12.4.16 // This Afternoon When I Got Home From A Very Long Day Of Studying At The Library.. 😓

This has been a thing for a little while, but it certainly bears repeating! If you can get the certification (that’s definitely the trick here), it can work for some private loans too.

Student Loan Forgiveness

An email I got this morning from the government regarding my student loans:

We recalculated your monthly payment for your Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan. We used the income documentation […] to determine your monthly payment of $334.66 [….] If you do not recertify or you no longer have a partial financial hardship (PFH), your payment amount will be $641.77.

The power of Income-Based Repayment plans for student loans: I am literally paying half what my monthly payment would be if I didn’t have “income based” forbearance.

The downside of course is that it would take me well over twice the length of time to pay off my loans (given the payment size plus interest), but I am enrolled in Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which means if I am employed with a not-for-profit for another four years, to make ten years total, the balance of my loans, roughly $30K, will be forgiven.

Furthermore, I believe (qualifier: this may no longer be true, I haven’t checked recently) if you are enrolled in IBR and paying based on income, after 25 years your loans will be forgiven regardless of where you work. If you are unemployed, IBR can reduce your loan payments to zero even once you’ve used up your grace period. If you are long-term unemployed, that means in 25 years you will no longer carry student loan debt. 

It’s 25 years of payments instead of 10, but it’s better than no help at all.

If you are in a low-earning job (I make just over $50K per year which in Chicago does not go far), IBR can help you keep your head above water and build savings by not charging you through the nose for your loan repayments. IBR is making it possible for me to afford to buy a home.

If you are employed with a charity, public school, private not-for-profit school, government agency, or other 501( c)(3) organization, you also qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which means after ten years of payments all of your qualifying loans will be forgiven.

A few years ago I wrote up how to apply for IBR and PSLF here. I just went through and updated all the links; it should be a good primer on the kinds of loans and jobs that the setup involves.

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I’m never over the fact that Juliet, though sunshiney, loving and in many ways naive, is actually a ridiculously morbid and very calculating person.  I love her for it, honestly, and I hate when people cut those lines or play it as though she isn’t these things.

Like, my love for Juliet Capulet knows no bounds as it is–she’s defiant, she’s passionate, she’s nonviolent, she’s loving, and basically  the coolest.  But I feel like the fact that she’s kind of a manipulative genius at times, and a somewhat creepy Gothic romantic at  others is so often overlooked, and I can’t imagine why, because that’s great!

I mean, it’s clear how intelligent she is, and how easily she manages to say what her parents want to hear, without even once letting on what she’s really saying, as the audience knows, most notable in Act III, Scene VL

Indeed, I never shall be satisfied With Romeo, till I behold him—dead— Is my poor heart for a kinsman vexed.

Where she basically knows how to simultaneously say that she’s grieving both for the loss of Tybalt and Romeo, while letting her mother hear that she wants Romeo dead, and then later in the same scene:

I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam ,I will not marry yet. And when I do, I swear It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!

Where she manages to basically throw it all out on the table–she’d rather marry Romeo than Paris–and still words it just so they have no idea.  This is an extremely subtle and deft crafting of word and communication and how people hear things.  The girl is basically a genius and could probably have made a terrifyingly good con artist if she wanted.

But then I also love the fact that lots of her other lines are oddly morbid, and that she clearly loves and enjoys darker things, and isn’t quite the wilting, delicate flower people seem to portray her as.  I mean, one need mostly just look at her speech in Act III, Scene II, which I’ll do here, and then it becomes a wonder no one modernizes R&J and makes her an adorable Gothic princess, in a way. 

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner  As Phaethon would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen. 

This part isn’t terribly dark, but it’s got the feeling of a battle  cry, in a way, invoking horses of the gods to go away, commanding the sun to set.  It’s intense stuff.

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match,  Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:

To me, at least, there’s something witchy about this: it reminds me, in a way, of Lady Macbeth’s “Come, thick night,” speech, where she’s powerful, literally calling evil spirits to do her bidding and change the course of what’s to be done.  Obviously, Juliet isn’t a witch and no spirits come to her aid, but the thought is there, as is her love for darkness, her disdain for light, her romanticization of the night and its cover and the color black.  It makes me want to picture a modern Juliet painting spider-webs on her fingernails and watching the starts for hours in the dark, and listening to The Cure.  

Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;  For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back. 

Again, this is something she very clearly loves and thinks is gorgeous, and it’s morbid and dark and rich.  And yet she’s so constantly written off as this silly little girl, foolish and flowery in the way people read her or perform her.

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, 

Honestly, just to drive the point home, she’s thinking about her lover’s death making him scatter into the stars and literally becoming part of the night.  She wants to be Night’s lover, in an indirect kind of ways, and the fact that she twines darkness with Romeo in this image, indicates that she associates love and things she adores with darkness.  It’s certainly a love for the dark that I’d put into a Gothic Heroine of later literature.

And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.

And finally, she concludes with calling the sun “garish,” which, if anything, makes me think of a line in a song from Phantom of the Opera–”Turn your face away/ from the Garish light of day”–which also associates romance with darkness, and a contempt for light.  But this isn’t meant to make her bad or wrong, simply private and rich and dark.

So basically, this all boils down to two things:  One is that Juliet Capulet should not be written off as stupid because she is literally too clever for anyone else.  The other is that I don’t get why people portray her wearing all white, or bright colors so often in modern adaptations, because there’s literally text-based justification for goth!Juliet if you wanted.

TL;DR Juliet Capulet is my cunning Goth Daughter who I love to hell and back and would kill someone for and I hate that people do not like her or put a lot of thought into her.  Also, if you’re ever thinking on it, consider goth!Juliet who loves spooky things and sneaking out at night. It could go very well with pastel!Romeo.

9th May, 2016 Almost gave up on matrices, but today’s lecture on determinants really gave me hope again ☺️💪🏻👓 Had the most unproductive weekend since the start of semester, but today has been really productive, so maybe I just needed a reboot 😅👍🏻📖✍🏻 Hope your Monday has been a great start to the week as well~

Does Zapping Your Brain Increase Performance?

Here is a picture of the nine-dot problem. The task seems simple enough: connect all nine dots with four straight lines, but, do so without lifting the pen from the paper or retracing any line. If you don’t already know the solution, give it a try – although your chances of figuring it out within a few minutes hover around 0 percent. In fact, even if I were to give you a hint like “think outside of the box,” you are unlikely to crack this deceptively (and annoyingly!) simple puzzle.

The Nine Dot problem: connect the dots by making four lines, without lifting your pencil from the paper

And yet, if we were to pass a weak electric current through your brain (specifically your anterior temporal lobe, which sits somewhere between the top of your ear and temple), your chances of solving it may increase substantially. That, at least, was the finding from a study where 40 percent of people who couldn’t initially solve this problem managed to crack it after 10 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) – a technique for delivering a painlessly weak electric current to the brain through electrodes on the scalp.

How to explain this?

It is an instance of the alleged power of tDCS and similar neurostimulation techniques. These are increasingly touted as methods that can “overclock” the brain in order to boost cognition, improve our moods, make us stronger, and even alter our moral dispositions. The claims are not completely unfounded: there is evidence that some people become slightly better at holding and manipulating information in their minds after a bout of tDCS. It also appears to reduce some people’s likelihood of formulating false memories, and seems to have a lasting improvement on some people’s ability to work with numbers. It can even appear to boost creativity, enhancing the ability of some to make abstract connections between words to come up with creative analogies. But it goes further, with some evidence that it can help people control their urges as well improve their mood. And beyond these psychological effects, tDCS of the part of the brain responsible for movement seems to improve muscular endurance and reduce fatigue.

It’s an impressive arsenal of findings, and it raises the obvious question: should we all start zapping away at our brains? That certainly seems to be the conclusion reached by the growing DIY community experimenting with home-made tDCS headsets.

But, while the list of supportive studies is far longer than those linked to here, the overall state of the evidence nevertheless continues to occupy that frustrating scientific limbo of being ultimately ambiguous – especially when we take into account all those comparatively boring, non-headline grabbing studies that found no significant effect from tDCS. In fact, a meta-analysis of tDCS studies – one of those laborious studies that study the findings of other studies – found the technique had no effect at all on a wide range of cognitive abilities. Yet that review in turn has been criticized as being too conservative and potentially biased in its own analysis.

More to the point, few of these studies have yet to be replicated, and most of them rely on a handful of unrepresentative people (US undergrads) who are asked to undertake the kind of lab-controlled tasks that usually share a questionable (at best) relationship with real world activities. And as for the long-term effects of tDCS use, or even how it affects brain function exactly? It’s not clear.

Yet none of this haziness has deterred start-ups from developing a slew of commercial tDCS headsets targeting home-users. Primary among those is Foc.us, which started off with a headset that allegedly enhances gaming ability before expanding to ones that improve learning speed as well as athletic endurance. There’s also Thync, a mood-enhancing headset that’s been described as a “digital drug” that can help users “energize or relax without drinks or pills.” While not quite based on tDCS, it uses pulses of electricity to target cranial nerves just under the skin to supposedly induce various moods.

Another such start-up, Halo Neuroscience, recently introduced its own headset, which stimulates motor neurons in a way that supposedly accelerates the strength gains and skill acquisition of athletes.

The firm reports on its own unpublished “preliminary results” with elite Olympic ski jumpers showing a 31 percent improvement in their propulsion force, with significantly less wobble when airborne. Even if a far more modest result than 31 percent turned out to be true, these sorts of findings could mean that tDCS is set to become a significant performance enhancer in the sporting world. Will its use in competitive settings be considered cheating?

In academic contexts, some universities are already trying to curb the off-label use of prescription drugs to enhance academic performance, with Duke University explicitly considering such use as “cheating.” Similarly, the Electronic Sports League, which holds massive gaming tournaments with million dollar prize pools, has started randomly testing players for so-called “smart drugs” that may give e-athletes an edge over their non-doping opponents.

Would using Foc.us’s GoFlow to “learn faster” be considered a similar instance of academic dishonesty by Duke University? Or what about using Foc.us’s gaming headset in the context of shooting down virtual enemies? If these devices give any sort of a boost, it’s not clear why their use should be considered any different from drugs like Adderall or Ritalin, at least in regards to cheating.

In non-virtual sport, the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) prohibits substances and methods when they satisfy any two of these three criteria: 1. they confer a performance enhancement; 2. they pose an actual or potential risk for athletes; and 3. they violate the “spirit of sport.”

If the preliminary findings from Halo Neuroscience on ski jumping are even remotely valid, the first criterion would certainly be met. On the other hand, it’s not yet clear if tDCS poses a noteworthy potential risk for athletes – though any such risk would almost certainly be smaller than the one involved in soaring over 100 meters through the air, as in the case of ski jumping. But does it violate the difficult to define “spirit of sport”? It’s a question that WADA may wish to avoid: to answer yes may commit it to trying to ban the unbannable. As far as we can tell, tDCS leaves no uniquely detectable impact in the brain: a ban would not be enforceable.

On the other hand, tDCS may simply be construed as not “artificial” enough to threaten our (often arbitrary) notions of fairness, whether in sports or academic settings. Unlike injecting or ingesting a synthetic drug, many may have the intuition that a weak electric current is comparatively “natural” or “clean.” For instance, even though the effects are similar, WADA currently tolerates athletes who increase their red blood cells (and therefore, presumably, their performance) by sleeping in a tent that simulates high altitude, but not those who do so by blood doping or EPO. Something about sleeping in a tent to enhance performance does not strike us as suspect in the way that drugs or blood transfusions do. Perhaps tDCS will be occupy the same corner as altitude tents: for the rule makers, both can be convenient inconsistencies in the rules, as both elude detection anyway.

An yet, while we can question the evidence for the actual efficacy of most performance enhancers currently used, tDCS in particular stands out in calling for more data. Unlike Adderall or anabolic steroids, at the moment anyone can get their hands on a tDCS headset by legally ordering one online. And even if these headsets become more closely regulated, people can still cheaply make their own using common items found at electronics stores, stimulating any part of their brain, or their children’s. Given the current hype around it, it would be good to know more about how exactly it impacts the brain — and the long term consequences.

Top Image: These are increasingly touted as methods that can “overclock” the brain in order to boost cognition, improve our moods, make us stronger, and even alter our moral dispositions. Credit: Fabrice Coffini/GettyImages

Source: Scientific American (By Hazem Zohny)

How to Manage your Time Better

1. Have a realistic plan for your day. Don’t just work on impulse, and don’t do try to do more than you can handle.

2. Prioritize your work, and do the most important things first

3. Know what your distractions are, and take steps to control them (for example, switch off your phone)

4. Start early, and keep on going, even when you feel discouraged or fed up

5. Know what’s irrelevant, and don’t waste your time on unproductive, or pointless things

6. Switch between focused work and lots of short breaks

7. Be flexible if you meet with obstacles, or things don’t turn out the way you’d planned.

Now Teaching English Online

Hey everyone!!

Now that I have moved back to Canada I will be giving online lessons via verbalplanet. If anyone is looking to better there conversational skills or studying for the Cambridge exam please try a free lesson with me(Ashante C) at:

http://www.verbalplanet.com/publicviewprofile.asp?tr_id=10028741945&lang=ENG&lang2=ENG

*It’s hard to tell which one is me lol I’m the one infront with the converse shoes and backwards cap:)

-IGGY

1: please for the love of god wash your hands. do foley care. check your IV lines. these things can seriously screw up a person.

2: most of the people sitting next to you the first semester won’t be there towards the end. people fall behind, people switch to other majors, people leave. 

3: your clinical group will become like a family. that means there will probably be at least one person in the group you won’t like, but you still have to help them out. and they will probably help you out too.

4: some people will gripe and be angry no matter what. you don’t need to get caught up jn their drama.

5: consider clinical experiences a job. every time you step on the floor or the unit, you are basically at a job interview.

6: some teachers will want to go above and beyond to help you out. some will not.

7: study everyday! seriously. even if you can only spare 30 minutes, use those 30 minutes. and don’t forget to look back over previous material even after the exam is over. focus on areas that gave you trouble.

8: get an NCLEX app or book and do practice questions. this will help so much when it comes to some of those crazy exam questions you really need to think through.

9: pay attention in class, even during those long lectures. the people who sat on their phones/laptops/etc my first semester aren’t here anymore. if you are having trouble paying attention, take a very quick “bathroom” break if you can to move around. it really helps to get you re-focused.

10: take care of yourself. everyone in nursing school talks about being sleep deprived. sleep is important and you’ll feel better and do better. bring some snacks so you aren’t distracted by the snackies. remember to “schedule” in some time to do something non-school related that you enjoy!

PREPARATIONS FOR AN EFFECTIVE STUDY SESH

1. Wash your face so you feel refreshed and ready.

2. Get a bottle of cold water and a small healthy snack to stay hydrated and nourished which really does help when you’re studying because it keeps the brain active. A study snack example could be, fruit and nuts or maybe a guilty pleasure (but don’t go overboard!)

3. Clean your study area if it isn’t already. Remember, a messy area = messy brain. But thats not the case always I know. However, a clean and organized study area stimulates your mind and makes you want to sit down and study.

4. Gather ALL your study essentials like your pens, pencils, ruler, paper (basically your general stationery), and most importantly, your actual subject material of course (textbooks, notebooks, handouts and past papers).

5. Lay all your study essentials neatly on the desk to how ever you think everything will be easily approachable.

6. Block out ALL distractions which will prevent you from studying effectively. Turn off your phone and put it away as far as possible. Put away EVERYTHING that you know for a fact that will keep you from studying your best. If you listen to music while you study, then classical music is said to be very helpful, however use the phone just for that purpose, and for what you will encounter in the next tip. You can also use your iPod if you have one or any thing that plays music. Just remember, don’t procrastinate. 

7. Set yourself a timer to make sure you don’t spend too much time doing one thing or waste time. Keep your phone ONLY for this purpose, unless your watch can set the timer, anything else. Most popular method is the pomodoro method. If you are unfamiliar with this, let me explain. So basically in this method, you study for about 25-30 minutes and take 5 minute breaks and then a long 15 minute break. You change this to how ever you want but don’t go extreme for example study for a about 40 mins and then take a 20 minute break. No. Again, if using the phone for the timer, PLEASE PLEASE refrain from checking social media. 

8. Start the studying now that you are fully prepared. Remember, practice active studying rather than passive studying. Active studying would include annotating lecture notes, doing practice questions, organizing and identifying main points, making summaries, etc. Passive studying would be just reading through your notes.

Hope you found my tips useful (and i hope they made sense) even though you probably saw these everywhere else. I’m just here spreading them out again to remind you what’s better for you and your grades and general studying. My name is Aditi, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic day!