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!

What it's actually like to study biochemistry

When I was in college, what I expected of uni is completely different to what it's actually like. So to give a clearer insight I thought i'd break down a week. (note: lectures, times and all the rest of it at different universities vary, this is only for my university and only this semester)

Mondays: I don't start till 2 on Mondays so I went in late. Caught the 10.36 train with my friend

and got to the uni library around 11.10. Quickly checked emails and booked a quiet room in the silent part of the library. I worked on amino acids and proteins for about an hour and then changed to the bacteria cell wall. This is pretty new to me so it took me a very long time to get my head around it. Even though I ended up not understanding much of it in the end. I left the room at around 1.40 so that I had a break and made my way to the lecture hall. Mondays lectures are on microbes and immunity, the lecturer carried on talking about bacteria for an hour then we had a 5 minute break. Where we would have a different lecturer talking about another topic. But after the first lecture I was so sleepy I just went home. Mondays lectures are recorded live so I could watch the recording at home, which I did later on that night. Every other Monday I have a microbes and immunity practical as well, from 5.30-8.30 these usually last a while, last time I finished around 8. Got home around 8.45 ate and watched TV.

 

Tuesdays: Tuesday is my busiest day of the week. I have a disease biology and public health lecture from 11-1, this one I ended up arriving 5 minutes late because the snow caused my train to come late. Thankfully I didn't have my usual lecturer, she makes the class clap when someone comes late. 2-4 is my molecular basis of life lecture and then 5.30 - 8.30 a molecular basis of life practical, thankfully in practicals you can go when you're finished. I really love practicals, though in college it was so hard to get a decent mark in them for some reason, I think it was because a higher percentage was needed to pass them. Uni practicals you walk in with your lab coat, goggles and work book (depending on if lockers are in the corridor or in the lab.) Get briefed and a health and safety talk, then its all systems go! In this practical we were doing protein assays ( fancy way of saying working out the concentration of proteins)

 

My test tubes pretty much looked like that, except we had to do 38! luckily due to shortage of equipment I had a lab partner that did 19.

 

Wednesdays: Wednesdays timetable is usually weird. At the beginning of the year we did practical's, then workshops, but nowadays it's a stats lecture followed by a stats workshop. Which to be honest I think are pointless, because after the mean and standard deviation we don't include other calculations in reports. These stats lectures start at 10, so that means I need to catch the 9.15 or the 9.21 train, any later and im late. and the workshops start at 11. So my day is usually done by 12.

Thursday & Fridays are my days off :)

Personally most of my revision takes place in the evenings, 6 onwards. The only time I study in the morning is a Monday I think. And most of the time on Saturdays where I usually go to the central library. And sundays are almost always revision free, this is when I tutor, go to mosque and spend quality time with my family.

I am done. I am so done

I am done, so done with trying with people who put simply don't give a shit. I don't understand why people just don't do the adult thing and say 'we're over' or let you know you wont be having further contact. I'm going to keep this as vague as I can but put simply

   
It's different though, if it was a prospective partner and they ignore you, I personally find that a lot easier. It's different if its a friend though, especially ones that you spent a great deal of time with, text back and fro. And obviously with people going to different unis I get why you wouldn't be in touch like before. what I don't get is silence and secrecy. I had some friends whom we were so close for so many years that we literally knew everything about each other and made big decisions together. Couple months go by and silence? I mean ignoring calls and texts. We were once best friends, but now we're just strangers with memories. Sometimes I ignore everyone, turn of facebook chat then see who actually makes an effort. Surprisingly people who I didn't expect did, and others I expected didn't. But life goes on.


I don't want this to be completely depressing so i'll look at an alternative view point too. There are other mates, who you see so rarely (i'm talking like once a year) but every minute you spend with them is priceless. I thank God that I have a friend who I've known since the age of 4, we've been neighbours for 3 years. After that we've always been in opposite sides of the country,  not even communicating for years sometimes because we didn't have the means. But yh now we have these bets (not involving money ofc that would be haram) who would be the cooler aunt, who would dress their kids better etc. The reason for that anecdote was to show that distance is only an issue if you make it an issue.

=)

Poetry

To mix things up a bit, and also take focus away from academics. I've let my creative side flow, I think my poems have improved a lot since I started writing.

That frustrating moment when you forget a poem
A beautiful one that was flowing
I remember laying there on my pillow thinking...
I'll write these great ideas in the morning.

Just before the sun rose, my alarm started ringing
See where I come from you don't wake up to birds singing
And as I heard the water from the shower trickling
I guess that poem must've had the same ending.

By yours truly

Semester 2 is in full action.

After a massive break from formal lectures and work- excluding revision for exams. I've finally started again :) This semesters modules are quite different to the last

Semester 1 I had:

1. Human structure and function ( which was basically a fancy name for physiology and anatomy)
2. bio science skills, a module that taught us practical, essay and excel skills.
3. Forensic and molecular chemistry
4. Molecular basis of life.

Looking back at it, I really miss human structure and function, loved the module and the teacher. I actually just got my results for it recently, meh I was 3 marks of a first but that's done.

 Semester 2 I have:

1. Molecular basis of life
2. Bio science skills, which I only have 2 lectures left.
3. Microbiology and immunology
4. Disease biology and public health

Disease biology replaced principles of drug action and I am sooooo happy that I was allowed to change. only had one lecture so far and im already loving it. We were given a choice of 25 diseases to research, which were things like asthma, Aids allergies etc. I chose the norovirus, mainly because it was really in the news last year and because there was a case of that in holby city. Micro biology, the first lecture consisted of the lecturer reading of the slides and it was a snooze fest. He was teaching us what we already knew for the most part, so at break me and my friend sneaked off to lunch *sshhh* and then stayed around till 4 because supposedly there was a tutorial which never ended up happening. To be honest, how you find the module is related to how the teacher is, the more enthusiastic they are the more you'll enjoy it.
Molecular basis of life basically should've been called biochemistry, because it's jam packed with genetics. That's literally all they've been talking about, DNA, enzymes, amino acids blah blah blah and then I had this teacher who kept banging on about p53 for 4 weeks, I still haven't found out what that is.

Revision is back on for me, and more practicals yaay! that's like a huge factor of why I chose biochem. Experiments, this coming week im going to have 2 practicals till 9pm. I was lucky with practical timing last semester so i'm not going to complain. 

Because I've kept banging on about my chemistry exam for so long I thought I should share the result as well, *drum roll* I got a 2.1 (B) I was kind of surprised and relieved at the same time. I expected the worst because of how the exam went and also because I knew in my heart that I could've done more. I'm not fond of doing post mortems on exams so I wont go into that.

And that's all for this week, peace out