Does samsung ship with fedex

I've discovered that I enjoy working with samples a lot more than fiddling with envelopes and modulations. I know I can use software like the Auto-Sampler built into Logic to take a sample and turn it into an instrument. Take the sample, specify the section that should loop when the instrument is sustained, and then you can play it like an instrument. Looks a lot like granular synthesis with large granules to me, but I can't seem to find a standalone product with this capability.
What hardware does this?

i just finished my freshman year of college, and basically it was pretty rough. at first, drinking and going out was fun with my friends but then it just got so bad.
i went back to therapy for a few reasons during my second semester, but this made things worse in a sense. everytime i would drink and someone said something to me that i (usually misinterpreted) interpreted as mean or triggering, i would scream/cry at them. most nights ended up with me sobbing walking home alone. there were a few times where my hurt feelings were valid like being abandoned at a party by my friends, but most was an overreaction. i talked about it with my friends that this happened with and they have been forgiving and mostly understanding, but i still feel pretty embarrassed about this happening multiple times.
but now that i am home for the summer, i’ve decided that if i am not in a good mental space, i absolutely should not be consuming alcohol. and since i’m home, i’m taking a break all summer, and plan to avoid drinking events next year(and not hang out with people who only want to drink).
because i’m home alone with my thoughts i can’t stop replaying these nights or other embarrassing things that happened on nights out. does anyone have any advice for dealing with this??
i have been forgiven by people i have hurt while drunk and most events i’m embarrassed about were so long ago and genuinely forgotten about by my friends, but i keep beating myself up over it, and wondering how people at school perceive me.

I cant see anything on the unraid webgui except the app title and the links under it, and nothing happens when I click them. Not playable in plex, although plex does see the tuners and refreshed guide successfully.
Any ideas? I did turn off ffmpg transcoding earlier if that has anything to do with it and increased the buffer to 2s.

Hello, I rebuilt my database and the webman mod stopped working. I tried reinstalling webman mod with the installer but all it does is create a “webMAN MOD” folder on the xmb instead of the webman games folder it should normally create.
I am very lost right now and any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

Was just thinking about past nba teams with nicknames...lob city, bad boys, run tmc, and even the heatles, etc [pls add if you can think of any more] and was wondering when do we stop using the beam team nickname? Never? When the core is gone? And who really is the core? Fox, Domas, Keegan? Does it include huerter and monk?

Hypothetical situation: Player A plays a match against player B, has an advantage and will win the duel in his incoming battle phase. His opponent knows that he is in a disadvantageous situation, but not that his loss is imminent. Player A plays with an activated copy of "Convulsion of Nature", so both players can see the upper card of their decks. Also, A has a mechanic that allows him to shuffle the deck countless amounts of times. For the sakes of this example, let’s say he has an active „Card Shuffle“ without a once per turn clause.
Player A, who does douchebaggery for a living, decides to make his opponent nervous and also cut short the remaining match time. Using Card Shuffle, he sacrifices 7800 Life Points to shuffle his own deck 26 times, then he finally makes the winning play. His opponent complains about slow play, but the player defends himself by claiming that he waits for his opponent to cut the deck (after the shuffle) in a way that positions a good card for him on the top (aka bottom) to draw if he decided to use a draw mechanic.
Is that legal?

I usually smoke carts and make my own from distillate, I wanna get into dabbing, eventually getting a whole rig. I wanted to try something like a nectar collector or maybe the Yocan Falcon but I’m afraid they’re cheap or gimmicky, I had a Yocan box mod my friend gave me that I liked but it broke in like 3 months. Does anyone have any experience with these?

hi! i’m planning on applying to transfer this upcoming application season (i’d start fall 2024) to berkeley. I am going through a lot with my disability and health and it would greatly benefit me to be closer to home (i live like 10 mins from ucb). does anyone know if they strongly consider special circumstances like this one?
also, i wanted to apply to ucla just for the heck of it, but due to this situation, i would not be closer to home LOL. is it possible for me to write a different additional comments section for a different UC?
i would appreciate any guidance. thank you!

Link: https://imgur.com/a/j1wXrNe
(I took these pics yesterday and only got around to posting today, lmk if you want a picture with today’s time stamp)
I’m selling an HG Economy Burrow! $150, shipping to CONUS included.
Stats: - 30 degree - 630g w/ stuff sack - Grey exterior, Black interior - Reg/Reg - Ground attachment straps, stuff sack, and cotton storage bag included - no scratches or tears - Selling because I love quilts and have too many (you know how it is :) )

A few things; this is a general question regarding the state of games, mostly MMOs but, D4 is leaning towards an MMO in a way. With Diablo Immortal and how it could potentially impact D4 though, I also think it's pretty relevant here. I'd post it in the MMO sub but, chances are they delete it anyway and, Like I said I do believe it is relevant.
What I mean is, why do you hate the inclusion of 'XP boosts', 'Buying to max level', being able to pay for gear repairs maybe etc? I think I'm gonna get downvoted for this but, I don't see the issue.
I know how common this practice is in the MMO space, I've spent a lot of time in that space but, ALWAYS doing PVE content and usually always alone. None of my friends have gotten into MMOs and I don't make friends in them. Anyway, what I'm getting at is, as someone who doesn't interact with ethers in the online games. I don't care whether that random guy has levelled to max or paid to max, i don't care if he is levelling faster because he paid etc. I don't see why it matters.
But, as I stated I'm a loner in these games, does it matter to someone who is trying to be involved and interact and if so, why? It seems weirdly egotistical to me. Not attacking anyone. What I mean is, it comes across as "I earnt my gear, he didn't so mine is/I'm better" or "My sense of achievement comes from the validation of showing it off to others" which all seem weird to me. If you can buy max level, it doesn't make your free grind any less valuable.
I think PVP is different but, not always bad. I think, if the matchmaking is good, it doesn't matter. If it puts similar levels against each other it doesn't matter if he paid or earnt it, you have the same gear. If the matchmaking doesn't do that then yeh, fuck that. Diablo, and this post, aren't really about PVP though so.
Looking for genuine input, I'm not meat riding some company, I just see people withholding on buying D4 because Blizzard might add these types of mtx's (I personally doubt they will) and i don't see why, those types of purchases can put you off the rest of the game.

So USPS lost my passport. Officially. I reached out to my congressman who opened a case with USPS. My passport was supposed to arrive on 4/7 at the Philadelphia Passport Agency from Sacramento USPS. My passport never departed and Sacramento cannot find it.
I worked with two congress offices in trying to get an appointment with the SF Passport Agency and the only available appointment is 6/5 which means I would have to push my flight out a day or two.
Unfortunately when I tried changing my flight the change in price is $1300. I honestly don't have that money to drop and would already be taking a loss by missing two days of my trip (we had itineraries already scheduled).
I asked the congress office if there are any availabilities at LA or San Diego passport agencies this week because I would rather drive/fly down there than pay $1300 for my flight change but I haven't heard back from the congress office yet.
I'm honestly so distraught and have no idea what to do at this point besides just taking the 6/5 appointment...but then I'd be out $1300. I feel like this is just a punch in the gut because USPS were the ones who lost my passport when I expedited it and paid over $200 just for them to lose it. So ironic because this trip to Europe was to celebrate my mom's retirement after working at USPS for over 30 years...
Does anyone have any insight or tips on what I could do to get an appointment this week and not have to change my flight? I know it's a longshot...

u/shipping_addict thank you so, so much for the geo dude card and message! I LOVE IT.
u/dry_camel1252 I love the pantry essentials post card and congrats to your daughter on her award! So awesome! My kids were given some awards at the end of this school year too and it's so fun to watch them accomplish things. Thank you!
u/jane_q I adore the post card you sent me soooo much. Love love love. Thank you for sharing your childhood memory about your cats. Such a fun story. I loved it.
u/omggallout omg. absolutely obsessed with the postcard. thank you so much, I seriously love it. And I hope you get your snowbrush put away soon lolol. thank you!!

18f i dont want to be here anymore.
repost cause other account got banned or suspended ? and cant get on that account so. dont know why even post this. really dont even know.
18f. i dont want to be here. i dont want to live. i feel so empty and depressed all the time. every day i feel nothing but depressed, sad, upset. even when i feel something i feel empty at the same time. dont even know if my feelings are real when i cant really feel anything.
i am just tired of feeling so empty and depressed everyday. tired of waking up everyday wishing i died in my sleep. i hate waking up just to repeat the same day over and over again. everyday is the same as the last. i wake up and go to college, then go home and i am by myself again doing nothing. i really hate waking up everyday is just another repeat of feeling empty. nothing ever happens.
my life is so empty. i dont do anything. everyday is a repeat. i hate going out just to repeat the same day. i am tired of feeling nothing / empty everyday. my life means nothing. its all so pointless and meaningless. i feel so empty everyday. cant remember the last time i wasnt empty depressed. feel like i act fine around people but really i feel nothing at all. everyday i wake up feeling nothing but empty and depressed. same emptiness depression suicidal thoughts as long as i know now and its never going to go away. really dont see the point in anything. dont know why if im so depressed and want to die so bad that im still here. i wake up every single day wishing i was dead.
everyday is just a repeat. i dont do anything. i dont have any motivation or care to anything though. everything feels so boring.
i feel lost. i dont know what i am doing with my life. there is nothing going for my life. i have no motivation to do anything and dont care about anything. dont see the point.. i just dont care about anything. there is not a single reason for me to still be here. i have nothing going for my life. no idea what im doing. i dont want to do anything. there is nothing i care about or enjoy. i am really stupid cant do anything right. everything i do turns out to be terrible. no matter how much practice. i never get better. i am so bad at everything.
i have wasted life literally doing nothing. everyone else my age are going out and actually doing things, knows what they are doing, has interests, friends, relationships.
i have none of that. i dont have any hobbies or many interests. i dont have any idea of what i am doing. i feel like i dont even have a personality or sense of who i actually am.
i do do anything. i never go out. ive just spent years alone in my room doing nothing. not even talking to anyone. i have no friends or any relationships. ive never even had a bf relationship which is embrassing. i dont have any friends to talk to. i just cant talk to or connect with anyone. i cant just talk to anyone. im really awkward and have nothing to say and never have anything to talk about. also i dont share interests with anyone (because theres nothing much i am intrested in, but few things i like, i dont know who wont think i am weird). ive tried to get into hobbies but i just suck at everything or i have no interest in anything.
also i dont even go out. but im too embrassed to go out because how ugly hideous deformed i am. going out just makes me anxious because i feel like everyone is judging me or laughing at me or thinks bad things about me. i feel so insecure and self concious i hate going out. everytime i go out i can just see everyone is disgusted and repulsed by me. i am so disgusting. everyone i know hates me. im always anxious going out that someones going to say something or im going to embarass myself, and feels like everytime i go out everyone is judging and laughing at me. everyone hates me. so i dont go out. which is pathetic.
I am such a disgusting repulsive miserable pathetic person. why couldnt i just be normal like every other person.
i am an empty boring person. its really embrassing and pathetic. i have nothing to show for my life. if anyone was to ask for what i do, or to ask a moment where i have done something, or what i enjoy, or what i want to do with my life, i would have no answers.
i am a loser and i hate myself so much.
i just dont want to be here. everyday i wake up wishing i was dead. i dont know why i am still here. i really dont want to be here. all i want to do is sleep and never wake up. i just want to die so bad. i dont know why i am alive. i really dont want to be. everyday i wake up wish i didnt.
i just feel so empty. i just like day to day feeling empty and depressed. i just cant really care about my life. i cant care about anything. everything is just boring and empty. my life is just constant boredom and emptiness. i wake up and just wait for it to be night so i can sleep again.
and i feel so lonely alone everyday. i have no one. i am alone all the time. no one ever texts or talks to me. nobody knows or cares about me. i feel so invisible. i mean nothing to anyone. i will never mean anything to anyone. i will never be good enpugh for anyone. ill never be important to anyone. i will never mean anything.
i really hate everything about myself. i wish i was just normal. i hate myself so much.
i have no purpose or reasons to be here. i am so pathetic. i feel so useless and worthless. im really ashamed and embrassed to be me. there is not a single good thing about me.
im really ugly and hideous. everytime i see myself i want to cry. i am beyond hideous and ugly. i dont even look like a real person. i actually look like a rotting corpse. ive never seen anyone come close to being this ugly hideous and repulsive. im so embrassed of myself. im really ashamed to be me and to go out everyday. its embrassing. i am really the most hideous person ive ever seen, or that anyone has ever seen. and the main reason i hate myself so much is how i look. i hate myself because how ugly i am. i look deformed. everything about my looks is just bad and creepy. i dont even look like a real human. everytime I see myself or remind myself that I actually am me im just repulsed and disgusted. i could've been anyone else in the world. but this is how I turned out. im so ugly its scary / creepy. i look like a corpse. i dont even look like a girl. i don't even look like a person. how can anyone be this hideous. i wish I could just be a normal person. i just wish i looked normal. i am absolutely hideous and deformed, nobody will ever like or care about me. im so ugly and depressed i wish i was dead all the time. i am the most repulsive hideous ugly person to ever live.
i feel like everyone hates me or is creeped out by me because of how ugly and unaturally hideous i am. i feel like i give off bad vibes. i feel so disgusting and repulsive and creepy. i feel like i creep everyone out make everyone uncomfortable. i feel uncomfortable and disgusting and repulsive and creepy just by being me. i am so repulsive.
i really wish i wasnt me. every time i see myself i want to crawl out of own body. i dont feel normal. everyone else is a normal person and i feel the opposite. what is wrong with me i dont know.
i wish i was anyone but me. my personality is awful. i am awful at everything. i hate everything about myself. i am bad at everything. i cant do anything right. i am so hideous and ugly and pathetic and worthless and useless. i hate everything about myself. i wish i could be anyone else. i will never like myself.
i feel trapped in myself. i hate myself so much and everyone else does. feel like everyone i meet hates and dislikes me. everyone wishes i was dead hates me. i know. i dont blame anyone though. i would not want to be around me. feel like the most boring, uninteresting, awkward person.
i hate myself so much. i am so pathetic and sad and miserable. even writing this is so pathetic and embrassing.
i wish i was dead every single day. i mean nothing to anyone. i have no one. no one would notice if i died or dissapeared. i am so worthless. i hate myself so much im so pathetic and alone. im so lonely and feel alone everyday. i dont why im alive. i just want to die. if i died or dissapeared no one would even notice or care.
i just want to die so badly. i dont see the point in living when i feel nothing all the time and i dont want to live. i have no reason to live. i dont want to do anything with my life. i just dont care about anything. i dont care if i die today or tomorrow. it really doesnt matter. i feel absolutely nothing. i really wish i could just disappear and go missing and erase myself. i just really wish i wasnt here. i have no worth. no reason to live. i should only exist for other peoples needs. cause have no other reason to be alive. i hate myself so much.
i dont know what is wrong with me. i am really disgusting. i just hate myself so much i want to be hurt. i feel like i deserve it. and i do actually deserve it. i deserve to be unhappy. i want someone to just hurt me, use me, abuse me. i really wish someone would kill me or that someone would hurt & abuse & use me. i just want to be hurt, and abused and used. wish someone would just kill me already. im serious. i want to be abused, hurt, used, worst things to happen to me. wish the worst things will happen to me. i just dont want to be here. i just want to go missing. i want to be hurt. im just worthless and a waste of space. wish someone would just hurt me or kill me. i have no reasons to be alive and i just want to be hurt. id someone would kidnap me so then i could just dissapear / go missing (no one would even notice or care). i dont want to be here. just want to dissapear every single day. want to die every single day.
wish i had some purpose or use or meaning to someone. even if they hurt me or use me at least i exist to someone. i hate myself so much feel like other people should hate me. i want that everyday. feel like i deserve it. i have no purpose. i will only ever mean something if im being used or hurt. i am worthless. my life is pointless. i will never mean anything. I feel like i deserve to be unhappy.
i really dont care about my life. wish something bad will happen to me everyday. ive gone out walking after dark on my own just hoping something bad will happen to me. wishing i just dissapeared / gone missing. but nothing ever happened.
that is all. this is pathetic and disgusting. i dont know what is wrong with me.

I’m making a data pack for 1.19.4 or 1.20 and I would like to test if a sculk sensor is within a cubic 10 block area around a player and then replace the block with a spider. This would be trivial if I was searching for an entity close to the player, but searching for a block has been much more difficult to figure out. I want it to work even if the player isn’t looking at the block, so a simple ray cast is insufficient.
The only way I can think of doing it is sending out a complicated ray cast that checks every block around the player, but that has been difficult too because the my rays intersect each other, checking blocks more than once.
Does anyone know an easier way to do this and if not, how to write a ray cast that checks a cubic radius around the player, but only checking each block once?

I don’t know for sure what size I was pre-op, but I was spilling out of DDD bras (I refused to buy bigger lol). I told my surgeon I wanted to go down to a small B cup, but at 3mpo I’m measuring at a C. I know it’s hard for a surgeon to reach a specific size and I know they are going to continue to change for up to a year, but is it at all possible that I may still go down a cup size at this point?
Overall I’m really happy with the shape and scarring and recovery was pretty easy (which I did not expect at 40yo), but Im a little down about this because my whole goal was to not have to wear a bra anymore (my poor shoulder grooves 😩). I can’t do that right now though bc they still bounce around a little when I walk.
My medical group does fully cover revisions, but I don’t want to have to go through all of this again (and risk possibly having complications next go round) if I don’t have to.
Do I wait it out and see if they shrink or do I go back and have them take more out? The problem is if I wait and see I may miss the window for a revision at no cost (not completely sure though, have to ask more about this). I’m so torn!

I’m on my 3rd year of playing, 22hcp, I struggle with how many balls to bring, how many does everyone bring?
Towards the end of last summer I started to walk when I play. In my cart bag, every ball I had/ have at the time can be in there, because it doesn’t matter. When I switch to my walking bag, I have a moment of indecision on how many to bring. I lose way less balls than I did even mid-June last year, but I still lean towards (what feels like) a high amount, 12-15.

19 months clean from meth and feel 75 percent. Still dealing with intrusive thoughts, anhedonia and lack of motivation. I feel better with each month. I never had these problems before drugs. I know that when I recover I'm going to feel like a human being again. My toxic dad keeps calling me lazy and says I need to lift myself up by the bootstraps. Should I cut him off? How long does it take to recover brain chemistry to baseline after meth? Please give me some hope!

Hey,
​
I just kind of finished renovating my TV wall and bought a 77 Philips 807 oled TV and i wanted to match my whole Tv + sofa area with ambient ligthing that matches with the ambilight behind TV.
I went with Philips gardient hue led strips -
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Philips-Gradient-Ambiance-929002994901-Lightstrip/dp/B09C3RSZ7Q/ref=sr_1_33?crid=36ZBQO4T5C1I0&keywords=philips+hue&qid=1685487492&sprefix=philips+hue+%2Caps%2C97&sr=8-33
At First I bought the regular plus ones and realised they dont have RGB independant zones but oh well, i will use them on the long wall, wont go to waste. But around the TV I wanted to Match points on certain areas of leds - so it goes together with my ambilight section.
I treid matching it, but it only lets me choose one position from the TV and it follows that area...
first picture - the tv ambilight on left should give out multiple colors but only gives out (defective) yellow from the bottom left and the upper part only gives out solid blue connected to upper right.
Second picture the led at bottom gives out only bottom center ambilight color, not all the colors.
Is there a solution for that? Does anyone know? Ill try to add an image/video of what i mean.
P.S Its gonna go all around after i find out there is a solution, right now i only bought 2 meters of it to test out and even that one is defective.
And its been a long day, my text is probably really messy, hope You all get what I mean.
​
Thank You all advance already...

Hello, I am setting up an ender 3 with the btt octopus max and nothing is working properly. When I turn it on the screen (BTT TFT35 E3 V3) screams "ALL HIGH" 3-4 times, then tells me invalid mesh (Even though there is no sd card plugged in), then screams Bed Leveling Disabled. Also the X-axis is reversed, and the home is completely wrong and does not use the endstops, it just shifts 5mm over and up. Does anyone have some working firmware for it?

(30F) I’ve been doing IF for the last couple of months religiously with only a few days off here and there, maybe once a fortnight. I eat well and healthily making most meals from scratch, but don’t deny myself a little treat if I want it. I do burn an average of 2300 cals per day.
I work out 5/6 days a week, sometimes twice a day, usually a 5k run, weightlifting or HIIT classes.
I’ve noticed a bit more definition in my body but my scales fluctuate between 59-62kg (I’m 5’7 / 170cm for reference) and never seem to move from there.
I would have thought after 2 months I would see some weight loss but I’m not and it’s starting to get me down. It seems like I’m putting in all of this effort for no payoff. Has anybody else had a similar experienced and figured out the issue? I don’t know anybody else who does IF so nobody in my personal life to ask.

Hi everyone this will be a many part series on how I got a 524 after 4 years of university and a gap year - I've received many a PM and wanted to mass-send out a guide bc I can't give quality advice just typing!
In my last 3 years of college, I TA’d for organic chemistry, biology, biochemistry, and general physics among other random classes. I've also tutored some people w/ MCAT q's now and have noticed some patterns that I just wanted to offer some advice on. I believe almost everyone can excel on this exam but recognize we have different access to resources like time, money, different priorities/goals, different limits and barriers.
Onto the post:
Most Common Mistakes and How to Avoid:
1) If you are in college, studying only to do well for an exam
many students have told me they studied in college to take a test and now struggle in spite of content review with flashcards, review books, etc.
This is not always a students’ fault, sometimes and esp if you were doing covid learning it was really hard not to do this. However we should all take responsibility for how we study as much as we can!
In freshman year, orgo, I would study 3-4 days before the test by rewriting all the notes, doing a few practice problems, and would stay up until like 5-9am on the morning of my test studying. It was really terrible for me and my health/mental wellbeing.
Solution:
Figure out what works for me and implement it early on.
What I figured out quickly was that my note taking strategy was absolute shit to be honest, and only worked well for my more memorization heavy classes.
What I did was write down what was and wasn’t working for biology/biochemistry/psychology (memorization classes) - what I wish I did now was spaced repetition with flashcards.
Physics and chem? Different story. I did terrible in high school AP physics but absolutely crushed college physics because I realized my study habits in high school were all wrong! In high school I relied on note taking and equations, and in college I only read textbook summaries (and googled or YouTube details), did the necessary flipitphysics that was assigned, and then for each chapter would hammer out probably what totaled to be 50-100 practice questions prior to each exam, which would cover maybe 3 chapters. I would go to office hours all the time to go over questions I didn’t understand.
Ask your professors what they think is the best way to study, go to office hours.
I like to ask myself: is this like a driving test, where it’s not enough to just know the traffic rules and I need to actually practice driving? Or is this just a knowledge test, where all I need is to regurgitate information? Most classes and exams are a mix, the MCAT is most definitely more the former.
2) Passive studying, saving practice exams and problems for later
Ok me going over this is like beating a dead horse. You need to study actively as in doing practice problems, doing spaced repetition, things that make you think. Reading, listening, and rewriting notes are super passive because you could easily not absorb anything at all but still accomplish the physical task of getting through content which is not enough!
Even listening to videos and making flashcards and reviewing those cards I would consider to be passive if you are not actively thinking through each card or connecting it to different pieces of information
Moreover, a lot of students fall into this trap of fearing practice problems because they feel like they don’t know enough information yet. I started practice exams week 4 of content review ( no regrets) and I wish I started practice problems UEarth at the same time!
Solution
When you’re practicing flashcards and you come across a card that’s difficult for you, don’t just try to recall it, find out the answer, then move on hoping you’ll remember it for next time. If you struggle to remember something after a few attempts the same day, go back and remind yourself of the “story” of how that information comes to be. For example, if you card said “does the umbilical vein carry oxygenated or deoxy blood” and you just can’t remember, you have to go over the concept. The mom body has to bring oxygenated blood to the fetus’ heart to be pumped to the fetus’ body, and we know veins bring blood to the heart, so the umbilical vein carries oxygenated blood. There’s a “story” behind every piece of information.
Practice problems! Anything that asks you questions that rely on knowledge and facts but in a way that you have to twist relationships and information and apply it. Problems help tell the story behind content, and you will quickly find out that memorization and knowledge are not enough. Start these early. You do not have to be at 100% confidence. Even being at 50% is enough for practice problems to start being helpful in guiding your study plan. Ya know, eat the frog.
The MCAT is a critical thinking and application test and discrete questions do not pop up that frequently. When they say the test is a mile wide and an inch deep but you take it and it feels super detailed, it’s typically because the details they test you on are variations on simple concepts but these small variations freak the people out who did not do the work of understanding the concept, which requires active practice.
3) Not being interested at all in what you’re learning
look I hate studying for a test as much as the next person but we are trying to minimize suffering here.
Please evaluate whether you hate something because it’s hard for you or because you genuinely think it’s just plain uninteresting to you. They “like” a certain topic in bio, they “dislike” a certain topic in chem, and I just want you to ask yourself, do you hate the struggle or do you hate the information?
That being said, the solution is easy.
Solution: Stay curious
Curiosity gives us things to be joyful about, to look forward to. If you absolutely hate fluid dynamics (my sour grapes because it took me so long to get), try to connect it to a topic that you find interesting, or that matters to you. Mine was hypertension, blood pressure cuffs, and airplanes because who doesn’t think airplanes is cool?
For CARS, get in the habit of feigning interest and eventually you may find yourself being amused by the passages. This was true for me, and especially true on the psych/soc portion of my own exam. I would jot down names or topics that I wanted to learn more about. I started to read more philosophy on my own time, to wonder about the world, and all of a sudden these long ass passages felt more approachable, more relevant to me, even if they were about some obscure photographer that I will never meet or remember the name of.
If you come and tell me physics isn’t cool, we’ll have problems. Physics is hard, and I struggled the first time around in high school so much that I got a C- and that was with my teacher being nice to me. However I can no longer deny its usefulness, its relevance, and frankly I cannot deny how awesome it is to have a branch of science we fall back to if we trace our own biology back as far as we can go.
4) Not setting and moving goals/strategies - This one I will jump straight to the general solution
If you are studying the same way after 3 months and making no progress but you keep chugging along, chapter by chapter, I got news for you. Something you are doing is not working well at all for you and you need to change how you study. If months of flashcards go by and you’re still getting a 490 on your exam, you’re not absorbing the information. Instead, try doing practice problems after the chapter and googling/youtubing videos of questions you get wrong. Maybe you need to make your own deck. Maybe you need to switch decks.
If you set a goal of 520 on FLs and you’re blowing those out of the water, raise your goal and set a higher standard for yourself, review those FLs with even greater precision.
If you set a goal of 520 and you’re scoring well below that, evaluate the time you have, whether you want to push it back, or if there’s a score that’s lower that you’d still be happy with. Read over others’ study techniques and see if there’s something you are missing.
Set goals for every few weeks of where you want to be on the MCAT. At those milestones, evaluate if you need to move your goalpost or if you need to push back the test.
5) Not taking breaks
So many of us have a habit of grinding and grinding away in an attempt to do super well. This was me in the first two years of college and I absolutely sacrificed my health, both physical and mental for it and I’m still paying the price years later. Burnout and suffering is real, and this process does not need you to sacrifice everything you love for it.
My friend from college once told me that if you don’t choose when to take a break your body will choose for you.
Solution
Every week take a day of half day where you just shut your brain off. I don’t care if that’s mindlessly scrolling through reddit, bingeing a show, going for a run, going out for drinks, whatever you want. Just take a day to be someone who is not studying for the MCAT.
We are aiming to compartmentalize this test to take up only a small portion of our brain.
Set schedules, for example, if you’re full time only study 9-5 or 10-5. If you’re a student or working full time, maybe this looks like spreading out your studying over a longer period of time and sequestering it to 6-8am or 6-8pm and 10-5pm on weekends with Fridays off. It really helps to have a schedule and to build in open days/flexibility into said schedule.
Give yourself flexibility to say no to studying for a day or even three if you need. It’s much better to not study at all for a day or two and come back with full focus, than to study at 25% efficiency and focus even when you’re tired.
Thursday nights before my FLs and my real test, I sometimes studied until my usually 6pm and sometimes cut my studying to be done at 11am because I just did not want to be too tired the next day. No mental fatigue for me, and I felt sharp on every test day (except I got up to pee in the middle of c/p during my real test bc I did not realize how much coffee I had LOL)
6) Trying to “shortcut” your way through content knowledge instead of being precise and detail-oriented
A lot of students I have give me lukewarm definitions of key terms in each topic. While it’s more than okay to not know everything in great detail, you have to be able to at least define something in simple terms. My structural biology professor once said “if you can’t explain something in simple words, you don’t know it well enough.” People will also sometimes give “shortcut” definitions, where they might say “oh, well this has an OH so that makes it polar” when the “this” they are referring to is fully a lipid.
Here’s an example: I ask you to define what something is. If your definitions includes anything like “it kinda is….” “it sorta is….” “I think that it’s basically….”, you don’t have a precise enough definition or understanding. I’m not saying you need to be able to explain why something works (like wtf IS gravity, right? *hits bong*), but you need a precise definition of what something is to begin understanding the why.
I probably don’t know physics any better than the next person, I definitely do not know biology any better than the next bio major. However, when you study, precision matters to get those points.
Solution: Ask why and make connections
Be the annoying 5 year old that asks “why?” fifty billion times.
For example, yeah we know that we can shine 260nm light to find a [ ] of nucleic acids. Ok, you say, it’s because DNA can absorb light, and more DNA absorbs more of that light, that’s Beer’s Law. Then I would challenge you to ask, well why DNA absorb light in the first place? Why does DNA absorb different wavelengths of light than, say, tryptophan? Why does conjugation or even the hydrophobicity of something’s environment change its absorption of certain wavelengths of light? Yes you will fall into a rabbit hole on things that are way out of the scope of the MCAT and eventually you will not be able to answer “why” at all, but that’s ok. The goal isn’t to pencil the line right in between physics and philosophy, which let’s be real, that’s what most stuff comes down to. The goal is to challenge yourself to connect an idea with them most basic scientific principles that you had to learn.
For example, the example of spectroscopy requires you to pull on (very) basics of quantum, electron orbital theory, energy, etc. It’s in making these connections and asking why that you will more easily and more quickly make those connections on the MCAT.
Even in doing flashcard reviews I challenged myself to do this. If I was hit with a card about the FA synthesis pathway, I would picture the pathway in my head but also draw out in my brain’s whiteboard how the products like malonyl coa influence the other pathways. Basically, just making connections.
7) Making the MCAT your whole life
Lastly, many students lose themselves in this whole premed and mcat process which makes them both miserable/burnt out and also kind of intolerable to be around.
Like you really don’t wanna be that person in your class, no matter how well you’re doing, who can’t hold a conversation without mentioning how you are pre-med and or studying for the mcat.
You also really don’t wanna be the person (me) that was so neurotic in their years of college that they feared that even one thing falling through means that life is over. I quickly regretted the type of anxiety I held in relation to this track before I came to the conclusion that this is just another career, and that I will live a fulfilling life regardless of where my career takes me.
My solution:
Set goals beyond the MCAT. Mine was to run a half marathon before October. Yesterday, I just ran my first 10k.
Other goals I set: plan my wedding and reception. Don’t kill any of my plants and find a white knight philo that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Learn to bake a cake and macarons with full shells. Shadow a few doctors. Bring my cholesterol down.
Basically, see your life as something that will go on no matter how you do on the MCAT, and that life will continue to pass as you study, so don’t give this exam, which is much smaller in the grand scheme of your life, more of your time than it deserves.
That wraps up this first part, hope it was helpful! I’m thinking of making this into a video series on YT because I like to hear myself talk and I hate typing and I also just need to get tf off of Reddit now that I’m done with my MCAT. My new goal is to minimize my social media usage (HAH)
Best of luck yall. sry if my humor is not your cup of tea, I just do not believe that this exam deserves the anguish, the suffering, the misery than many people experience because of it.