My new Academic Year Resolutions

First year of medicine has probably been one of the hardest years of my life. But I've learned so much along the way, I can't actually regret it. However, this new academic year, which I started two days ago, feels like a brand new opportunity, and therefore I'm going to do something I've never done before: A resolutions list. Here are the things I want to improve this year, the mantras I want to run in my head every single day when I wake up:

• You're not stupid. If you fail, then try again. There are always new chances to improve what you do. 
• Start moving your ass. You need to lose weight and get in shape, for your own physical and mental health. Join the gym, start running early in the mornings. Anything. 
• Work every day, be organized. Buy an agenda and actually use it. Get a binder and keep it organized, so you know what you have to study and when you learnt it. 
• Eat healthier. Your body is what allows you to enjoy your life. If your body is not healthy, neither is your mind. Healthy food can be delicious and you know it. 
• Allow yourself to dream. If you want to become a doctor and a writer, then dream of it. Dreaming is the first step to making your dream come true. Don't be afraid of your desires. 
• Enjoy your days at uni. Go to the cafeteria with your classmates whenever you can, have fun in practices and classes, learn as much as you can, be nice to those who you love and value. Be nice even to those people who you don't like. 
• Read more. If you really want to read, make the time for it. You spend a lot of time every day traveling in the metro. 
• Write more. You've joined a Creative Writing group. Go to every single class every sunday morning, and don't be afraid of reading out loud what you've written. Nobody starts being an expert, you have to learn, and that's a long process. Write just for the sake of it. You love creating worlds. Nothing's stoping you. 
• If you want to go have a drink with your friends, indulge yourself. You can't spend every waking hour studying, you'll go insane. Balance the things you love most in your life, there are 24 hours in your day, make the best of them. An afternoon with your friends won't make you fail a single subject. 
• Be confident. You have many treats you don't realize. The people around you love you because of those treats, they must be true. You're human, and you're a miracle just for that single fact.
• Tell the people you love that you love them. If you wanna kiss them, kiss them. If you wanna hug them, hug them. If you wanna tell them they're fantastic, tell them they're fantastic, because they are. 
• Read all the books you have left. They're overflowing your book-shelves, and you're dying to read them. Do it. 
• Be excited for your niece. You're going to become an aunt come February. You're going to have a new life in your hands, and it's going to be so exciting. You'll show the world to this little girl, you'll read to her, you'll dance and sing with her, you'll make her laugh and she'll make you laugh. 
• Enjoy the rain. You love the rain. Take a book and a hot cup of chocolate and think that life has given you the best gift in the world. Put on a film, on comfy pajamas, make hot chocolate and croutons and have a wonderful afternoon with mom. 
• Be grateful every single day for the things you have. You're so lucky, you have no idea. 

Musical Mondays #1: Soothing Andrew

I discovered Andrew Bird thanks to tumblr. When I first saw his blog I thought "who is this guy?" and being the curious little melomaniac I am the only possible outcome was going to youtube and listening to some of his songs. 

Little I knew this guy was going to become my favorite musician ever. 

There's something very special about Andrew's music. He's a prolific artist, composing and singing his own songs and playing every instrument that lands in his talented hands. As certain organization put it, he's a one-man orchestra of the imagination. 

And that's exactly what you get. Pure imagination. Andrew's not afraid of experimenting. His music is unique, exceptional, moving, touching. Maybe I'm biased but I had never fell so fast in love with a musician jus by listening to a single live performance. When I listen to his songs, I feel like there's something that finally gets me. Every single note plucked out of his violin brings up a story in my mind that I die to write. 

These songs envelope you and bring you back to a train trip that arrives to an old european city, they take you to some magical place in which you can find cozy wood houses in the forest, to lighthouses overlooking the wild sea from the top of a white cliff, to a cold island in which seals play like little kids and to whatever other scenario your mind can make up. 

I always listen to his songs whenever I'm writing, because it gives me the perfect mood for the things I want to capture in the pages of my notebook. His lyrics are wise and cunning, and his music is always tender and playful. At least these are the things I feel with songs like this. 

Besides, there's no better way to start a monday. Even more if it is the monday just before my anatomy exam. 

I'd tell you more about Andrew's music, but you have to discover him bit by bit, unravel every song and make it yours. Maybe he doesn't have the cleanest voice, or the most beautiful one, but he's such a great artist that it doesn't matter. His music makes you feel lots of things, and his whistles... Oh, how he whistles. 

____________________________ 

Have you ever listened to Andrew Bird's music before? 

What did you think about it? 

Inspiring Books for Young Scientists #1 | Letters to a Young Scientist

"Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career--both his successes and his failures--and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans' depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being's modest place in the planet's ecosystem in his readers"

There's something really comforting about science. At least I think so. The fact that we can know the world we live in with depth is something awesome. I've always loved that feeling that comes with looking at the things that surround you and knowing them to the chore. Quite literally. Seeing the world in waves, in heat exchange, in molecules and atoms and stardust has a poetic, novel-like side. That's why I decide to become a doctor. Because I want to know what makes people up, and I want to fix them when they have health problems. 

I got my hands on this books just in the right moment. And I loved it to bits. These 21 letters are written by Edward O. Wilson, one of the most famous entomologist of the scientific world. He started as a child, chasing bugs with a butterfly net in his backyard and filled with child determination. And one day he became really interested in ants. Yep, ants. I wasn't very sure at first, because I didn't know what I was going to find inside this book. It turned out to be surprisingly fascinating. Wilson tells us all about his career, right from the beginning. He uses some of his discoveries as examples, and he doesn't hesitate to talk about his failures too. 

What really stuck with me of all the things he exposes in this book, is the fact that to be successful in your scientific career, you need determination and hard work. That's all. You don't need to be the new Einstein to get where you want to get. If you work with a fierce desire of being good at what you do, you'll be good. No, let me fix that. You'll be great. You can not let yourself be intimidated by the knowledge your peers have, because you have knowledge too. The fact that other people succeed doesn't mean you can't do it too. 

Another valuable advice is to get yourself surrounded by hard-working, passionate people. You'll see how others work, their creativity will enhance yours, and it will always be more fun and it will make the scientific experience 100% wrath it. But now I want to say that I'm not talking just about scientists, this is applicable to any field: art, literature, architecture, law, business... I don't know, name the profession and the only sure thing that I can tell you is that passion gets you anywhere. 

I'm really thankful for this book, because it made me remember that illusion I felt the first time I put on a white coat, the first time I got my hands on a human body (like, a cadaver) (yeah, yeah, this might sound strange for non-medical people but, what can I do, these things interest me!) or that memorable time we dissected a pig's heart in the high school's lab and I was like a child with a new toy while Al was trying not to throw up in the corner. 

This book is obviously directed to young students of biology, but it can be a little conductor of light for those moments in which spending hours glued to your chair doesn't feel worth it. So I urge every young biologist, chemist, physicist, doctor, nurse, geologist, pathologist... to go to the nearest bookshop, buy this book, and read it. And you'll learn incredible things about ants! 

I'm aware this is not a book for everyone. It talks a lot about the biochemistry of ant's organisms, and some people might find that boring. I thought I wouldn't enjoy it very much for this same reason, but in the end I found myself being really amused by the way ant's world works. Trust me, it's more fascinating than it seems. I swear. 

My first steps in the scientific world haven't been easy. But I'm sure they are leading me in the right way, and I'm starting to walk on with more strength every day. 

P.S: 5 points for those who spot the Sherlock reference. 

_________________________

What about you? Have you ever found one of those 

books who just made you see everything under a new light?