a new 30 before 30

Getting into medschool was a game and life changer which meant writing a new '30 before 30' list was well overdue. I kept some from my old list but also incorporated new items too. Some goals are easier than others and some are pretty huge and may not be achieved until I'm after 30 but a girl can dream ('buy a house' is very ambitious!).

Here is the old list:

I'm still tweaking the list - the aim is to add something to it once something else gets checked off. When I was younger, I always thought that I would have my life sorted by the age of 25 and as that is only eight months away, this list shows that couldn't be further from the truth!

Have you written a '30 before 30' list? If so, link me up - would love to see yours :)

term one's 'rough' lecture notes

Keeping my notes as neat as possible is something that I have a slight obsessive compulsive about but in lectures, writing things down as quickly as possible is more important than ensuring that the page is super neat. If you compare my lecture notes with my group work ones, there is a visible difference. I use cursive and join up my handwriting when scrawling in lectures and things are also all over the place with arrows everywhere and little illustrations too.

Multicoloured pens are perfect for lectures as it allows me to underline things of note or things that may be important. They also allow me to scribble and decorate my paper when I'm bored as you can see below. 

Aside from taking notes in lectures, I also do some self-study on campus that don't need to be written up in a neater way so I choose to write in cursive that is semi-neat and semi-messy. The most important thing there is to keep the page layout as neat as possible as I may want to refer back to the page at a later date. The sort of notes that these would include are things that we have had no official teaching on but things that are deemed important to still know about.

And what if I needed notes that were neater that would be used for revision and were part of the syllabus? Well, this is the end result:

Hope you've enjoyed this look at my rougher notes - most of my notes are actually pretty neat as the most untidy ones are ones taken in lectures as you can see above!

my week #149

My week got off to an amazing start where I went to see George Ezra at Brixton Electric. It was a show as part of the Brits Week where other artists were also featured with George Ezra as the headline act. If you've never heard of him, definitely seek his songs out on Youtube; but I have to let you know that he sounds much, much better live.

Thursday marked the beginning of the year of the sheep - happy chinese new year to you all and I hope you all have a prosperous year with good health and advancement in your careers and/or studies :) I spent it with my family and friends which is always the best way.

How has your week been?

term one's lecture notes turned into revision notes

Firstly, happy Chinese new year to you all! I hope you all have an amazing year of good health and see an advancement in your careers and study.

Now, onto the blog post itself. Term one had a few lectures that were ridiculous. Ridiculous in the sense that they had an extraordinary amount of content in for a one hour lecture and were almost as deep as the sea when it came to how much we were expected to know about a relatively small subject.

To try and combat any feeling of fear ('OMG how am I going to know all this by exams!?'), I decided to write out these lecture notes onto an A4 piece of paper each. Sometimes, I would fail and I would need two sheets (I blame the lecturer more than myself for that - just look how small my handwriting is!) but it meant that I had everything on a page or two, rather than on a lecture handout that had six slides to each page and still managed to span ten sides of A4.

Whilst writing out the lecture notes, I try and add in some colour (hello Zebra Mildliners, Muji gel pens and Pilot Juice gels!) whilst also keeping it as minimalistic as possible. Headers were underlined with the thin nib of the Zebra Mildliners and sub-headings were written or underlined in coloured gel ink.

Doing this ensures that the content I have to learn doesn't look so daunting - I lose interest quickly when flicking through pages and pages of lecture slides that aren't handwritten so this ensures that my eyes stay on the page and actually take things in. Usually, I end up making flashcards with these notes but only on the content that I am struggling to take in rather than everything on the page. I also transfer the more difficult bits onto a post-it note as that is another way to break down the material further.