20 lessons for 2020

2019 has been a pretty challenging year for me. I started it being scared and anxious about everything, and I ended it single, with new career goals and surrounded by my best friends. Here are 20 lessons (100% tested and approved) that I learned along the way!

1. People only show their best sides to you but you would be amazed by how many people share the same feelings as you

2. If you feel like you can’t be yourself around a certain group of people, then you’re hanging out with the wrong group

3. Notice people who make you feel energized and happy VS people who drain all your energy. It’ll change your life.

4. You don’t need to justify yourself when you say « no » to something

5. However, you should say yes more often to spontaneous proposals and experiences

6. Honesty is a sign of respect

7. If you don’t give your 100% to something then you’ll be less likely to get that 100% back

8. Choose flaws over qualities. Your dream job also consists in not-so-dreamy parts, and this is what you should consider when choosing your career. The same applies with friends/lovers.

9. The person you sit in front of at the library can become one of your best friends (true story for me)

10. 99% of the scenarios you imagine in your head will never happen

11. Changing starts within YOUR thoughts and how you react to them.

12. Just because you’re offended it doesn’t mean that you’re right

13. Keep a critical eye to everything you hear/see.

14. Being vulnerable is a sign of strenght and not a sign of weakness

15. You can cope with a lot more than you think

16. Your life can totally change in a year and you can be a whole different person only if you’re willing too

17. Cherish what you already have in your life, happiness lies in gratitude

18. Wanting to be perfect for others will only make you seem a boring and hypocrite person

19. The habits you adopt now will define the person you’ll be in the future

20. Be curious. Read books, listen to podcasts, travel (even in your country), and talk to new people

Ig : @anatomyandcappuccini

That’s still a lot of trees #EthicalMemes

Here is the link in case anyone wants to donate some trees!

https://teamtrees.org/

They’re only about 1.2 million away, and a couple of weeks ago they were 4 million away. There’s a good chance that with a bit of noise made about this, they could rally for that home stretch. This would be a good time to tell your family, friends, co-workers about the project, as there are many people interested in donating to charities at this time of the year. Once you choose a donation amount, you can also select that it is a gift for someone else, if you’re interested in gift ideas.

If nothing else, please help pass on the news here!

It’s dec 17 3:33 am we can still do this

super close!!

Heck yeah!!!

my college sent out a document of advice for graduate freshers from the Oxford University Counselling Service and I thought it had some really good reminders in it.

This is fantastic!

Hey guys, since my previous post on Morning Routines was very well received,  I decided to make a night version. This small infographic thingy outlines the things I do at night to prep myself for rest, as well as some other things you could try to ensure you get a good night’s sleep. Hope this helps, and don’t hesitate to drop me an ask if you have any questions!

P.S. the typefaces used are Bromello and Montserrat

The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.

I needed this so much.

@kimgoodwin | 7/19/18

you know, I think about the subtleties of this term a lot, because it’s inherently a term related to assumptions and prejudgements about your audience (namely: how familiar are they with the subject I want to talk about) and because a certain amount of best guesses are inherent to general conversation.

‘Mansplaining’ is *not* just ‘a man explained a thing to a woman’ or even ‘a man misjudged his audience.’

Mansplaining is a term that arises because men are especially likely to assume women are less informed on topics then they themselves are, especially traditionally ‘male’ topics. And as a woman it is frustrating and belittling to encounter these assumptions at high frequency.

On the other hand, people in general love to explain their topics of interest to other people.

How do balance these things in the fly?

Well. This is a actually challenge I encounter a *lot*, but in a largely non-gendered context, in academia. Because at conferences and other scientist-frequented gatherings we are *constantly* talking about stuff we are excited about that needs explaining, and we are *constantly* thrown into situations where we have to rapidly assess the other person’s level of familiarity with the subject. Academia is a whole damn world of niche specialities with unpredictable overlaps.

Do you know how embarassing it is to be talking about a paper you vaguely remember and realize later that you were talking to the world expert in that field? Because I have had that experience. More than once. And you’re left frantically trying to remember if you said anything particularly stupid or presumptive.

On the other hand, do you know how useless it is to the other person if they ask about your work and you jump in about three levels able their head and don’t even bother to lay the groundwork about why this topic is broadly relevant or interesting? That’s just bad science communication.

I think this chart nails the number one rule for approaching this problem: did you ask? are you checking in to see where comprehension is with your audience and to assess their engagement and knowledge?

One of the first things I teach students for practicing their on-the-fly ‘elevator pitches’ about their research is to build in these check ins. “I don’t know how familiar you are with ant biology…?” “Have you heard about that new stuff with gut bacteria affecting human health and behavior?” “Have you ever known anyone with Parkinson’s?”

And this holds true at *every level* of science communication: whether you’re talking to the judge that stopped by your poster and trying to affirm their familiarity with your particular subject area, whether you’re teaching a new class of students and have no idea how solid their background is on a topic and what’s going to bore them vs what’s going to lose them. Or maybe it’s your friend’s neighbor’s mom, asking what kind of science you do, and you really are blind to their history with the topic.

‘Mansplaining’ exists as gendered term because there is a *pattern* of this occurring based around gendered dynamics, but the wider phenomenon of misjudging your audience is something that *everybody* has to learn how to tackle at some point in their life.

Don’t assume! Check in! Keep checking in! It’s not a lecture, it’s a conversation, and that means interaction.

Say it with me:

You are worth so much more than a grade on a piece of paper. Your grades and academic ability does not define your value.

Honestly, this is something I say to my self before and after I take a midterm. Try it out sometimes !!

Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

I’d also like to add some more specialized resources!

Video games:

Easy game engines (virtually no coding): 

More difficult game engines: 

Mobile game development: 

Game console development: 

Note that games can also be created on more general platforms like iOS and Android apps, but the resources listed above are specialized for game development.

iOS apps:

In order to develop iOS apps, you’ll need to purchase an iOS developer program membership for $99 a year, which requires an Apple account. Here are some general resources:

iOS apps are developed in the 2 official languages of Apple: Objective-C and Swift, the latter of which is newer and generally much easier to learn.

Objective-C resources:

Swift resources:

Xcode also has SpriteKit, SceneKit, and Metal built in, all of which are incredibly useful for creating apps that require elaborate graphics, particularly games.

SpriteKit resources:

SceneKit resources:

Metal resources:

Also, in order to publish iOS apps, you’ll have to juggle certificates, app ids, and provisioning profiles. This process can be convoluted at times so here are some resources:

Android apps:

In order to develop Android apps, you’ll need to register as a developer for a one-time fee of $25. Here are some general resources:

Android apps are developed in Java and the layout is coded with XML.

Java resources:

XML resources:

For publishing (which is somewhat easier than publishing iOS apps):

3D modeling/animation:

Misc. resources:

Stack Overflow is an ask-and-answer community for programmers. It’s amazing and will save your life. Sign up and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Github offers a student pack (here) if you create an account and prove you’re a student. This gives you free access to a bunch of great programming resources for free for a certain period of time, such as Unreal Engine. Also, Github in general is a site that you can host your code on. Other users can see it, and “fork” it to make a copy of your code and modify it.

Parse is a backend service that allows you to store data in databases it hosts on its own servers. It lets you use push notifications, create users, store and retrieve data, etc. It’s compatible with iOS apps, Android apps, Windows apps, Xamarin, React, Unity, OS X, Windows, JavaScript, PHP, .net, Arduino, and Embedded C. It’s free up to a certain limit that depends on the services you use.

Cloud9, Codebox, and Squad are online IDEs that allow for real-time collaboration and support a variety of languages, so they’re useful for team projects.

And some general advice:

Like the OP said, coding isn’t just for professionals and “geeks” anymore. Anyone can learn it if you really try, and with the rapidly expanding tech industry, learning coding can really broaden your opportunities.

If any of the links are broken, or you have a question or some information/resources to add, you can contact me through the askbox or the OP through his Twitter (as mentioned in his post).

If you’re interested, try some of these out and best of luck!

Great work expanding on my humble list to include a much fuller collection of resources for learning how to code! Cheers!

reblog if you’re a STEM major and are constantly googling trig identities

slams reblog

Help

Very modern, has multiple features, (only) the private “environment” is free (max. 1GB RAM).

Excerpt from a testimonial:

After switching to StatAce, a university professor saw that students became more engaged with her introduction to R course. They like our interface and the fact that they can access StatAce from any device without installing software.

I. atmosphere

this the thing that gets me studying. I turn on my fairy lights, a lofi livestream on youtube and get me something to drink. Find your perfect atmosphere (search for study moods on tumblr).

II. starting

I start studying about 4 days before the exam,  but it depends on the subject. For math I start one week before the exam, for english two days. Be realistic & start early, srsly since I stopped studying one day before the exam, it got way easier because I only have to do a little bit every day.

III. study method

I gather my material and decide on a study method. This also depends on the subject. I recommend flashcards for memorizing, mindmaps to show relations, and summarys for subjects with a lot of info. Find one that works best for you.

IV. studying

I used to do the pomodoro method but it doesn’t quite work for me. I study for about an hour and then take a 15 minute break. For subjects I really don’t like I actually use the pomodoro method because then I won’t get too frustrated. 

V. practice

I think that’s the most important step for good grades and a lot of students just skip it (I did too). Use your old worksheets, exams from the last years, find some exercises on the internet or make some up. This prepares you very good and you’ll know how to use all the information you studied. 

VI. evening before

I started to facetime with my best friend the evenig before every exam. We talk about the subjects, ask what we didn’t understand and make each other less nervous. This helped us both a lot because we’re like “we can do this” and this took a lot of our worries. recommend 100%

stem majors as study aesthetics

chemistry: neat, monochromatic notes, late night cups of tea, staying after class to ask the professor questions

mathematics: the sound of pencils scratching on paper, perfectionism at its peak, empty library halls with filtered light

physics: the buzz of excitement before the first lecture of the semester, messy handwriting on chalkboards, the relieved exhaustion after an exam is finished

psychology: flashcards and textbooks strewn across a desk, group study sessions with great music, reading scientific journals to learn more about what’s discussed in lecture

engineering: early morning study sessions with really good coffee, whispered jokes during lecture, putting homework off until the last minute but still managing to do okay

biology: notes full of color and highlights, spending hours watching videos on  KhanAcademy but not really getting any work done, great study snacks

neuroscience: whiteboards full of terms and labelled diagrams, messy hair and tired smiles, a to-do list five miles long

astronomy: late nights with windows thrown open, daydreaming in class, doodles in the margins of textbooks

computer science: study sessions fueled by pizza and coffee, late nights with laptop screens as the only source of light, the feeling of pure joy when a program runs right

last ones right 🤦🏾‍♀️

College Note-Taking System

Having cohesive and effective notes is one of the key skills I think one should have, especially in an academic setting. When you’re receiving a ton of information each day, you want to be able to keep track of that and remember what you’ve learned. I’m constantly trying out ways to make my note-taking more effective and tailored to my needs. Here’s what my note-taking system looks like so far.

Quick note: click on the images for better quality!

Class Notes

Taking notes in class is an invaluable way to keep track of the new knowledge you’ve gained. However, depending on the mode in which the lecture material is conveyed, I take my notes differently. Here’s a summary of how I take my notes for each type of lecture, as well as some examples from the classes I’m taking now.

Slides (e.g. Macroeconomics)

Macroeconomics is a class in which you should be able to intuitively understand a lot of concepts but also remember a lot of things. Because of this, I’ve tailored my note-taking method and habits to achieve that goal.

I write my notes by hand because handwriting is more effective in committing things to memory.

As for what I actually do - and this is what I’ve done for other classes in which the professor/lecturer uses slides:

Here’s an example from a Macroeconomics lecture.

Oral Presentation (e.g. Anthropology)

During classes in which the professor just speaks and doesn’t use much visual material, I listen before I write instead of attempting to write down every single detail mentioned.

Also, I type up my notes instead of handwriting them since the exams are all open-book so I don’t really have to commit things to memory.

Here’s what I do:

Here’s an example of a Google Docs document from an Anthropology lecture.

Demonstrations and Sample Problems (e.g. Computer Science)

Classes in which the lecture is mainly going through demos and problems are kind of tricky, because you want to know and understand what the professor is doing, but you also don’t want to be writing down every single step that’s being executed. Here’s what I’ve found to be the most effective so far:

Also, these kinds of classes are usually classes in which you’d learn better when you actually do problems yourself, so I definitely learn more when I do assignments and labs than when I’m in class.

Here’s an example from a Web Programming lecture.

Here’s one from an Object Oriented Programming and Data Structures class. I often draw things to help me visualize the general points.

Rewritten Notes

My rewritten notes have definitely changed a lot since high school. Since most of my classes don’t require a lot of memorization, I organize my notes in such a way that they’d be easy to index or find information from. Here are some of the ways I do that:

Establishing a Visual Hierarchy

Having a well-defined hierarchy helps me flow through my notes really well as i read them. It helps me organize information like a mind map without actually making a mind map - I know the big topics and their subtopics and sub-subtopics and details … basically it’s easier to see how these ideas fit together.

But why don’t I just make mind-maps? See, the thing is, a lot of my notes require sequential or linear thinking, e.g. in macroeconomics it might be the sequence of events following a change in the economy, or in computer science it might be a general algorithm for solving a certain type of problem, or it might be proving or deriving a certain equation. These sorts of things just generally don’t work well with mind maps. Instead, establishing a visual hierarchy in my notes helps me organize different ideas while retaining the linear nature of the information.

Here’s what the hierarchy looks like.

Here is an example from my Web Programming class, which is a purely project-based class, so no prelims or exams. As you can see, I draw rectangles around important terminology so that I can easily find them while I’m working on a project. I also include examples from in-class activities as well as notes on syntax so I have an idea of how to implement certain things. These examples and notes are further grouped by terminology/concept.

Structuring Them for Easier Flow

My syllabi for my college courses are nowhere near as detailed as the syllabi for my high school courses - those of you who take/have taken Cambridge exams would know. In college, my syllabi are only lists of topics and not what you’re expected to know for each topic. Because of this, I have to find a way to arrange information so that I can achieve the most comprehensive and cohesive understanding of that topic, i.e. so that the flow of my notes is similar to the flow of my thinking.

For example, in my economics notebook, I like to have the details first (e.g. the separate markets: the goods market, the assets market, and the labor market) and then the big picture later (IS-LM-FE). Some people prefer the other way around - seeing the big picture and then going into the details - which I can understand and have done myself for certain topics.

Making Use of Proximity and Spacing

I very much dislike notes without good use of spacing and grouping things together. Keeping related ideas in visual proximity helps your brain (or at least mine) organize this information. It’s also a lot easier to find things and visualize your notes when they’re not just a huge chunk of text.

One thing I should probably mention is that I don’t use colored pens anymore because it just takes a lot of time to switch pens and think of a color palette. I also don’t have much use for it. In the past, I used color to help me memorize and group things in different categories, but now, I’ve found that there aren’t a whole lot of categories I need to keep track of, and when I do, I can do so with just one pen but changing the style of the text.

And that’s what my note-taking system currently looks like. It’s working well so far, but I still think there are other things I could try out that might be a better fit.

So yeah, hope this was helpful, and as always, feel free to drop an ask if you have any questions, or even if you have any suggestions or would like to share your note-taking system. Have an awesome week!

It’s called copula deletion, or zero copula. Many languages and dialects, including Ancient Greek and Russian, delete the copula (the verb to be) when the context is obvious.

So an utterance like “you a bitch” in AAVE is not an example of a misused you, but an example of a sentence that deletes the copular verb (are), which is a perfectly valid thing to do in that dialect, just as deleting an /r/ after a vowel is a perfectly valid thing to do in an upper-class British dialect.

What’s more, it’s been shown that copula deletion occurs in AAVE exactly in those contexts where copula contraction occurs in so-called “Standard American English.” That is, the basic sentence “You are great” can become “You’re great” in SAE and “You great” in AAVE, but “I know who you are” cannot become “I know who you’re” in SAE, and according to reports, neither can you get “I know who you” in AAVE.

In other words, AAVE is a set of grammatical rules just as complex and systematic as SAE, and the widespread belief that it is not is nothing more than yet another manifestation of deeply internalized racism.

This is the most intellectual drag I’ve ever read.