For the past few years I have had a mindset where I have thought the busier a person is, the more successful they are. If someone has more on their plate than I do, they\u2019re a better person, they\u2019re working harder, and they\u2019re smarter. This fall, being a senior, I\u2019ve been working to reprioritize, so that I didn\u2019t spend my senior year feeling miserable, but \u201csuccessful\u201d. I think that being in this class with this kind of philosophy I was validated in my efforts. My parents are both doctors, many of my aunts and uncles are doctors or have careers in the medical field. I feel as if I know a lot about it, and it\u2019s not something that I want to pursue. I\u2019m a Biology and Environmental Science double major and I\u2019m interested in public health and infectious diseases, specifically bacterial infections. I usually find myself in classes full of pre-med students. I am not pre-med. I find that in many times the people in my classes are riddled with anxiety that seems to be contagious and makes me feel inadequate. It makes being there a lot less fun. It\u2019s harder to have intellectual conversations about the implications of what we learn or wider societal problems because so many people are just asking, \u201cwill this be on the final?\u201d and I find myself wondering, \u201cshould I be more worried about the final?\u201d<\/p>\n
I went into this class knowing that it would be a lot of work since it was both Anatomy and Physiology in just one month. In the past, I\u2019ve looked at my academics and thought that if I wanted to do well in a class, I was probably going to be stressed at some point. I thought that if I was more stressed out I was working harder and putting more effort in the class. On the first day of this class, Dr. K challenged us to be conscious of our stress levels throughout the semester. Before the first quiz and exam I tried to maintain a lower stress level and be comfortable with just knowing what I knew at the time. I ended up not doing as well as I wanted to on those first assessments. My instincts immediately wanted to revert back to they way I\u2019ve thought in the past. I thought the reason I had not done as well as I had wanted to was because I wasn\u2019t stressed enough.<\/p>\n
Throughout the rest of the semester I tried really hard to fight that urge. As long as I was putting effort into the class and doing my best, I had no reason to stress. Getting to be at Colby and living amongst my friends and peers and leading some kind of holistic life that makes me feel fulfilled is a more important than how I do in one class. This is not to say that I didn\u2019t care about this class and stopped trying. I just tried to shift my perspective. I tried my best to find new ways to learn the material that worked for me, and I definitely put time into learning this material. However, I tried to trust myself. At the end of the day, I knew what I knew, and that was FINE. Getting enough sleep, talking to my friends, reading for pleasure, not being so stressed I couldn\u2019t sleep through the night, were all more important to me than staying awake for one more hour just to freak out about whether or not I knew enough of the material. I have appreciated the philosophy behind this class, and I am saddened by the fact that it\u2019s been so rare in my Colby career.<\/p>\n
Here are some videos of my friend Callie and I studying together that might be helpful for others IMG_2858<\/a> IMG_2856<\/a> IMG_2838<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the past few years I have had a mindset where I have thought the busier a person is, the more successful they are. If someone has more on their plate than I do, they\u2019re a better person, they\u2019re working harder, and they\u2019re smarter. This fall, being a senior, I\u2019ve been working to reprioritize, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bi265-humananatomyatcolby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}