Flow vs Schedule

I have one hard rule in Dominica: there are no rules. Except the one saying there are no rules.
Ahem. Let me start again.

I'm currently sitting on a broken chair in my kitchen, waiting for 1.5 liters of oatmeal to cool and watching some baby ants do their thing in my kitchen. Wait a second, Im thousands of times bigger than them. Excuse me for a second.

I'm currently sitting on a broken chair in my kitchen, eating some of the 1.5 liters of cooked oatmeal and wondering if the ants understood the message I left them. After all, it only takes one ant to deliver a message...and there is only one ant left. I'm taking an easy morning, as I decided not to hit up the market and just sleep in (where sleeping in means waking at 7AM). Of course, I wouldnt need to sleep in had I not been studying till 12:30. "But Arthur", I can hear you saying, "what happened to sleeping at 11pm?"

Flow happened. And lecture based studying happened. And apparently, a loss of proper sentence structure as well.

When I first started, I was studying in 30 minute blocks with 5 minute breaks, during which I'd usually go outside, refill my water bottle and hit up the bathroom or just enjoy the view. But without bothering to configure my watch each time (a 30 second ordeal to begin with) I would end up taking longer breaks and slow the progress down. It also became harder to measure progress. Thus, I switched it up so that I would study each lecture from beginning to end where possible, and then take longer breaks between. By avoiding the disjointed reading, I could practice recalling more of the lecture as a whole, instead of just individual parts, and as a result I'd get much better Flow.

Flow (witha  capital F) is something that a lot of artists and psychologists mention, but is hard to control. Its a state where everything feels great, and you're in control and producing amazing work. And like a good wave, you want to ride it out for as long as possible. Or, put another way, its like hitting the Turbo boost button while playing Mario Kart. I don't really understand it, or pretend to. But I do know that my sweet spot for flow tends to be later in the evenings, around 9 or 10.

Well, shit. How does that help me? It doesn't. I start getting into some sweet studying right as I'm about to head to sleep, and because I go through an entire lecture before quitting now, it means I stay up much later. Then I need to wake up at 6AM and wonder what the hell I was thinking sacrificing an entire day of alertness for just one hour of good work. I've done this for the last 3 days in a row, and I need to remind myself not to do it again.

Another reminder: eat more fiber Arthur. You sit down in a library for over 12 hous a day. Your large intestines are not particularly pleased with your lifestyle choice, no need to make their work harder with 4 meals consisting entirely of pasta. The coffee you've had for the last 3 days also works against the lifestyle you are trying to build. Allright, Thursday doesn't count, that one was mostly for pleasure anyway.

Additionaly, there's the problem of doing the work vs completing the hours. I probably mentioned this once already, but one important aspect of med school is learning and memorizing the concepts one studies in class. By my second week, I kept making notes in class without continually testing my knowledge of the material, which is when I started feeling like I didn't know anything. This led to a lot of stress, bigtime. I didn't actually realize anything was wrong until I had just had lunch, with a full stomach, and I still had a big appetite and wanted to eat more. That's when I realized just how stressed I was. As you are no doubt aware, many other people also use food as stress relief, but I guess its a good thing I realized early on and changed up my methods.

What I ended up doing, oddly enough, was taking a friend's advice and reading 4 or 5 slides and trying to completely understand each one before taking down any notes. This forces you to, at the very least, have basic memory recollection that goes beyond 10 seconds, which I had fallen victim to. I also added a second manner of note-taking, which is a list. Every time there's a word/compound/toxin/enzyme/disease with significance, it goes on that list. It effectively serves as a flashcard/memorization tool that I go through the next day to try and recall everything I can. If I make a mistake or forget something, its obvious the mental association I made wasn't good enough.

For example: "be careful not to snap off the snare, its sensitive" refers to the V-SNARE and T-SNARE transport targetting molecules, which lock onto a membrane, and the SNAP and NSF (n-something Sensitive Factor) proteins, which unlock the SNARES. Of course, an important protein in this complex is Rab(Ras-associated factor in the Brain), which is easy to confuse with Ras (the superfamily of G-binding proteins) and Ran (Ras-associated factor in the Nucleus that tells importin and exportin when to release their cargo).

As soon as I notice a confusion between Rab/Ras/Ran, I have come across what one study tool called "interference". Its confusion between two terms/ideas/ways of remembering things. For example, I might mentally define the Posterior Longitudinal Ligament of the spine as the one posterior to (behind) the anterior ligament, but then again, I could also give that same definition to the Ligamentum Flavum, or the Transverse Ligament, or even the Superspinous Ligament. You really need to address interference as soon as you realize it, because instead of learning one thing wrong, you basically learn two things wrong.

After the list, I then force myself to use the concept map again for studying, but because slightly more time has been removed since reading the lecture slides, it becomes more challenging to remember every point, as well as the organization behind it. 'Why did the prof mention this' or 'where would this fact go' are questions that really help you categorize the knowledge in your head. It took me a few days to realize that just about everything can be answered by one of the following questions.
Is it describing a characteristic? a structure? a function? a process? is it a category? a component? a disease?

Finally, a word about color-coding the drinking water in Dominica

• Brown = its raining somewhat heavily
• No water = its raining too heavily and the city/school shut off water
• White = the school just added chlorine to their water reserves
• Bubbly = they just changed a water filter, some air bubbles got trapped and now look like soda pop thats been shaken.
• clear = probably drinkable, if its not your home tap water.

Thus, to reiterate and modify:

• keep specific lists
• keep mind-maps hierarchical, but only create them after reading several slides 
• always smile and keep positive, it really helps with...
• focus. be vigilant, notice when the mind strays and keep it chained to its post
• do your stretches
• don't worry about the grades, worry about the process
• go to sleep as soon as the alarm rings, even when you are in the Flow

PS: its very easy to feel isolated, make sure you send letters/emails/communicate via phone or skype with friends and family back home until you create your own small family here. You won't really realize how isolated you are at times, until its too late. I set aside a good half hour or so each day, either for blogging or chatting. Its like sleep: inefficient but essential.