AbsenceofTitle

Severe case of wanderlust.
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So its almost the end of the second week of uni, and can I just say, that time absolutely flies?? Its already October!! Just two months til 2010 is over! It seems like just yesterday my sister and I were freezing, hungry and wet waiting for the ball to fall in New York Times Square! Being back at uni is awesome. I feel like I’ve been sleeping the last two years- I’m keeping myself as busy as possible by volunteering for stuff and doing more things to keep me fulfilled. Its taken me this long to realise that if you wanted to, you could actually meet sooooo many people at uni, simply by joining a bajillion societies! I dedicated sooo much of my 2nd year to EMSA that its nice to now have more of a variety, both in terms of responsibilities and things to do. I’m prioritising quality over quantity, but its cool that I can still make new friends, even in 3rd year! My closest friends would know that I was actually really wanting to study elsewhere this year- maybe what I needed wasn’t a change of scene, but rather a change of mindset. So I’ve been a Science student over the last two weeks and I must say that doing a BMedSci is SOOO different from medicine. Seriously, how do you non-medics do it?! I feel like I’ve had to use actual brain power for the first time in two years. In medicine its pretty much, here, this is what you have to know, memorise it and regurgitate, whereas the Honours Physiology programme I’m doing now has so much more critical thinking and analysing involved. Its super cool that my lecturers and the research papers I’m studying are at the forefront of new technology - that literally, there’s no recommended textbook coz what I’m learning would take maybe another 10 years to make it into a textbook! Everything is novel and experimental. Here’s something very interesting I’ve learnt in my elective “Mechanisms of Developmental Neural Plasticity” (well, I dunno, I find it interesting anyway..). If you cover up one eye with an eyepatch, or suture your eyelids together during a certain timespan during childhood called a “critical period”, when the eyepatch/sutures are removed after this critical period is over, the deprived eye will never recover eyesight ever again, even though there’s nothing physiologically wrong with the eye. Sounds impossible, right? Its because the cells in the brain, having not received input from the deprived eye during that important time, decide to stop working. However if you were to repeat this experiment with an adult, you could cover that eye for as long as you want and your vision would be fine once the experiment is over! This is plasticity - a developing brain is plastic, that is, moldable and capable of change, but not an adult’s - which is to say, that once you’re an adult, you will nevernever be able to grow any new neurons. The ones you already have can create more synapses (connections) with other neurons by doing things like Sudoku, learning a new language, memorising stuff, but if you were to do something stupid enough to kill your neurons, thats just too bad for you! My classes are quite challenging but very interesting! My lectures never have more than 25 people in a room, which is such a nice change from medicine where you have over 200 students in a lecture theater. I used to not bother going most of the time coz lectures are soo not compatible with the way I study, but I haven’t missed a single class so far which I am very proud of! And since the class is so small my lecturers actually know my name and are approachable enough for me to ask them questions! Am so far very happy with my decision to intercalate! =) Its not easy but I can already see that I will gain a lot out of it! So to end this entry, can I just say how much I love my flatmates? They are such core reasons for why I’m happy here. I love how sometimes I walk a little faster on my street just so I can get into my flat that much quicker - they are such genuinely nice people so our flat is so drama-free. It feels like KTJ whereby my bestfriends live just next door. If we could kill all the mice in our flat (yeah there are mice all over Edinburgh. I know, fkking gross - although I saw one yesterday and it was actually damn cute!) then our flat would be perfect! Also I like how even though all of us are Asian, I’m the only one in the flat who grew up where I came from, so they have such international mindsets. And they make me laugh so much! Love them to bits =)So its almost the end of the second week of uni, and can I just say, that time absolutely flies?? Its already October!! Just two months til 2010 is over! It seems like just yesterday my sister and I were freezing, hungry and wet waiting for the ball to fall in New York Times Square! Being back at uni is awesome. I feel like I’ve been sleeping the last two years- I’m keeping myself as busy as possible by volunteering for stuff and doing more things to keep me fulfilled. Its taken me this long to realise that if you wanted to, you could actually meet sooooo many people at uni, simply by joining a bajillion societies! I dedicated sooo much of my 2nd year to EMSA that its nice to now have more of a variety, both in terms of responsibilities and things to do. I’m prioritising quality over quantity, but its cool that I can still make new friends, even in 3rd year! My closest friends would know that I was actually really wanting to study elsewhere this year- maybe what I needed wasn’t a change of scene, but rather a change of mindset. So I’ve been a Science student over the last two weeks and I must say that doing a BMedSci is SOOO different from medicine. Seriously, how do you non-medics do it?! I feel like I’ve had to use actual brain power for the first time in two years. In medicine its pretty much, here, this is what you have to know, memorise it and regurgitate, whereas the Honours Physiology programme I’m doing now has so much more critical thinking and analysing involved. Its super cool that my lecturers and the research papers I’m studying are at the forefront of new technology - that literally, there’s no recommended textbook coz what I’m learning would take maybe another 10 years to make it into a textbook! Everything is novel and experimental. Here’s something very interesting I’ve learnt in my elective “Mechanisms of Developmental Neural Plasticity” (well, I dunno, I find it interesting anyway..). If you cover up one eye with an eyepatch, or suture your eyelids together during a certain timespan during childhood called a “critical period”, when the eyepatch/sutures are removed after this critical period is over, the deprived eye will never recover eyesight ever again, even though there’s nothing physiologically wrong with the eye. Sounds impossible, right? Its because the cells in the brain, having not received input from the deprived eye during that important time, decide to stop working. However if you were to repeat this experiment with an adult, you could cover that eye for as long as you want and your vision would be fine once the experiment is over! This is plasticity - a developing brain is plastic, that is, moldable and capable of change, but not an adult’s - which is to say, that once you’re an adult, you will nevernever be able to grow any new neurons. The ones you already have can create more synapses (connections) with other neurons by doing things like Sudoku, learning a new language, memorising stuff, but if you were to do something stupid enough to kill your neurons, thats just too bad for you! My classes are quite challenging but very interesting! My lectures never have more than 25 people in a room, which is such a nice change from medicine where you have over 200 students in a lecture theater. I used to not bother going most of the time coz lectures are soo not compatible with the way I study, but I haven’t missed a single class so far which I am very proud of! And since the class is so small my lecturers actually know my name and are approachable enough for me to ask them questions! Am so far very happy with my decision to intercalate! =) Its not easy but I can already see that I will gain a lot out of it! So to end this entry, can I just say how much I love my flatmates? They are such core reasons for why I’m happy here. I love how sometimes I walk a little faster on my street just so I can get into my flat that much quicker - they are such genuinely nice people so our flat is so drama-free. It feels like KTJ whereby my bestfriends live just next door. If we could kill all the mice in our flat (yeah there are mice all over Edinburgh. I know, fkking gross - although I saw one yesterday and it was actually damn cute!) then our flat would be perfect! Also I like how even though all of us are Asian, I’m the only one in the flat who grew up where I came from, so they have such international mindsets. And they make me laugh so much! Love them to bits =)

So its almost the end of the second week of uni, and can I just say, that time absolutely flies?? Its already October!! Just two months til 2010 is over! It seems like just yesterday my sister and I were freezing, hungry and wet waiting for the ball to fall in New York Times Square!

Being back at uni is awesome. I feel like I’ve been sleeping the last two years- I’m keeping myself as busy as possible by volunteering for stuff and doing more things to keep me fulfilled. Its taken me this long to realise that if you wanted to, you could actually meet sooooo many people at uni, simply by joining a bajillion societies! I dedicated sooo much of my 2nd year to EMSA that its nice to now have more of a variety, both in terms of responsibilities and things to do. I’m prioritising quality over quantity, but its cool that I can still make new friends, even in 3rd year! My closest friends would know that I was actually really wanting to study elsewhere this year- maybe what I needed wasn’t a change of scene, but rather a change of mindset.

So I’ve been a Science student over the last two weeks and I must say that doing a BMedSci is SOOO different from medicine. Seriously, how do you non-medics do it?! I feel like I’ve had to use actual brain power for the first time in two years. In medicine its pretty much, here, this is what you have to know, memorise it and regurgitate, whereas the Honours Physiology programme I’m doing now has so much more critical thinking and analysing involved. Its super cool that my lecturers and the research papers I’m studying are at the forefront of new technology - that literally, there’s no recommended textbook coz what I’m learning would take maybe another 10 years to make it into a textbook! Everything is novel and experimental.

Here’s something very interesting I’ve learnt in my elective “Mechanisms of Developmental Neural Plasticity” (well, I dunno, I find it interesting anyway..). If you cover up one eye with an eyepatch, or suture your eyelids together during a certain timespan during childhood called a “critical period”, when the eyepatch/sutures are removed after this critical period is over, the deprived eye will never recover eyesight ever again, even though there’s nothing physiologically wrong with the eye. Sounds impossible, right? Its because the cells in the brain, having not received input from the deprived eye during that important time, decide to stop working. However if you were to repeat this experiment with an adult, you could cover that eye for as long as you want and your vision would be fine once the experiment is over! This is plasticity - a developing brain is plastic, that is, moldable and capable of change, but not an adult’s - which is to say, that once you’re an adult, you will nevernever be able to grow any new neurons. The ones you already have can create more synapses (connections) with other neurons by doing things like Sudoku, learning a new language, memorising stuff, but if you were to do something stupid enough to kill your neurons, thats just too bad for you!

My classes are quite challenging but very interesting! My lectures never have more than 25 people in a room, which is such a nice change from medicine where you have over 200 students in a lecture theater. I used to not bother going most of the time coz lectures are soo not compatible with the way I study, but I haven’t missed a single class so far which I am very proud of! And since the class is so small my lecturers actually know my name and are approachable enough for me to ask them questions! Am so far very happy with my decision to intercalate! =) Its not easy but I can already see that I will gain a lot out of it!

So to end this entry, can I just say how much I love my flatmates? They are such core reasons for why I’m happy here. I love how sometimes I walk a little faster on my street just so I can get into my flat that much quicker - they are such genuinely nice people so our flat is so drama-free. It feels like KTJ whereby my bestfriends live just next door. If we could kill all the mice in our flat (yeah there are mice all over Edinburgh. I know, fkking gross - although I saw one yesterday and it was actually damn cute!) then our flat would be perfect! Also I like how even though all of us are Asian, I’m the only one in the flat who grew up where I came from, so they have such international mindsets. And they make me laugh so much! Love them to bits =)