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Completing the Last Year of Biomedical Engineering

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I am trying the Grow Your Grades blog competition again but this time I am hoping to be more prolific with what I write. For the last Grow Your Grades competition I believe I had only written a total of 3 posts for an entire year. This time I am hoping to be more successful. Now I am on my final year of my engineering degree at Politechnika Śląska in Biomedical Engineering and in this rendition of the theme I am hoping to get 5s for all of my subjects. Admittedly I am a very late contestant but I see this contest more as an opportunity to write rather than to win a Mac Book. To be honest, I do not like Mac Books because they do not seem to be worth the hype.

I will be starting my sixth semester very soon, which consists of the following subjects:

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Embedded Systems [4]

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Medical Electronic Equipment [1]

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Medical Image Analysis [2]

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Programming in Python [1]

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Virtual Reality Modelling [6]

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Introduction to Graphical Programming [4]

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Elective Subject (Yet to be Decided) [4]

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Algorithms and Data Structures [2]

The past few semesters for me have been alright, in the end I managed to pass them with an average of 4+ / 5 but I feel I could have studied the subjects more effectively, not to mention to avoid being brainwashed by certain seemingly "productive" concepts and ways of life.

In addition to my core subjects, I will see if I can find ways to handle other matters way:

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The Development of my Technical Polish Proficiency

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Learning German to A2 Proficiency and Icelandic to B2 Proficiency

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Attempt to Write some Research Reviews

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Develop my Portfolio of Tangible Skills Further Overall

I have to admit that from my experience over the past semesters I am not a fan of cramming as many subjects into a day as possible. Recently I have taken a more essentialist approach to life, as very few things in life are important, which should make this blog more interesting considering the number of subjects I have. One comment I would like to make is that the idea that one can have it all (unbridled ambition) and must work oneself to the ground seems to be dangerous and life-destroying "wisdom". In trying to become everything we become masters of none in the end, and we end up with shallow knowledge or a shallow level of skill that would not be actionable in any real life situation. The only thing to be gained from such a way of life is face value, that you show others how much of a tough cookie you are for drowning yourself in work when in the end it turned out to be absolutely pointless.

May this blog be more fruitful than the last. Any questions about my subjects are very much welcome.

(edited 3 years ago)

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username4972306

Books That Students Must Read (24 - MAR - 2021)

You would often find on many websites and especially on the video site Youtube countless recommendations for what students should be reading now and which books will help you in the future. The self-help industry has certainly opened the eyes of many people to a wealth of possibilities for personal development, however the ways in which personal development are recommended to be cultivated can cause a greater nightmare or the exact same nightmare that they are claiming to fix. If you look at famous celebrities in the science field such as Elon Musk they talk about working for an insane number of hours each day and to spend every ounce of your breath working on something. From time to time they have good advice for achieving success but the problem with a highly success driven society is that people are often put under pressure, it could be peer-pressure, parental pressure or simply being influenced by many of today's societal messages, to make themselves extraordinarily busy because hard-work will always pay off in the long-run. However, hard-work is necessary in the initial stages of any lifelong goals but it can start becoming a burden and even a hindrance to goals if not applied correctly. The trap that many students, including I, have fallen into is that of non-essentialism.

The book that had saved my sanity at university was not in fact anything written about how to do more in less time, but the practice of the disciplined pursuit of less. If there is one book that everyone should read, I would say it should be Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.

As a university student I have thus far not achieved much not because I was lazy but because I was trying to do too many things at once. There appears to be a certain glory in being skilled in so many things and having knowledge in so many different areas, but as an answer to my previous posts, having both breadth and depth takes a long time and trying to do too many things in parallel instead of sequentially is a recipe for disaster. After having burned out several times I was starting to ponder about whether I was deeply flawed because so many other people seem to work extremely hectic schedules and they appear to be successful and happy, and here I was at university being overworked, unhappy, having falling grades, missing assignments and not seeing much progress in any of my side hustles. The problem was not necessarily that I was putting in too much work, but that I was spreading myself too thinly in the hopes of trying to impress everyone around me. This book put me back on track on life, and while I have not finished reading it yet, it brings up a number of good points:

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Thinking is often viewed as being a waste of time but it is necessary to take a break from work or studies to evaluate whether you are going in the right direction and whether any course corrections need to be taken. Without any self-evaluation in the heat of the moment of working yourself to death you improve less career-wise and are on the same level as a lazy person.

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Limits are everywhere and not knowing them or not knowing how to work with them will always lead to burnout. The possibilities of the human mind and body are said to be limitless, but only if you work on a prioritised set of skills consistently for years. You can't become superman overnight and you certainly can't become superman by thinking that you can do everything within a day.

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When you get inspiration to do something or you see something new and wonderful to do evaluate it first but don't immediately act on it because in life you have to always differentiate the good opportunities from those that are excellent.

One important introductory point that the author makes is how the word priority used to only exist in the English language in its singular form, but after the industrial revolution it became plural and its rather ironic to see many CEOs and bosses of companies talk about having so many priorities when in reality they should only be having a few because trying to work on so many things at once will always lead to only making very small increments of progress everyday. The main takeaway point here is that in the world of education and employment trying to cram as much as possible into an already busy day might seem like common sense and be viewed as honourable because you are preparing better for your future, but you cannot prepare for a future in this way when you will be a jack of all trades but a master of none because your skills and knowledge will be too shallow to be applicable in any field. The main advice of the book, therefore, is to take an essentialist approach to your life and cut out all that does not serve and only focus on cultivating opportunities/skills that are the best for your situation based on self-reflection and evaluation. This is often hard because as humans we have an innate fear of failure, so doing many things at once can also be thought of as a retrospectfully in-vain strategy to stave off the fear of failure because if we are invested in so many things then that would mean that if one thing fails we are still alright because we have many other things on the burner that are bound not to fail. In the end, everything fails because we never manage to get anything off the ground from such a bloated workload that we have burdened ourselves with. Perhaps to remedy the situation when focusing on one thing we should try to prevent failure from occurring instead of worrying about.

This post is of course an oversimplification of what the book has to offer, but by no means is it encouraging people to be lazy. In an attempt to become everything to everyone, we become nothing.