Blog Response to Aug 17

One thing that surprised me (to a degree) was that our brains are capable of learning any subject we want. I feel like on some level I already knew this, but I have heard from teachers/professors over the years say or hint at the idea that some people are “cut out” for certain subjects. I feel like this has maybe been a source for some of the reasons why I have questioned if I was “cut out” for medical school when I struggle in a course. It is honestly really nice to know that scientifically this is not true and that I can learn and accomplish anything I want (oddly makes me feel a little more confident)!

I also really enjoyed the TED talk video that was included in our first set of lectures. I had never thought of our focus being like a pinball machine. It was interesting to think about how we needed to break down our learning in order to integrate it into our brain to keep it as new knowledge. I feel like so often it is stressed to us that we are building on old things, but this analogy showed me the importance of understanding the basis of the new topic to be able to add it to what we already knew to help understand the bigger picture.

In the TED talk procrastination was discussed as well. I knew that once you procrastinated on tasks several times that it became easier to do so. I just thought that was because it became a pattern or habit. I did not know before this lecture that it was because it was linked to physical pain. This was interesting to learn and made me wonder if that pain was possibly linked to other things like stress which made me want to procrastinate even less.

In the last lecture in this set we discussed that science was a process, which is something I feel I am quite familiar with. However, I did not realize how many steps, and people were involved with a scientific publication.