar to that of water. Previously, it had also been thought to increase blood pressure, but recent studies have shown no such connection. There's a whole list of risks and benefits of caffeine listed on wikipedia, if you're interested -- I only glanced at the list, but I didn't see anything there that was blatantly contradicted by the rest of my research; still, take it with a grain of salt. I guess the fact that it appears relatively harmless makes sense: I wouldn't think that anything ultimately harmful to humans could be used as widely as caffeine is, what with the knowledge we have of biochemistry today.

So, the only thing you really have to worry about in your reckless coffee consumption is addiction. Like any other drug, caffeine is addictive, and, when used extensively will eventually cause withdrawal symptoms like headaches, muscle pain, irritation, and so on and so forth. One site I visited also claimed that caffeine consumption can turn into a vicious cycle: though its effects diminish over time, as with alcohol, there will be a measure left in your body, and that might disrupt your deep sleep pattern, leading to restless sleep, which, then, leads to more excessive caffeine intake.

That's all I've got for now, folks! Hope none of you get caught in the vicious caffeine cycle in the vicious month that is called November (I know I'm about six days off the start of November, but it's appropriate, ok?); and if you are, well, at least it's delicious, delicious coffee, right?

Sources:
http://www.overcaffeinated.org/
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcast/CIIEcompounds/transcripts/caffeine.asp?playpodcastlinkuri=%2Fchemistryworld%2Fpodcast%2FCIIEcompound.asp%3Fcompound%3DCaffeine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine
I also mercilessly stole the pictures off google images. If you own any of these images and would like them removed, please notify me in a comment, and I will take them down.

The story of how I fail a lot

Hark, listen! For I shall tell you a story of how I really suck at making decisions and how that lead me to a decision that I will not, fingers crossed, regret.

At my university, they should offer a course (or unit, as we say in Australia *aussiepride!*) about picking courses, and then make it compulsory for me to take it. I've been at my uni for a whole two semesters now, and one thing I've learnt is that I really, really suck at picking units.

You see, at the end of last year, when I finished high school, I discovered that I had done very, very well on my exams and my grades were very, very good. I also knew that the course I had planned to apply for didn't actually require grades quite that magnificent. So, in a fit of pride, I decided that I should put those grades to good use and apply for a double degree instead. The specific double degree I finally decided on was a science/biomedical sciences degree. The smartest of you will probably notice how "biomedical sciences" has the phrase "bio" in it, which is, in all likelihood, referring to biology. Even though I had it on paper that I am really smart (or just a massive nerd), this fact somehow failed to register with me. See, I knew that I hated biology. I knew this from the get-go. And still, I thought it was a good idea to devote half of my degree to it.

Extremely surprisingly, I hated both (one semester consists of four units at my university) of my biomed units, and at the end of semester one, I proceeded to transfer to the science degree that I wanted to apply for in the first place.

Then it came time to pick units for semester 2. I was extremely excited, because since I was now doing a single degree, I had room for electives -- I wouldn't only have to confine myself to core units as double degree students are forced to, but I could actually do something fun as well! Further, I could do a unit outside my own faculty; I could pick some really interesting arts unit to balance with my three science units! I perused the multitude of units they offered in the arts faculty, and finally settled on a philosophy unit.

Considering the tone of this post, can you guess what the problem was here? Yep, I actually really hate philosophy. Why? Because I don't usually even think in a coherent manner -- I'm much more a touchy-feely type person than an evaluative, rational person in my life philosophies. As with biology, I knew this beforehand; for some reason, the unit description just got to me and I thought that I would somehow magically begin liking it.

For next year, then, I've finally given up the notion that I'm any good at picking units. Instead of failing at picking electives, I'm going to focus all my energy and attention on something I know I love: I've decided that I'm going to do a double major (72 points instead of 48 points; each unit is 6 points, don't even know why) in chemistry. I know that it's going to kill me a little, but if last year (i.e. my last year at high school) is any indication of anything, it's indication of the fact that I'm not afraid of doing work.

That, and I'm a huge nerd, and I take pride in doing lots of nerdy things.

Wish me luck!


EDIT 23/10 18:45: Yeah, I only now realised how badly I had screwed that title up. I guess you could've interpreted that as some sort of a pun as to how badly I fail? Alas, no, it was an actual (to borrow Neil Gaiman's wonderful expression) #silbenawebfail. Derp.

Mission: Cramming

I think they (ambiguous, perhaps referring to the government or medical authority or anyone who is ever in contact with young people of the right status and age) should announce a valid medical condition called University Syndrome. The symptoms of this terrible illness include sleeplessness, excessive caffeine consumption, general bleariness, bloodshot eyes, gradual lightening of skin pigment (provided this is applicable), tension headaches due to soreness in the back, shoulders and neck, an apparent inability to focus and so on and so forth. It also includes social behaviour such as only coming out during the night (also applicable for vampires, for which a myriad of the other also apply; take care to watch for fangs), only being able to talk about studying or the things you were doing while you were supposed to be studying, a habit of locking oneself into a room with a pile of books, and a diet steadily declining in healthiness, though it never was very good to begin with.

The time has come for the end of semester, and shortly, the exam period will commence. Before that, I'll still somehow have to manage to cram a semester's worth of study into a week -- for each of my units respectively (in that, I'm lucky: some people have to cram ALL their units into one week). In all fairness, I don't exactly hate doing it -- I'm nerdy enough and like what I'm learning enough to like having the closure of running through everything I've learnt at the end of semester and bringing it all together to form one big picture. At the same time, I'd much rather be playing videogames, watching movies and tv-series, continuing on my Epic Reading Quest and planning my novel.

Yes, the new novel that I'm planning for NaNoWriMo this year. I mentioned it a few posts or so back, and the progress I've had on it since I mentioned it has been exactly zero. Well, technically, if you count the amount of brainstorming I've done on public transport to and from university (excluding the times I've been reading The Wise Man's Fear) and the amount of ideas I've stored at the back of my brain, the progress I've made on it on a scale of a hundred is maybe one. I had really been hoping to get a full outline down for this one before beginning it, but it doesn't appear likely that I'll be able to do it. Still, I'm not too worried -- I'm excited about my idea, and that means more than any detailed outlines I could ever produce. I'll tell you more about my novel at a slightly later date, when I'm not completely bleary and confused by study, and actually have something more tangible than just the bare bones of it down. My characters have personalities, but not even names, yet!

Here concludes my shabby, brief update on what I've been doing in the past week or so. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but if you follow me on Goodreads (I think there's a link somewhere on the sidelines), you'll know I finished The Name of the Wind some time ago. I'm now rapidly pawing my way through The Wise Man's Fear -- in fact, it's so damn addictive it is actually one of the principle reasons I haven't been sleeping well at all for the past few weeks. Here's to hoping that I finish it soon so that I can get a good night's sleep for once. Also, when I do finish it, I plan on posting a little review-type thing on the two parts of the trilogy that have currently been published, so you've got that to look forward to, alongside the details about my novel. There are also some other marvelously geeky plans I have for this summer, but they might fall through, so I'm not going to talk about them before I'm 100% sure it's going to happen; but if it does, I promise that the first thing I do is to come online and talk about all of that.

So, providing that my books don't somehow swallow me whole (a real, tangible threat when you've got this many books lying around), you should look forward to hearing of me very, very soon!