so
good morning so i've just woken up it is
very early the sun is rising which is
beautiful
and the reason that i'm up early today
is because
i work the best in the morning it is
this beautiful time where it's a fresh
start my roommates are generally asleep
so i sort of have this space to myself
i reflect i get intentional about the
day and in the case of today
i smash the work my good friend v
often says the game is the game and we
came to play that's how i feel today
the game is the game university is the
game i came to play
through being here today i'm actually
kind of on it i have three classes today
till midnight i have a bunch of readings
to do
but i also have an assignment welcome to
me trying to complete this assignment in
three or four hours
everyone works differently but for me i
don't like to do essays in bits i like
to sit down
power it out because the hardest part of
writing an essay
is starting and just writing down the
horrible words at the start
it is so much easier to edit something
you've already got and to write afresh
so i'm like i'm just gonna bang it out
but before i do that
part of my morning routine is to spend
45 minutes on a freezing cold balcony
do some yoga do some meditation do some
exercise
and that is going to set up my brain for
today
let's go
[Music]
i can't tell you how game changing is in
lockdown to get changed almost as soon
as you get out of bed
i don't let myself go on my phone in bed
and i think that fundamental difference
paired with getting changed just gives
me a happier day
so i'm just lying here after having done
a meditation
and half an hour again i can't tell you
how perspective changing it
is to do meditation i know it's got a
stereotype of being
hippie and only related to spirituality
i'll link some non-scary guided
meditations in the description or
something but when i open my eyes
i genuinely just see the world
differently i just laid here for a
second
just looked at the sky i just admired
the cloud formations and then some birds
were flying apart
kind of similar to the benefits of cold
showers i don't know if you've ever
heard of that i think there's something
really grounding
about it being freezing cold on the
balcony because especially during
lockdown i spend
all day in that beautifully heated
apartment and to just spend 45 minutes
being cold it makes me appreciate the
heat so much more
i don't know i think the cold is calming
and this is super relevant
so i love positive affirmations they
really help me combat
any insecurity in my life or poster
syndrome
which i do struggle with a lot at the
end of my meditation i just repeat
certain phrases to myself in my head in
present tense
things like i am worthy of being
successful and happy
i am loved i am compassionate i am
kind i make an effort to help others
all of these things which we have to
sometimes trick ourselves into
remembering and the reason that this is
relevant
my assignment today for my collective
neuroscience class
there's quite a wide scope on what we
can do it on i am going to conduct a
literature review
about self-affirmation so i'm going to
do a lot of research on the space and
then write a 1 500 word
essay posing future avenues for study
etc
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
if you guys have been following me for a
while then you would know that i
love notion notion is where i have high
level plans for my month
my week and my day so here i just
firstly wrote a reflection
in my journal i answered a few gratitude
prompts for the day
one really interesting prompt is can you
come up with an experiment that might be
interesting to run today
to which i wrote how would i treat today
differently if it was my birthday
i also wrote a to-do list and scheduled
my day just roughly in my google
calendar just to give myself some
clarity and direction
i also had three classes to plan for
i just had a shower i just got changed i
haven't done ironing in a long time so
just
ignore the many creases on my jumper
i've planned out my essay
and i'm ready to write okay so through
my research i have narrowed it down
to a very specific subsection of
self-affirmations
specifically i'm interested in how
affirmation can affect those in minority
positions
and seeing how affirmation can combat
existing stereotypes around social
groups
so for example there's this thing called
social identity threat
if you are a female in a male-dominated
stem environment where a lot of
stereotypes might assume
that women are less competent than men
in modern day these stereotypes pervade
there have been studies conducted where
just before people take a test if you
give them
a self-affirmation about their identity
group
it's either positive or negative you can
affect
how people will perform in the test for
example there was a study conducted with
african american and latino americans
just before they took the test
they were exposed to an affirmation
saying something like
on average african americans perform
worse in this test and whether that
affirmation was true or not
backed up by evidence or not just the
mere
reading of that and internalizing that
caused people to perform worse
and conversely if you affirm people with
a self-affirmation
that's specifically combating the
stereotype around your minority group
for example women being affirmed with
something like
women are competent in stem subjects
like i as a woman
and weren't competent of succeeding in
this exam
if they were offended with that before
the test multiple times
they were more likely to succeed what's
interesting too is the study with
african-american and latino americans
two years later the students who were
affirmed
so they did the self-affirmations before
every test had higher gpas than their
non-affirmed peers
two years later that's crazy and
self-affirmation here
was not as powerful in the white
students there was both a control and
there were white students who would
affirm
with the same affirmations around their
group but because there weren't those
negative
implicit bias stereotypes against white
students in the space
those affirmations didn't really benefit
them in any way and of course this is a
really complex field with a lot of
inconclusive evidence
but for my limited research that's what
i'm going to explore is i'm going to
explore
how valid are these studies i'm going to
write a literature review of
everything that i can find in this niche
space of self-affirmation from what i
understand right now there are a lot of
factors that determine
the efficacy of self-affirmation some of
them being frequency
how often you're affirmed someone being
timing like how
close to the event that you want to
perform better in the relevance of the
affirmation that you're choosing
to your own life or your own insecurity
or your own worries
yeah the brain is so interesting it is
so powerful
it is mind-blowing to me that it's not
just about
your knowledge and how much you know but
this element of
confidence and self-belief does play a
role in performance
i have hypotheses as to why that might
be from a neuroscience perspective
and we'll dig into this more my aim is
to finish the first draft of this essay
in three hours which is ambitious
because i still need to do some more
research
and cite many references so we've got
this let's go
and so i began i think there's something
really special
about getting into a research flow as i
said the hardest part is starting but
when you're there
time just passes and your brain is
swirling with ideas
and it's like you have this essay
roadmap spanning your brain
where all the ideas sit in isolation and
it's your job to thread them together
with your fingers
tapping away at the keys i have
different types of assignments
some are essays like this literature
review
others are problem sets for my finance
business class we'll be given a case
study with financial documents to
analyze
which we have to pull together with
calculations and write an
essay to create strategy personally i am
a wordy person
i love essays they are my favorite
format of an assignment to do
i love the idea of putting together so
much research to help formulate a really
cohesive idea
this assignment was really cool i think
i had like 20 different references i
just read so much
one sad thing that i think our
university teaches us is
just how to bang out stuff without
necessarily taking
weeks to perfect the essay you know do
loads of research
just because of the high density of
assignments that we have i've written my
introduction
my first paragraph and i've got my full
essay plan
so i know where i'm going so many
references i know it's a literature
review but so many
i'm really intrigued are you an essay
planner are you just a spontaneous
go ahead and write without a plan
because for some people that works and
i'm just amazed i'm like how can you do
this
good morning
welcome to having roommates
my headphones are the signal that i am
doing work
i worked on this maybe the next three
hours and then i have my first class of
the day
and had to do my readings for my next
two classes
[Music]
hello bonjour so it is now
midnight and i just finished my last
class of the day
i have class from 6 00 or 7 30 and then
another from 10 till 11 30
just because i've covered and this being
a weird semester
and like everyone being scattered around
the world and we have to compromise it's
not the end of the world because both my
roommates are also in that class
so you just you just kind of get through
it so this morning i'm proud i finished
pretty much my first draft of that
assignment i'm actually somewhat ahead
because it's due
the day after tomorrow that doesn't
happen a lot with me right now i'm
normally like
treading water trying to not drown in
all the work
so doing okay it's really interesting
though
i love what i'm studying i don't have
full clarity on what i want to do in the
future yet but yeah so i do cognitive
neuroscience and then i also do a minor
business currently i just have my
finance class which is my least favorite
class
but is fascinating
in terms of improving my world view i
understand
so much more today we did foreign
currency risk
and transfers and how companies hedge
risk which also led me down this long
hole of videos just out of interest
because
i realized i didn't i don't really
understand the world as much as i
thought i did
how is currency priced i couldn't have
really told you
how does inflation actually work i
couldn't have really told you that
either now i feel like i get it
beyond the world of classes and readings
and assignments
my casual magic of today was
i went on a little bike ride with lada
who is my roommate
and it was so rainy and so
windy and outwardly very miserable but
i've gotta say
when you're inside all day long there's
something really cathartic
about rain like i was cycling along and
it's kind of like spitting rain you know
where it's so oddly refreshing
we went by the canal we supported our
favorite vegan donut place in berlin we
just had beautiful vegan donuts
and then most of the day when i was just
doing my studying you have the gorgeous
sound of the
pita patter rain again life is what you
make of it isn't it
so i could i could be sitting here
complaining about the rain but
i choose to see it as cozy okay
thank you so much for watching i am
gonna head to sleep it's been a long day
i'm gonna have a bit of a lion tomorrow
i really wanna do like a dance workout
or some high energy
fun workout on the balcony wherever you
are today
whatever you've gotta get done whatever
is on your mind i'm sending you love
i'm sending you some kind of peace even
though it can be difficult i do believe
that you can
do your work without this fear that
comes from hospital culture
and instead some feeling of ah i love
learning
learning is fun what can i gain from
this whatever you've got to do today
do you have to do it or do you get to do
it
that's my question i'm lucky to be at
this uni happy to be here
i get to do this beautiful assignment
and that's the mindset we're gonna have
oh before i go to bed
i'm so proud because i have
always wanted to be a consistent
journaler
because life is so amazing right and all
these amazing things happen and
you have all these feelings towards
people and
life and you just forget you just forget
them like i will look back on my life
here and have a way
muted version of everything that i'm
experiencing right now so i have kept a
daily diary
like 90 of the days six out of seven
days a week here which is incredibly
rare for me and i'm very proud
even when i'm exhausted even when it
doesn't feel like anything's happened
that day i will write at least
one line of what happened a few bullet
points and then i end up just
scribbling out my feelings i'm gonna
write my journal and
that's my day see you later