Why I haven't posted for 2 weeks

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't posted lately. I was either in exams or exhausted from exams. My last exam of the year was last Monday and last lecture was on Thursday. In between then and now I have taken a break from everything. This blog, revisions and pretty much anything academic. I think I deserved it. 

Revision will be starting again tomorrow (Monday) and I shall continue with 'life' I guess?  I'll post again before the end of the week inshaAllah. 

In the meantime take care and enjoy your holidays :) 

~Amina 

The time I performed in Aston uni

Hey readers, 

I did it, I went to Aston uni and performed 3 pieces of my poetry. 2 of them I have on this blog somewhere "to all my women around the world" and "poetry and what it means to me" it was the most nerve wracking and exciting thing I've ever done. 

It wasn't my first time performing, the first time was at a small open mic event at my uni during freshers where the audience was 40 or less. But yesterday, dayum... There were so many people. I lost my nerve and forgot the words haha.

To break it down, I knew 2 of my poems of by heart and not the 3rd but when I walked on stage I was literally blinded by the lights, I couldn't see the audience or hear myself properly. So I stuttered and started again but tried to style it out with joking. People seemed to love my other poem called "to the lady in the mirror" that one went really smoothly because I've performed it last time and I tried to be funny in the intro. Because there were guys there aswell I introduced it by saying    "It's called to the lady in the miror but if you're a guy obviously it would be to the guy in the mirror" people laughed, which is what I was going for. 

Oh and at one stage I couldn't hear myself loud enough, so I paused mid poem and went can you guys hear me. People laughed idk if they were laughing at me or with me but it was both terrifying and fun. Which is why I would definatly perform poetry again. 

I was so flattered when I looked at twitter, I though I really messed up, one of my friends thought I was confident and looked like I intended it. Which is great. I finished of my performance with "my poem is never fully perfect, there's always a flaw and I guess in some weird poetic way, it could mean that beauty isn't perfect after all" 

Which suited my hiccups ha. 

A girl I know came up to me after the event and gave me the nickname of closet poet, which makes me sound like I'm an undercover gay. Spoken word is something I'd deffinately want to do again.

That's all folks, 

This post is a week late, I had exams lately so I wasn't really in a writing state of mind. But my exams are done for now :D 

Amina :) 

Random rant and update

Hey guys,

Omg I'm so knackered from that exam, I have no energy in me to do work for my next exam and practical work. The exam went okay-ish. Not as bad as I expected but not as well as I hoped either. Hopefully the result are out next week. 

If I get a 2.1 in this, then I know I'm cut out for this. 

Next exam is next Thursday and there's a 50 mark piece if work due on Monday. 

This year has been an interesting road to self discovery, one journey I didn't even know I was taking, at the age of 20 I learned who I am, who I'm not, who I'd like to be and where I stand and most of all my worth and most of all to be more open to people. Which my best friend from uni hates lol because she feels as though I talk to anyone and gets jealous. Haha I had to call you out dude, you know I love you :p

Maybe I'll post a blog called '20' just before my birthday. 

I've been trying to keep it to myself that I'm performing at an open mic event and well today I find out almost all of my friends from uni and the ISOC are going. Dayum. Everyone's going to know I do poetry, which will kind of compliment what I said in my last post. Where I said I want it in a more interactive space. Now I feel nervous. 

Man I need to find a gym pronto, too much junk food mixed with me sitting down for so long means that any abs that were ever there at some point this summer are gone. 

 

My thoughts don't have any commitment right now lol, just jumping from one topic to another so uglyly? That's not even a word. 

Random rant and update over, 

Peace out 

Amina 

3 days before the proteins exam

Hello readers, 

This will be a really quick post today, a) because I have an exam around the corner and b) I don't really have anything interesting to say. 

so it's almost university week 7, which is when my midterms for the proteins module is. And I probably have done more maths in these 7 weeks than I have done in my entire AS maths year (slight exaggeration but it most certainly feels like that) 

Enzyme kinetics is not a joking matter, I spent a couple weeks understanding how to derive each equation and then in the next lecture notes there's some more maths. I've just started the 5th lecture out of a series of 6 which is on allostery. It's 2 am so I have no idea how much will stick.

Enzyme kinetics is just one half, the other half is protein and amino acid purification, that's not too bad. I mean it did take me a while before I could purify an unknown protein on a simulation called proteinlab but all is well in that department i think. The exam is this Tuesday *bites nails* 

On top of that I have 2 questions worth 30 marks in total to hand in on Monday and I haven't even had a look at it yet, in that module I guess I have room to mess one piece of work up (not that i want to) so if I get like a 2.2 (C)in it I think it'll still average a first (A).Not a risk I want to take but yh. My life has literally been the library almost everyday so there isn't anything new for me to post. Oh I may be performing at a spoken word event next week. Looking forward to that. I've been thinking about something I could do with my poetry lately, to express it to a platform that is interactive, unlike my blog. But right now I'm just drained to be honest, it's so hard to balance everything that I want to do. I need to really sort out my time properly because after a couple years I don't want to look back and regret. 

One thing that did happen this Wednesday was I went to sleep in the prayer room lol. 

I literally had 3-4 hours of sleep the night before and after doing work for an hour I couldn't stay awake, i went to the prayer room way before it was time to pray. Lied in the corner and set an alarm. To my surprise I actually slept comfortably and felt better after. 

Anyway that's enough procrastinating from me for now, till next week inshaAllah.

Take care, 

Amina :)

A week in the life of a second year biochemistry student

Hey wassup readers,

I hope you're all doing well. Since the point of this whole blog is about telling prospective students how it is. I shall break down this very hard week.

Monday, as with almost every Monday I had to give in a report, this one was about the gel electrophoresis picture that I posted sometime last week. that was due at 2pm so I strolled into uni late. around 12 ish and was going through some finishing touches with my friend who was also my lab partner. we realised we accumulated some mistakes along the way and had to sort a lot out.
this resulted in us printing the work at bang on 2 and turning up 5 mins late to the practical itself. consequently missing the instructions for that practical. its Saturday now, the work is due on Monday and I still have no clue, simply because of 5 minutes. it's sad really. Life's unpredictable.
after the practical and after eating we had a study session in the library covering enzyme kinetics, or shall I say trying to cover enzyme kinetics. My poor maths skills let me down on a couple of equations.

Tuesday: normally I have a 9 am lecture which finishes at 11, followed by a tutorial which is then followed by a workshop. This week I skipped the tutorial and workshop and went to a society meeting instead. Because I hadn't covered the material I didn't see the point of me attempting questions. The society meeting lasted for about an hour, the student union had called for a meeting with all the societies and because im the secretary of the biological society I went. After that, this is 1 ish now. I started to finalise things with the gym and some girls, because im trying to make a girls only gym hour at the uni gym.
Following this, I started to research some prospective companies and speakers for an event I want to plan with the BioSoc.
And then I went to teach, it was a nice finish to a long day because on Tuesdays I teach my nephew. And he amazes me with his writing skills (MashaAllah) I wouldn't be surprised if he became a writer. No, I'm not trying to be biased.

Wednesday: This technically is my day off but I went into uni to try work on Mondays practical work and enzyme kinetics again. I understood and worked on more of enzyme kinetics, and made some neat notes. It doesn't sound like much but I was literally in the library for like 5 hours :/
Thankfully when me and my friend took a break there was a talk about Malcolm X and racism that we went to, this led to some sort of debate. Which was nice, but it wasn't my cup of tea.

Thursday: I went to uni quite late again because my lecture didn't start until 2. I got to uni around 12. this time me and a couple more friends tried to make sense of the work, not one of us understood it. When we did go to see our demonstrator she said she was busy and to email her. So we just went to the lecture instead. Thursday lectures are really long, theyre timetabled from 2-6 but most lecturers finish around 5 thankfully. Following this I went to an Islamic society event which I was looking forward to. This was literally the highlight of my week. The talk was very motivational, just what I needed. And I've met some more wonderful people. I got home around 10 pm for the 3rd time this week. Which would then lead to today

Friday: For the sake of my sanity I had a lazy day, I've done nothing university related at all. Just lounged around listening to poetry and watching TV. I honestly think the stress is getting to me, I've got a cold for the second time in 4 weeks.

Saturday: My Saturdays just make me cry, 9.30-11.30 I have Arabic lessons. 2-5 I have mosque, 5.30-7.00 Im teaching, the hours for teaching aren't even very formal and they do over run the majority of time, because were family friends etc etc.

Sunday: again I have mosque from 9-11, teaching 11.30-1.40, then again 6-8. This sunday though i'll be meeting up with a friend I haven't seen in a very long time. Looking forward to it inshaAllah.

That's literally my life right now as a second year, on top of that theres alsmo applying for placements. I've applied to 5 places so far and the status is still 'considering'. But I have this horrible gut feeling that I'm going to be rejected. Because for one of the positions the interview date is the 10th. If I was going to have an interview i'd be informed by now. *bites finger nails*
inshaAllah I hope it all goes well.

And waheey, I now have readers in Australia?

Clearing things up

Hey guys, 

I understand I may have caused some confusion on my results day blog about biomed. Well basically I wanted to change to biomed because I could then become a hospital biochemist faster and easier. However after I shadowed a biomedical scientist at a hospital, I didn't like it at all. 

So I have stuck with biochemistry. And after my 2 work experiences this summer I have more of an idea what exactly that I want to do. I want to do something research based that's hands on. And hopefully if I get a placement year that's appropriate I will know if that's what I want to do for the long term. 

Therefore, I am still a biochemist, only difference is I'm slightly less confused.

Have you noticed my posts are shorter this year? That's because 1- I don't really have the time to write a massive post and 2- I got the blogger app on my phone. So I can post shorter blogs more frequently as I commute etc.

That's all for now folks, I'll see you soon inshaAllah 

Mixing things up a little. Pictures

Have you ever taken a picture that just reflects your mood? 

This was one day last week, after a really long day. 

This weeks practical, now if only those lines were straight...

And I have 4 days to write this up 

I'm mixing things up this year, posting random nice pictures I take. 

Chandeliers 🎤

My friend took me to this posh designer shop, lol I just stood there taking pictures of their lights. 

First post of second year

Wassup readers, I hope you're all doing well. 

I'm officially blogging as a second year. I don't really know how i feel about that ha. I feel like I should know everything by now but I'm still very clueless. So what's new this year? 

I've tried to become more proactive and involved with uni social life (maybe to make friends maybe not ;)) I've become the secretary if the Biological Society, where we're currently sorting out a trip.  

I've become more involved with the Islamic Society, which I find pretty cool. I've met a lot of new sisters and we all get on pretty well Alhamdulilah (thank God) 

Second year started of really fast, like in university week 2 there was already an assignment deadline set ( which is due today) placement meeting and placement deadlines. And exams are in a couple of weeks. Even though I have 2 days off per week it really doesn't feel like it at all. I've been in Uni everyday from last Sunday to Friday. I'd say second year started of a lot more intense than first year. One obvious reason that i can think of is because of placements. A lot of us are applying for placements and the deadlines for big companies are soon, this is like the UCAS process all over again but some places will release the placement one day and then have the deadlines exactly one week from then. So you really have to be organised. 

Taking a break

Hey dudes, there will be no official blog this week as I have some deadlines to meet.
I'm in the middle of applying to placements and have just found out the application deadline is on the 24th of this month. So bear with me...

New poem: What does poetry mean to me

As promised, when my laptop is fixed I would post again. I got it back yesterday and here's a poem I wrote on the train today.

Poetry and what it means to me
poetry is a release for me,
A release from rules and social norms.
It is where I solely rely on my feelings to become creative

It's a place for me to rant
Or write a love filled ballad
I could write in iambic pentameters
Or not rhyme at all
It's where I truly express how I feel
And conceal it with metaphors
so you'll never know just exactly what I mean.

I could write about things that really matter
condemning wars
Or I could write one filled with meaningless metaphors
to a horse.

The chaos makes it beautiful,
Because everyone's mind is it's own canvass.
My words create the painting
but your mind creates the colours
So what you derive is as much mine,
as it is yours.

My poem is never fully perfect
There's always a flaw
And I guess in some weird poetic way,
it could mean that beauty isn't perfect after all?

Peace out dudes,
from yours truly

Dear Freshers

Dear Freshers,

Congratulations for getting into uni, you did it! And my God was it a long, tiring, troublesome journey. But you've come to the end of the tunnel, to the promised light. Going to university is a life changing experience. What you learn is so much more than just your choice of degree, you discover who you are, learn more about who you want to be. University helps shape the person who you'll be in more way than I could ever describe. As you rush to take notes in lectures you'll find that your handwriting speed increases immensely. You'll learn that Harvard referencing is a pain in the ass which you'll probably never completely grasp. You'll doubt everything you ever knew to be true, as new ideas are taught to you. You will leave some lectures absolutely amazed, wowed, and inspired. At one point or another, you're phone probably will go off during a lecture.

There's always going to be that one lecturer, whose lectures you find it so difficult to stay awake in, oh and you'll realise that being poor and taking loads of naps as well as being hooked to TV series, is perfectly normal. You're going to hunt down journals for a few sentences, books for only a paragraph or two. For an assignment which you'll probably forget about. I think I've written about 'Beers law' 3 times and I still cant tell you what the equation is.

Here's the probably the best thing you'll read on this post. Uni is not like school or college, everyone is friendly because you're all adults now. Don't be afraid to go up to people and introduce yourself in welcome week. During freshers is the easiest time to make friends. Some of my closest uni friends I've come to know by simply approaching them myself. These 2 girls were talking and I marched up to them and said "Hi, I'm Amina, what are your names" And we've been friends ever since. Try loads of different things. There isn't another place as diverse in terms of societies and extra curricular stuff like uni.

I know this must be so exiting for you guys, heck I remember this time last year like it was last week. I had my books and everything ready, just raring to go. It was the best feeling in the world, knowing that from this point on, your future starts. It's a feeling that you wish you could have forever.

Remember this guys, it's normal to feel lost after a couple of weeks, to feel like you don't know whats going on/happening and that everyone else seems to know what theyre doing. They don't, always always always check online, and if youre ever in doubt. Email your tutor, and if you don't know your tutor then someone in your department. Universities usually have the department contact details on their websites. Someone once told me this, and I think it's worth sharing with you guys. Befriend older student doing a similar course to you. you will most likely meet them in societies, don't be afraid. ask around. I've met some really helpful friends at the Islamic society, who have given great advise. It's little things like, 'Dr T usually gets her questions from her tutorials so make sure you remember your stats' and comments like that make a difference, I had 5 stats related questions in my exam, a topic I thought wasn't even important. Another time I was struggling with an essay, a 2nd year biochemist just happened to hear my conversation and helped me on the train. It's the little things that make the difference.

Look for a society that is related to your degree, e.g. pharmacy is usually PharmSoc, there's others like biological society, law society etc, whatever your subject is. Facebook is a good place to connect with people, so outside the actual freshers page, it might be useful to look for societies pages aswell.

Don't underestimate your workload, yes in almost all courses first year grades don't count. But you know what counts? the skills of writing an assignment properly and remembering what you learned in your first year you'll need for the rest of your duration. Besides, it's best to aim for at least a 2.1 anyway, with the tough market work experience is really needed. And most work places will ask for a transcript of your grades.

Get to know your lecturers, now this is difficult in massive classes but you should have seminars where you meet lecturers on a smaller student:lecturer ratio. For me, it was demonstrators. Of course I don't mean personally, but ask them loads of questions about your work, ask ask ask. Then they'll help you out more compared to another student that doesn't ask, which only means better marks.

If there's one thing I regret from this past year, it's not revising a topic before the next one is taught. Because the next topic is based on the assumption that you know the previous topic so you'll most likely be clueless if you haven't revised yet.

Congratulations again for making it, may your dealings with Student Finance England be smooth and most of all. Don't forget to have fun :D

Peace out!

This is probably filled with spelling and grammar errors, do excuse it I wrote this at 3am ;)

Chase your dreams & dare to be great.

Everyone wants to achieve some sort of dream, and this dream can be associated with many different things. The car of your dreams, the house of your dreams, the spouse of your dreams, the career of your dreams, the degree of your dreams. I think you get the gist, dreams, the thought of achieving a dream is very alluring. I think at difficult times the images of your dreams can keep you going. Dreams. A 6 letter word yet it can open up so many scopes of our imagination…

 

Somewhere, somehow deep inside us we all have dreams. Whether we choose to admit them or not, whether we verbalise them and make them come to life, or shove them to the corner of our mind, we still have them. And I say dreams-not dream-because we never truly just chase one thing. We chase many different things in succession. And a dream can change. And I can tell you that with assurance because within a space of 3 years I’ve had 4 different dreams that I wanted to chase, career wise. What we don’t realise when we’re younger is that nothing is really ever too late, so what if you follow your heart thinking you’re doing the right thing for you, and then you find out too late that actually that’s not what you want to do. Only to find that the object of your affection is something that you never really expected, something that you perhaps might’ve not realised even exists. But that’s just it isn’t it? Achieving your dream is such a sweet thing and that’s not just because of the destination that you got to, but because of the experiences that you had in your journey and the boundaries and barriers that you overcame in your pursuit. I believe that, that’s what makes you really happy. It’s the hardships that we overcome that make the good days better, and knowing that there is a light at the end of this long dark tunnel; make the darker days bearable.

Which is why, in my opinion, success and chasing your dreams come in hand. Because surely by achieving your dreams you have simultaneously achieved success. But your dreams could change, that doesn’t mean you're a failure though. Picture a dream as a bubble, you know, the ones that you blow. They’re so fragile, so breakable and are influenced by external sources. I say this because the external sources are the experiences that we have and things around us that we see. Which help us decide if that’s what we want. Lately what I wanted to do was to become a clinical biochemist, pretty big shot role, mixes lab work with patients so it seemed like the best of both worlds for me. Until I saw a day in a life of a biochemist. Which wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. I then did another placement in a school science lab, which was really cool. I loved every minute I worked there, and even though it was all hands on, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. My bubble has been moving around a lot more times than I want it to be. But I think, no I know, that if I wasn’t a confused biochemist, I would probably be more narrow minded. Now I try to explore as many areas as I can in case sometime later in the future-near future- I know what I’ll be.

Life is a canvass, paint it in different colours. Dreams don’t work unless you do, but if you’ve done all that you can to make something happen and it doesn’t. Then it was never meant to be, you haven’t failed.

And so what if you don’t have the career of your dreams at 21 or 23 or whenever it is that you graduate? It’s not the end of the world. You have your whole life to achieve it, you have your whole life to be great.

 

 

This video is a great inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsOBaV_93yQ 

That's all for today, I hope this post has somehow benefitted you. As always for more frequent posts, well statuses. Like my Facebook page on https://www.facebook.com/confusedbiochemist 

 

Peace out!

So you want to be a biochemist?

This blog is aimed at any future/current bioscience students who hope to work in a hospital lab.

First of all I'm going to talk about how to become a hospital biomedical scientist. Before you apply to uni you need to make sure that your course is accredited by the Institute of biomedical science IBMS and the Health care and professions council (HCPC). You can do this by checking the university website before applying, usually as far as I know you only get HCPC if you do a placement year (sandwich courses) where you will complete a portfolio. It's key that you are aware of these things well in advance. But incase you found out whens it's too late. Depending on how bad you want it, you can do an accredited MSc in Biomedical science, the beauty of that is you can either opt for a part time or a full time course, where the part time will allow you to have a day job and it's only for one day a week, but this may vary across universities.
Or, if your university offers both, see if they let you transfer

The above route works if your degree choice is BSc biomedical science. And what you can become with this is a biomedical scientist specialising in biochemistry.

There is also another route, if you steer clear of biomedical science, this is both at a BSc and at MSc level. you can pretty much do any life science based degree and then become something called a clinical scientist. The role of a clinical scientist is a bit different to a biomedical scientist, a clinical scientist has more responsibilities and a higher pay aswell. One thing worth mentioning is that a clinical scientist has a MSc. But not your  average MSc which lasts a year. This masters lasts 3 years and you are paid 25K per year whilst undertaking it. The link below should explain it better than I ever could
http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/healthcare-science/training/nhs-scientist-training-programme-(stp)/

I must say though, most of the work you will be doing in labs will be machine operated. This picture is QE hospital laboratory where I did my work experience, the biochemistry part. So here you'd feed your sample in one end and expect results from the other.

 

Hope this gave you an insight of the different paths you can take to become a hospital biochemist,

 

Peace out!

End of year 1 results

Well well well, today was the moment of truth. My results went alright, with a huge range. I've noticed that generally in exams I do really well and really bad in assignments/ practical write ups.

And  because the exams and the coursework more often than not have the same weighting in terms of percentages. I've met the conditions I mentioned in the previous post though . Alhamdulilah! this means I can transfer to biomedical science and can hope to get a good placement. Which I'm happy about.

To all of you who are waiting for your results, I wish you all the very best of luck.

 

Peace out!

Update. Results tomorrow*Drum roll*

The 16th of June is the day of truth, the results for semester 2 and subsequently the whole year will come out. Now in many Universities in the UK the percentage needed for a pass if 40, and results in the first year generally don't count. with the exception of courses like medicine and optometry. However, I'm changing to biomedical science next year (which is a long story that I will talk about in another blog) and the conditions are that I get a 2.2 in every single module, and on top of that I have been told that in order to get a placement I must realistically get a 2.1 or above. This means that in my microbiology exam I need to get a very good grade, which seems unlikely but now, all I can do is wait.
Let the next 8 hours commence

~Confused Biochemist

Poem #5(?) || I Dare You ||

      || I Dare You ||

I dare you to stop making excuses
I dare you to deal with your problems
stop blaming other people for YOUR failures
blaming takes the power away from you
The power to change
I dare you to control of your own fate
and not blame it on your gender, religion or race.

I dare you to stop being scared
stop being scared of what might happen if you give it your all
stop being scared to fail.
For that thought alone prevents you from giving 100%

I dare you to not hold anything back
fail, lose, but get right back UP
The joy of success is not in never failing
but in rising EVERYTIME you fail
get back up one more time than you fall down
not because it's easy, because as sure as hell is not,
but because YOU owe it to YOURself

I dare you to work HARD
not just today but everyday of every year
because it's better to be ready and not have an opportunity
than to have an opportunity and not be ready.

And I dare you to start today
What are you waiting for...?

 

Yours truly,

~ Amina

Request #2: Reflections

Reflections on how we perceived life would be for us as University students, as children, and how it actually is?

Ok so i'm gonna break this one down and do it in chronological order starting with how I thought life would be like when I was a child.
To be honest I didn't really have expectations of adulthood or life in general as a child. When I was younger I believed that I was going to be a professional football player, be the next Beckham. So I spent most of my time playing football, watching football and trading those football cards. Odd thing for a girl but yeah...
It also depends on what your perception of when childhood ends is, I don't think the mental state of being a child ends when you're a teenager, I count it as ending at 14 and mainly because that's the first time I thought about my future and acted upon it. And at that point I believed that life would be what you worked for. That one would get only what they prepared for and nothing else.

I feel that its appropriate to include the gap between childhood and a university student too, because those years encompass critical decisions that will shape even whether or not you do go to uni and what you study. I believe the teenage years are the most volatile years of your life. How did I/we perceive it then? I can only give my account because ive never asked anyone else, so this is by no means a generalisation.  During GCSE's I thought the world was my oyster, I saw how my hard work was being rewarded and was pleased with the grades I was achieving. so I perceived life as 'you reap what you sow'
And as I grew older that mentality changed, that would be perfect in an ideal world and in ideal situations but life is never really ideal, we all struggle at one point or other. And momentum is cruel, it waits for that one dip in your life and propels you in deeper. So in a levels and uni I realised that you sow a great deal more than you reap. That you need to work twice as hard to get the grade you want.

Now on to the uni bit:
How I perceived university is definitely not what its like, I thought there would be loads of societies that you could join and lots of activities and things going on. but it didn't meet up to my expectation. however this really depends on the uni that you go to and what you're interested in. At my uni there's an anime society that's on multiple times per week. so that's great for someone interested in that, so it really depends on who you are. I think what really clouds my experience is that I really love sports and the sports facilities are mixed. My uni also has activities going on during the week but finding a friend to go with isn't always easy esp if most dislike sports and commute.

Another point is help and guidance, now I didn't exactly expect a certain level of guidance but we were left to do everything by ourselves, which was very overwhelming especially in the first semester. when we were assigned tutors and those tutors are Dr's and some even carry out research in the field that you study (e.g. my tutor is a biochemist who if I remember correctly is a researcher as well) I thought that the whole reason behind that was that he/she will have tutorials with us or seminars to see how well we're getting on. I expected our tutors to give us direction. I've no idea how it is at other unis, this is just mine. Maybe it's only in Biosciences that this issue is with. I know some students on another course, cardiac physiology or something like that have a lot more contact time in smaller groups. And maybe its just how first year is.

A friend of mine who is in her 3rd year said to me "lecturers aren't interested in you now in your first year, in your 2nd and 3rd year is when they really start to help you"


Now that I am in university though I feel as though it's not about how hard you work, it feels like no matter what you do or how hard you work it'll never be enough to get to where you want to go. There's a great deal of competition out there and you really need to get loads of experience- which is scarce. However it also depends on the career path one has chosen, though granted everything nowadays has a lot of competition but some are more competitive than others. I feel like im repeating myself now so i'll wrap it up with this.

Work as hard as you can, for as long as you can, whenever you can. Because you never know what cards you'll be dealt in life. Wise words that my GCSE chemistry teacher once said to me were "Aim for a 100% that way if your result is the 90's you wont be upset" and I'm beginning to understand more and more the implications of those words now.

Life is never balanced, YOU do the work to balance it  ;)

I don't think that I've answered your question entirely but I gave it my best shot.

Again as a reminder to those who don't know, I now also have a Facebook page were I post motivational/inspirational stuff and poetry regularly. So go ahead and like it, the more likes I get on that page the more stuff I shall be putting up. the link to that is: https://www.facebook.com/confusedbiochemist

That's all folks, peace out!

Its the holidays!

 

After many weeks of never ending work, I’m finally finished for the year. I’m kind of happy but also sad (hear me out before you think I’m crazy) I’m happy because I’m not stressed out and because I don’t have important deadlines to meet. However I quite enjoyed lectures even though I fell asleep in them more times than I can remember. Looking back at the year, I’ve never fallen asleep in a human structure and function lecture, this was due to very vague lecture notes. The lecturer was also lively, so any future students at my uni doing bioscience, if you have Dr G you’re in for a treat.

Now to why I’m sad part. I have nothing to do, nothing to get out of bed for. I’ve been writing some more poetry but there’s only so much one can write. Before anyone thinks “why doesn’t she just get a job” I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just unlucky when it comes to that, been applying for jobs as they come on the market but no one gets back to me. Someone should tell them what they’re missing out on lol. I tried to do some spring cleaning, which was hopeless. As soon as you go to the 2^nd room the first one gets messed up.

I’ve made up a sort of bucket list for the things I want to do this summer these are:

·         Learn how to code

·         Loads of reading and writing

·         Paint my room

·         Get a 6 pack (Abs)

·         Raise money for charity

After watching the social network and a documentary about entrepreneurs I realised they all had one thing in common, computers, they all did coding in one form or another. Many of them becoming millionaires, just recently the ‘flappy bird’ craze made the owner super rich in just a couple of weeks. It’s the one area I think that rewards creativity and lots of work quickly. I’m not planning on becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg, to me, it’s just a skill that I want to have.

I think if I didn’t take a science route I would’ve done creative writing of some sort. And reading, books are so encapsulating. They take you to a whole other world that you wouldn’t normally see, and teach you things about the world which you didn’t know. 2 books I read recently are ‘your genes unzipped’ that had a lot of interesting things in there. One that fascinated me was; there was a little boy who was just a few months old having a circumcision when something went wrong. The doctor then told the parents it would be easier for the boy to be ‘made’ female genitalia rather than to try fix the problem. The little boy was treated like a girl since, named a female name etc. etc. But the child never felt like a girl and had a hard time. When ‘she’ was told the truth ‘she’ had surgery to correct things and he lived happily ever after. Which makes me question, what is gender really, is it  a state of mind rather than the genitalia? Do chromosomes on the X and Y determine our psychological state of which we feel like? I don’t see how this question can be answered. My point is, read, there is a whole world of fascination and crazy stuff out there that you might miss out on if you don’t read about them.

2^nd book was keeping hope alive by Dr Hawa Abdi, I don’t think this woman gets enough publicity, her story is truly inspirational. She also taught me a lot about the Somali civil war which I didn’t know much of.

6 packs, I’ve always wanted to get them. Besides I need to lose all that weight I gained during exams. I actually went to the gym today, for the first time in a very long time. But whatever I was trying to achieve was nullified when I went to heavenly deserts, and let me tell you, they are indeed heavenly. But as of tomorrow, I shall control my sugar levels (Insha’Allah) type 2 diabetes is no joke.

peace out!  

 

Poem #3 To all the women around the world

To all my women around the world

You are strong and you are beautiful

We are the backbone of society

Raising boys to become men

And little girls to be independent ladies

We are not helpless princesses in need of saving

As Disney will have you believe

We’re not just here to look pretty and act dumb

Our wombs are not a factory

Where our efficiency is measured by how many children we have

For far too long men have messed things up

And have left women to pick up the pieces

This is to my single mothers whose exes are worth less than faeces

Because they gave birth to a fatherless child

Whilst that father was alive

This is to my ladies that are managers and CEO’s

That work really hard but still get paid less dough

And the government dares to pretend there’s equality

To me, it looks like men degrade women in order to gain superiority

I’m writing this so that this poem can go down in history

So that future generations can one day say

That is how it used to be.

 

 

 

 

Just because i wear a hijab

I really just have to get this off my chest.

Just because I wear a hijab doesn't make me less of a human than you. just because I wear hijab I shouldn't get dirty looks and stares. This is more so in old ladies. I find it so frustrating when you get on a bus and an old woman clutches her bag? like what the hell?
The amount of rudeness that's been thrown my way over the last couple of years is just disgusting. I've realised more hostility now that I go to uni than when in college. But when I do think back at it, my college was full of ethnic minorities and there were a lot of muslim students and teachers. so I didn't really stand out. But now that I have to go to the train station regularly, I cant remember a day when someone didn't stare at me, you know the look I mean. once the train was packed, so I had to sit next to two ladies, one I assumed to be the mother and the other her daughter. these women were 35+  before I sat down they were having a chat and smiling etc. when I sat next to them their expression was one of horror, and they were just watching me throughout the whole train journey. looking at my phone as I was texting. Normally you'd expect someone to look away when you've caught them staring at you, but that certainly wasn't the case there.

Another time I went to a science fair ( yes I went to a science fair) and I got stopped and searched. I was there ( the fair) for a good 5 hours and in those 5 hours I haven't seen anyone else getting searched. I felt- I don't even know how to describe how I felt. all I wanted to do was to take my sister to a science fair and see cool  inventions and experiments. I felt like I was being treated like a criminal. For a crime that I didn't commit.

Even in uni, coming out of lecture I was walking with a friend who also wears a scarf and this remark was made by this guy- words that I don't even want to repeat.

It's not like we ask for preferential treatment, i'm not even speaking from an Islamic perspective. I'm speaking from a human perspective, just because we dress in a certain way doesn't mean that we should be made to feel inferior. I feel like we shouldn't have to constantly be like *hey look at us, we're normal, we're like you* Old ladies, I understand that you didn't exactly grow up with many muslims around. but that doesn't mean that you should give me a dirty look, turn around and stare at me when I sit next to you. This woman once even had the cheek to make a eurgh sound at me whilst I opened the door for her. I believe i'm a good person and I don't deserve the treatment I get. I don't judge a Labrador based on what a Rottweiler does. 

I guess i'm saying that; we have feelings too, I cant even begin to tell you how much it ruins my mood. It's not fair. I know some of the accounts I made above are nothing compared to how others get treated, however that doesn't make it any more acceptable.

We're all one race. The human race. Religion shouldn't really matter, I'm not being naïve. I've met some really lovely non muslim people who im friends with. However I've also met some hostile muslim people. I judge a person based on how they treat me and others, if more people did that being gay/straight/black/white/muslim/non muslim none of that would matter.

You may or may not agree with me with many points. To be honest I don't care.  When I blog, I blog as Confused Biochemist, that's how I choose to define myself. Not by my country, my gender, race or religion. Being a Muslim shouldn't affect/change anything or anyone but me.

That's all I wanted to rant about today.
Peace out.

Who is Confused Biochemist? Q&A

It's been nine months now and how rude of me I haven't formally introduced my self lol, I've also added a lot of random things about my self.
      Name: Amina
      Age:20

      My favorite inside joke: That's a tie between 'naked trees' and ' Margret and Anne'

      People I look up to: My old mosque teacher
     Do i like someone: nope
     Tea or Coffee: Though I have coffee more often, I like tea more.
     Natural hair color: black
      Favorite color: any type of blue
      favorite movie: hmm that's a hard one. I'm gonna have to say The Avengers
      Favorite song: nobody told me by B.O.B and Aloe Blacc wake me up
      Someone I miss: Not exactly someone- but my cat
      Last Person I texted: my mate N
     Last person I called: my mate A
      Someone I'm talking to right now: you guys ;)
    Where i wish I was right now: Dubai
     Favorite day: Saturday because it's the first day of the week I can sleep in
     Favorite smiley: ;)
     Guilty pleasure: hands down HSM all of them
     What was your last dream about: No idea
      Last thing you said to your brother: alright
     What are you doing right now: typing ;)
      What are your plans for today: well seeing as it's past midnight, do chores in the morning, get   ready for mosque tutor and hopefully get a good amount of work done.
      Favorite class: Human structure and function
      Favorite place to eat: Subway!!
      Last thing you watched on t.v: Casualty
      Last person to make you smile: sister
     Last person to make you laugh: sister
     What do you love: Making a difference,
     What do you hate: plans failing and someone messing with my stuff
      Favorite person to talk to: In all honesty, my little sister. she's crazy but she's my kind of crazy
      Where was your profile picture taken: copied from Google images ;)    
      Are you happy: I'd like to think so
      Are you sad: only when  I look at my work load.
      If you could change anything what would it be: tbh I don't know anymore, I only wish I knew the things I know now when I was 16.
    How do you see your future: whistling merrily in a lab
   Why do you blog? Well well well.... I blog firstly because when I was applying to uni there was next to nothing out there of what biochemistry was like, realistically what you could and what you should expect to do. In college the teachers just romanticised it, others made it out like it was rocket science. So I started to write to give a realistic insight of what studying biochem is. I didn't know what biochemistry really was until the summer of AS. Before that I always had the misconception that it's only for medicine rejects. So I want my blog to be able to be used as an information point too. thirdly random poetry and motivation. Now I started writing a book twice. Once a collection of poetry and secondly a motivational book. Poetry with me only flows and is to the level I want it to be when i'm really passionate or emotional about something. when that wasn't going as smoothly as I wanted it to be I started a book, a motivational one. But because I was going through pretty much the same experiences in college there wasn't that much to talk about. Also a book required a lot of commitment, and most of all it needs to flow. That's where blogging comes in. My posts don't need to have anything to do with the posts before. Every time it's a blank canvass which I like. One day InshaAllah i'll publish a motivational book. But in the meantime, i'm sticking to this.

For daily ( or almost daily) motivational quotes here and there by yours truly then like my new facebook page https://www.facebook.com/confusedbiochemist

That's all folks

Quick update, facebook

Hey guys, I now have a facebook page called Confused Biochemist. Like that page for updates and a motivational status every now and again.  https://www.facebook.com/confusedbiochemist
And generally smaller things, like funny pics etc. whereas i'll be leaving this for the bigger blog posts.

That's all folks, peace out

poem #2 what if

Here's just one of the things I write when I'm supposed to be listening to my lecture. I think this is the most personal poem I've ever written, which is open to interpretation. Enjoy!

My greatest what if.
one question will always remain
Nothing will ever be the same

What if you stayed
what if life hadn't changed
would I still be the same?

If my circumstances were different
would my life be hindered?

What if you didn't have to leave
would you always have been there for me?

What if I did everything you wanted me to
would you be proud of me then
or are you proud of me now too?

What if I became exactly like you
would people look up to me, like they look up to you?


What if I searched for the answer through time
would you be able to tell me where to find...
The answer.

I could ask you what if endlessly
But I just want you here indefinitely.



What if?
 

Thank you

Let me just take a moment here to say thank you all so much for the views, my blog is my baby and when I started I had no idea that my blog would be read from so many different countries. I mean I only put up links on my Fb and twitter. And some of you are in Canada, Indonesia and France! I am intrigued though, do let me know how you find out when I've posted. According to my calculations and the number of views I get everytime I post I should hit a 1000 views next week. I have great plans for this blog in the near future inshaAllah, I'll probably personalise it a little bit though that's not certain yet. What I do definitely plan to do though is write a lot more kick-ass motivational posts like my 'it gets better' one.

Thank you to all my friends who have supported my blog and read every single one of them, I really appreciate it and the feedback. This has certainly been a journey for me. One that I never anticipated on going on. It just happened one day, after I signed up for my uni course, looking back at my first blog lol I sounded very very enthusiastic. It's certainly been a great journey, with more greatness planned.

Requests, love life, coping

Ok guys, last time I put up statuses asking what people want to read. And my 2 responses were.
1) My love life
2)Coping with your studies and managing to have fun at the same time

1) I was really tempted to write 'My love life' and then leave it blank because that's what its like. I'm in a really confused place right now, constantly wondering if I should become a confused biomedic instead of biochemist. Then again I love biochem but post graduate stuff is confusing arghh... It would be unfair to drag someone into that anyway. When I've got my life sorted out then i'll worry about finding someone. The how is something I do not know at all. All I know is one thing, I will never make the first move. Whoever you may be, you're gonna have to man up.

2) Coping with my studies- I guess that really depends on the persons perspective. I'm not revising as hard as I was in semester one and therefore my grades aren't as good as i'd like them to be. With deadlines and exams fast approaching my stress levels are very high. That doesn't stop me from having fun though, I always find a way to fit in time for meeting up with friends, even if that is just the 20 minute train journey. Luckily I have 2 friends that catch the train in the same direction as me. I try fitting in a couple of hours for the gym, though I haven't been in a month now :( and swimming the odd week. It may sound a little sad, but those are the things that I find fun. That feeling straight after gym, and the next couple of days where you feel so strong. I once tried to get Jessica Ennis type abs, Barely got a 4 pack. I leave work at uni and the library lately, So I've kind of been a hobo going from one library then another. But hey, if you've got immature friends you've got everything right?

My coping right now goes like this, on days where I don't have family stuff
Wake up tired- library/lecture- library if I was in lecture- come home-eat & go on laptop- read Quran - revise a little more- more laptop- go to sleep tired.
That cycle begins on Monday and usually gets broken on Thursday.

I Hope that answered your questions. If you've got any more suggestions feel free to comment/inbox. I apologise for not posting as often as I used to, I've got a lot going on right now but June should be interesting inshaAllah :D

And that's all folks.

deadline, forgetfulness, crying!

Omg, this Monday I was in central library,  all by my self, getting work done. I got there quite early. went for lunch after 3. Took a nice relaxed lunch hour. walked in the nice weather etc etc. then at 16.55 I got a call from my friend "where are you" this baffled me, then it dawned on me. I had a practical at 5.15 remember i'm in B'ham yh. doesn't matter how fast I go i'd still miss the practical because I was late. I emailed the teacher ASAP telling him what happened. And I was truthful, I said that it completely slipped my mind that I had a practical and that I was sorry. I also asked if I could join the last group. He answered me with a straight no saying it wasn't good enough that i'd have forgotten about an important practical. I couldn't help but think, i should've lied. Told him i had a migraine or something. However, According to Islam, lying is not permitted except in specific cases which do not lead to loss of rights, bloodshed or slander of people’s honor, etc., but which concern saving lives, reconciling between people, or creating love between husband and wife.  These practicals are compulsory and you cant pass without attendance to all of them. I honestly felt like crying. you know when you get a massive lump in your throat? that. In all honesty i'm not that type of student, I've never forgotten anything important before. So I phoned the teacher and begged him, he finally agreed to let me join the last group under one condition, that there is space for me. Alhamdulilah!!! (Thank God) and I really hope, wish and pray that there is. That's one drama down

Today I handed in a practical report at 3 something and then had a norovirus poster to submit by midnight. Around 4 oclock I'd finished most of the work for it, only needed to reference a figure and look up where I got the symptoms from. So I left uni came home, internet was playing up for a while till I finally fixed it. Finished referencing and wanted to submit at 9. it just wouldn't let me submit. After 40 mins I felt like crying again, especially since it says online "if you have trouble uploading your work let a member of staff know in good  time" I then went through random files I had saved seeing which ones the webpage would allow me to submit. turns out it was Word. I copied and pasted all my work onto word. I just couldn't get the hang of making my work look poster like on word since I've never done it before. Powerpoint is my number 1 go to in all cases. it hit 10 and i was- put honestly- shitting my self. i then called 2 friends to see if they could help me out and they saved my life. I'm not one to communicate feelings but Z and A I loveee you dudes. I repeat they saved my life. The poster is finally submitted and looks great. I feel so exhausted. No rest for me though :/ I've got that practical in the morning.

I'm still shocked at the fact that at 4pm i only needed to add one or two sentences, never could i have imaged what would happen 6 hours later.

Deadlines over! exam revision to go...

Non stop, norovirus, practical reports

Today im just going to rant. No time or effort for a well organised post. Why are lecturers so vague man. I'm doing an enzyme assay report and idk what to do! its not even a case of you can go home and figure it out, theres literally no way of getting it right unless you were told what in this case "the true volume" is or even how to work it out. Drawing graphs is another thing, I drew 5 graphs, finally perfected them and did all calculations I needed to work out from them. AND THEN I realise that my first graph was wrong, and because the other 6 graphs were depended on the gradient of the first, all of them are wrong too. Basically I was almost finishing a report I've been working on for a week and now I need to start again.... or so I thought lol. Good thing I didn't upload this the day I wrote it. thankfully I didn't need to start again, because where I was dividing by 4 I should've multiplied by 0.25 giving me the same answer really. so I just tweaked where I write how I calculated things.

I also have a norovirus poster due, which I can only use 150 words, I've used a 100 now and I've still got quite a bit to do. Who on earth thought that you can cover a whole bloody disease in 150 words!
Omg, it's satuday night and both deadlines are on Tuesday!!!!! looks like tonight is going to continue into the early hours of the morning.


And I missed marvel agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. this week :/ that was the highlight of my Fridays last semester. incase you haven't heard of it, if you like spiderman and ironman I think you'll love this too
containing a mixture of spying, computer hacking and there's a biochemist too! agent simmons.

It gets better

It's funny how life shows you that things aren't as bad as they seem.  A fortnight ago I had a huge emotional breakdown, for many reasons, and I hit a really big depressive low. Became anti-social and didn't really speak to anyone. I had an important deadline coming up aswell so no one needed to know what was going on. And I thought that the mental state that I was in was bad, like I thought my luck just cant get any worse.
 Sunday morning I woke up unable to get out of bed, with a severe case of the flu. I have no idea of most of the stuff that was going on in my head but I woke up with a high temp at 2.30 am and all I could think was 'I am in the movie white house down, if I stand up, cough, sneeze or make any sort of noise im going to get shot' So I ended up not getting a drink, holding sneezes in. It was really weird. In a state of physical illness, suddenly all the emotional stuff seemed next to nothing. After trying to fight it for a week, you know doing all those things the GP advises, stay hydrated, better diet etc I did all that and was on this medication that felt like it was stripping a layer of my oesophagus every time I drank it. Friday and i'm finally better. And you know, I feel like a new person. Staying in bed helped me set my priorities straight. And the point of this blog post is to tell you it gets better.

Things are going to get hard, and without trying to sound clichéd. It will eventually get better. I know what I described above isn't remotely even close to what people may encounter but I can honestly say that you WILL become a stronger person after the hardship. life may be a bitch to you, things may never work out for you. People like you don't get nice things? But my question to you is what are you going to do about it? are you going to sit back and take it, letting life take the wheel and then ending up wherever because you were too afraid to try. Or are you going to toughen up, take the hits and come back stronger, take the driving wheel and go to the destination you want? Be the person who you'd want your kids to be proud to say "that's my mom" or "that's my dad"

Time that we have is limited, so are energy and health. Who knows what tomorrow holds, what if tomorrow it's too late and you needed to have made that change today? The second, minute and hour that you lose you will never get back. As Eric Thomas says "you can burn down my house, I've got the blueprint I can build it again, you can take all my money but I will be able to replace it, but the time that I waste I will never ever be able to get back" That's paraphrased so don't take my word for it. Eric Thomas was homeless! and now he's an author. A lesson we should all be aware of is, a lot of people hurt. you know we're not the only ones. Take Adele for example, she was a no one for a while, in terms of in the music industry. her man broke up with her, she then took that heartbreak and made something productive from it and that album 21 was globally the biggest selling musical release for both 2011 and 2012. Now i'm not saying we should start writing songs about our feelings. But we have to use that extra energy - to be fair it really is extra energy, it's a lot of effort to be depressed and/or angry. And channel it into something that will turn out to be productive.


You know, the last time I felt like this was when I first decided to retake one of my college years. It was either that or do a course which I really didn't feel like, which was nursing (which is what my family wanted me to do when they saw my grades), but I didn't. And if I had chose that, the easier way out, if I didn't retake. I know that I wouldn't have found happiness in nursing that I found in biochemistry.

Just hold on, hold on tightly. you'll get there. Maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually. Do it for the people who care about you, and even more so, do it for you! You are special, forget the clichés for a minute, but seriously how many people have the exact same genetic make up as you?
Exactly.
I'm going to leave you guys with two words.

Be amazing!