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тнιs ιs ηιgнтιηgαℓε тяүιηg {a gyg blog}

hi, my name is nightingale and welcome to my blog!

i’m starting IAS levels this year! you’ll notice i’ll never refer to the academic year as “year 12” — that’s because i’m not currently in the UK and so am at an international school which just happens to offer both the british and american stream. i’m also 15 years old — because of the differences in the school system at my current school and the UK, i ended up taking my IGCSEs early. it’s all very weird, so bear with me :^_^:

this year, i’m taking biology, chemistry, physics and maths. i’m am aspiring medic, hoping to study medicine at cambridge — ambitious, i know. but i’m so keen on going there, and it wouldn’t hurt to try, right?

my current interests in medicine are psychiatry and neurosurgery. i’ve been interested in psychiatry for a while, but neurosurgery has only been something i’ve gotten into recently — it’s fascinating! i know the two specialities do intersect a lot, which is also great.

my IGCSE grades:

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my IAS subjects:

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random facts about me:

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here’s my current to-do list:

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my reading list:

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it’s not much, but i hope this’ll interest you! bear in mind updates may be sporadic because i’m never consistent with things like these :awesome:

(edited 4 years ago)

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Reply 1

sadforsadboys

Hi Nightingale! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your iGCSE results. You did fantastic given our current circumstance and I'm sure you'll do great with your IALs! :party:

Can you tag me in your journey? I'm curious to see how you do over the academic year. And would you like to be tagged in my blog once I get things up and running?

Reply 2

username5288204

Original post by emilynxlan

Hi Nightingale! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your iGCSE results. You did fantastic given our current circumstance and I'm sure you'll do great with your IALs! :party:

Can you tag me in your journey? I'm curious to see how you do over the academic year. And would you like to be tagged in my blog once I get things up and running?

i would love that! and will do x
thank you btw!

Reply 3

username5288204

i’ve had to force myself to stay away from posting until i’d at least completed my math homework and ticked off another thing off my to-do list since i’d probably jinx myself... sigh. if i so much as think positively about progress i’ve made it’ll disappear the next day faster than you can blink. i’m convinced i have some sort of curse :frown:

anyways, in the days since that first post i’ve pretty much completed all but two units of my math homework, which inshaAllah i’ll do today! our teacher had originally assigned us two entire chapters with no elaboration whatsoever with only one week of summer to spare and then suddenly dropped the bomb today that all we really had to do was the first and last few questions from each exercise... all those tears for nothing. sigh.

in addition to my math homework i’ve also gotten started on the further reading! i had a quick look through PubMed but haven’t downloaded anything yet, but i started reading the various books on medicine i’d downloaded. so far i’ve read This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay which is EXTREMELY funny, full of profanity and sarcasm :u:

it gets depressing near the end and i found myself feeling his exhaustion and his distress as i read. i would fully recommend it.

i also started on Do No Harm by Henry Marsh which is a really good book on the life of Henry himself, a neurosurgeon. it’s extremely interesting and the descriptions of the surgeries he carries out are stunning. at one point he described his view of the patient’s brain as if it were a Greek garden which was so beautiful. i’ve had to highlight so many of the descriptions, there’s many great quotes in there. i’m barely 1/4 through but i’m enjoying it. hopefully i’m not jinxing myself once again :catfight:

i also had to go into school to collect my books today. the physics textbook is legit the size of a uni textbook and the chapters look so complicated which is just freaking me out. biology looks okay but there’s so much content and once again it’s a really big book. chemistry looks gross as usual. in conclusion i am not ready and on the brink of a nervous breakdown but i’ll live :pinch:

(i won’t)

i hate to-do lists because me making plans basically equals me cursing everything in my path, i learnt that the hard way last year. i’ll try to complete the last two units of my math homework (this is me trying really hard not to make any tangible plan) and for the next few days i need to sort through all the IGCSE stuff i mentioned in the last post.

speaking of this is me trying, this blog name was actually inspired by the taylor swift song this is me trying, which is an album track and my favourite on her latest album folklore, aka album of the year. i go by nightingale, which is inspired by the title of my favourite demi lovato song (more like favourite song in the universe)!

stream folklore for clear skin and awesome A level grades if you haven’t already :catfight:

anyways that’s it for today. i’ll post again once i’ve done the last of my homework and sorted through all the other stuff. as of now what i really need to do is get my **** together and try to stay mentally sane... we’ll see about that.

until then!

tags:

Spoiler

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 4

sadforsadboys

Original post by nightingalegend

hello again!

i’ve had to force myself to stay away from posting until i’d at least completed my math homework and ticked off another thing off my to-do list since i’d probably jinx myself... sigh.

Bro SAME

Reply 5

username5288204

Original post by emilynxlan

Bro SAME

the struggle is very real

Reply 6

Chemusen

Those are some amazing GCSE results! Can I be tagged?

Reply 7

username5288204

Original post by MidnightSymphony

Those are some amazing GCSE results! Can I be tagged?

sure! and thank you so much <3

Reply 8

sadforsadboys

Good luck with school my dude!

Reply 9

username5288204

i cba to write a whole new post — it’s legit 3 am and i can’t sleep whoo are we surprised? insomniacs rise!

anyways i did the bio stuff which i’m really happy about, although it really wasn’t necessary as we’ll most likely cover it again later on in the year, but i have never managed to adhere to a to-do list so ticking everything off is a huge step.

school starts tomorrow at 9 and i’m meant to wake up at 7 but who cares? coffee exists.

i’m around 50 pages away from finishing Do No Harm! it’s an awesome book. i love how each chapter starts with a medical term and a definition, each of which i’ve highlighted.

i also haven’t been on twitter in a bit which is great — stan twitter is addictive. i don’t want to spend too much time on it. twitter is full of drama and tea whereas tsr is a lot more civil, so spending time on here isn’t as bad. it’s easier to log off whereas with twitter... it’s impossible.

i’ll update next saturday hopefully (where i live school starts on a sunday and ends on a thursday) so we’ll see how the first week of school starts.

to all those starting next week, good luck! if you’re starting year 10, you can do it! don’t let yourself get too caught up in the stress but work hard :smile:

if you’re going into year 11, boy oh boy make sure you don’t go insane but try your best to enjoy the year while studying well. if you’re going into year 12, let’s have mental breakdowns and jump off cliffs together <3

until then!

tags:

Spoiler

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 10

username5288204

Original post by emilynxlan

Good luck with school my dude!

thank you! and you too if you’re going back :heart:

Reply 11

sadforsadboys

Original post by nightingalegend

thank you! and you too if you’re going back :heart:

I've another wee while until I start but I'll take all the luck I can get :h:

Reply 12

NurseCarol

Wow, congrats on those grades!! I have a question, I kind of fancy making a blog, how do you make one? <3

Reply 13

username5288204

Original post by nursingstudentuk

Wow, congrats on those grades!! I have a question, I kind of fancy making a blog, how do you make one? <3

thank you! it’s relatively simple, to increase font size just put [ size = (plus sign) 2 ] and to decrease do [ size = (minus sign) 2 ] (without any spaces between the text or the code) and then end with [ / size], again without any spaces. if you want to change the colour of the text, just do [ colour = (your option) ] (choose, without the rounded brackets) and then end with [ /colour ] without the spaces, and so on. i used an insta fonts copy paste website for the font in the tile, and also make sure you tag those who ask to be tagged in a spoiler at the end of the post so that they’re notified whenever you post a new update!

i’m also new to this is bear with me lol :smile:

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 14

greenapples2

wishing you the best of luck <3 please tag me (:

Reply 15

username5288204

Original post by mpaprika

wishing you the best of luck <3 please tag me (:

will do! thank you so much, you too 💓

Reply 16

NurseCarol

Original post by nightingalegend

thank you

but honestly I dont even know how you started this thread lol. Is it like a normal thread? Like where it says 'start a discussion'?

Reply 17

username5288204

Original post by nursingstudentuk

thank you

but honestly I dont even know how you started this thread lol. Is it like a normal thread? Like where it says 'start a discussion'?

yup! just started a discussion lol and made the forum grow your grades

Reply 18

NurseCarol

Original post by emilynxlan

Hi Nightingale! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your iGCSE results. You did fantastic given our current circumstance and I'm sure you'll do great with your IALs! :party:

Can you tag me in your journey? I'm curious to see how you do over the academic year. And would you like to be tagged in my blog once I get things up and running?

I'd like to start a blog too, shall we follow each other as well? :smile:

Reply 19

username5288204

04/09/2020

so um, i’m still alive but barely... it’s only been a week!

they legit just threw us into the workload at full force. my science teachers still haven’t unleashed the storm yet but my math teacher, who also taught us throughout IGCSE, has no darn mercy. i’m TIREDT.

a subject-by-subject summary of my week:

biology:

biology... oh the glorious biology. we’ve covered a considerable amount of content in just one week, definitely a lot faster than at IGCSE. although that may be because of the fact that our IGCSE biology teacher taught us by the speed of a snail...

anyways, so far we’ve covered differences between plant and animal cells in quite some detail, did light and scanning/transmission electron microscopes (yawn, so boring :boring:

) and magnification, calibration of an ocular micrometre, field of view (i spent the entirety of the two lessons we spent on microscopy reading on my phone — such an awesome student, totally cambridge material),,, and then we started on the ultrastructure of a cell, which we’re still on. i actually find this really interesting, and surprisingly enjoyed it.

as for homework, for the past three or so days we’ve been getting short tasks as homework everyday, just 3-5 MCQs on the topic we’ve covered that day. our teacher’s also pretty good and moves onto topics quite quickly but not so quickly that it’s disorientating. i have to make notes on bio pretty much everyday or i’ll fall behind and understand nothing, however — it’s wild.

chemistry:

so... chem. at first it was really boring as we were just going over the most basic IGCSE chemistry but now we’ve started the more interesting topics — orbitals and all that. i understand chemistry for a change! i really don’t want to jinx it, so i’m just praying that i manage to stay sane as chem progresses because i know it’s considered to be one of the most difficult A levels. (i’m always making my life harder for myself lmao,,, girl who told you to choose medicine, of all courses, at cambridge, of all unis?)

the homework is actually fine, we don’t get much. i honestly really like our teacher. i just wish she’d move a little faster with topics, but oh well.

physics:

i’ll be honest here, physics is really boring right now. that’s only because we’re learning all the basic calculations needed for AS physics — SI prefixes, derived quantities into base units, adding vectors, stuff like that. i just hope this part ends quickly because i’m quite eager to start the actual physics.

i legit don’t know how i’m saying this, i literally hate physics...

i’m starting to realise i sound like a nerd when i’m the total opposite — i hate everything to do with school lmao. who dis? not me, that’s fo sho.

(anyways)

maths:

and finally... maths!
(ew)

where the **** to start... SO. MUCH. RUDDY. HOMEWORK.

our teacher literally does not give a flying duck about how much we have to do with other subjects. in her world, math is the only subject to exist.

why are all highschool math teachers literally psychos...

anyways, maths is boring rn (i’ve said this three times already lmao) because i covered all the topics we’ve done this week when i was doing the math homework. the only thing keeping me sane right now is the fact that i’d completed all the exercises (except for one but oh well) for the first two chapters in the summer... once we get to chapter 3 i’m doomed.

need i say more? i’m dying over here :broken:

anyways, onto the nicer stuff i’ve voluntarily done this week!

i’ve finished Do No Harm and When Breath Becomes Air. i’d say WBBA is my favourite, it’s a beautiful book. i almost cried at Lucy’s epilogue. DNH made me laugh quite a few times because the man curses so much but he’d always struck me as the kind who was too civilised to cuss :lol:

i also subscribed to a couple podcasts; Oxford Psychiatry and MedConversations! i’m looking for something that links neurosurgery and psychiatry together, both of which i find fascinating. if any one has any suggestions, please let me know! :woo:

i’m currently reading Emperor of all Maladies. it’s over a thousand pages long,,, wow. i also downloaded a book on landmark cases in forensic psychology, just to have a read around. i found a book on neurosurgery/psychiatry but couldn’t find the free versions of it, sigh. i also started on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. i’ve barely read 100 pages yet so i can’t really say much on it, but i do love how Oliver Sacks has an interest in both neurology and psychology/psychiatry, so i should probably check his other works out once i finish the one’s i’ve downloaded :excited: