S-STEM Scholar Anthony Miller's Blog

  Moving On As I am finishing up my undergraduate career at ASU, I find myself lost in between applying to medical school and finding a job. Finding a job is not so difficult but being employed full-time while studying to retake the MCAT may prove to be. The MCAT will require lots of study time for me as I didn't do well on my first attempt. Setting time aside for everything, studying, family, girlfriend, and time for myself is something I've always had difficulty with this. I hope I can make a schedule that isn't too difficult and that I can stick to. I think making time for oneself is very important not just for a student, but for everyone. That's something I've learned at my time at ASU. So many things can happen while you're focusing on all the homework, housework, going to your job, taking time for yourself mentally and physically can make an impact on your lifestyle. Depression and anxiety can easily take over so working out, going on walks, etc. are essen...

  Personal Life Goal      The goal I have for myself is to be happy and motivated. For striving towards a career in helping people with medicine I am having troubles being motivated currently. With everything in the world that is going on, especially the things we do not know, I have been unhappy and stressed. These feelings have caused me be unmotivated and complacent. I don't want these feelings to affect my grades more than they already have this semester.       To help get to a better place mentally I've started going to behavioral therapy to find ways to change my noneffective thinking and behavior. I believe this is necessary before I start my career in medicine. Not being motivated, being unhappy, and depressed all aren't good things to anyone, let alone someone in the medical field. Hopefully I'll get this fixed sooner than later.

 Helpful Resources for New Students There are many resources available to us students, I will tell the ones I have used throughout my ASU career. The first resource I made sure I had was to be with DRC or Disability Resource Center. This resource helps students receive accommodations for their disabilities, like preferential seating, alternative testing, which means you don't have to take the exam in the possibly noisy class, and better chairs for those with back problems. You will be assigned a DACT and they will be the person who will contact your instructors with your accommodations and will keep you in the loop. Also, with DRC you can receive DART rides to your classes if walking is difficult. There are many other resources for us that can be specifically for our majors or the careers we're striving for. A resource that comes to mind is one like the FREE Princeton Review Self Paced Course to study for the MCAT. You can also talk to your advisor to find out about these reso...

Adjusting to this Quarantine Today was a particularly stressful day as I tried to prepare for the extremely long day tomorrow. I was supposed to get my brother to work at 8:00 am and then take my mother to her appointment in Scottsdale at 9:30 am and I have an exam tomorrow and a group assignment due at midnight. I also have a paper due on Friday, so I feel very overwhelmed. I like being ahead in my classes or at least most of them. I feel it is hard to because most of the classes are changing assignments to accommodate the inability to perform the previously made assignments, like a lab experiment. I have a lot of stress right now, I talked to my girlfriend and I feel better to an extent. Just have to breathe and take things one at a time. I would love to go on walks more but I feel like with my family needing help it makes me focus on them instead of myself. I think this is because I am a people pleaser and this is especially so with my family.  I feel th...

Living in Quarantine Being at home all the time is something I'm used to or at least being cooped up inside, so it's not too different for me. The difficult thing now is the changes in routine, not having to wake up at certain times, driving to school and work. I now work from home on my laptop. But the Zoom meetings help, even though only one of my classes has implemented it for lectures, I wish more of my classes did that but the other classes have either audio embedded Power Points or recorded video lectures so these help as well. I also use different platforms to hold student meetings along with Zoom like Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Snapchat and so on. I feel like using these platforms like this has made things easier and has kept me sane. I am trying my best not to go outside, especially because I love the temperatures this time of year but I still do but I usually go out when it's late and I'm in my car playing Pokémon Go. We should all ...

Should we be scared of the Coronavirus? Everyone including some of my loved ones are scared of the new Corona Virus that's spreading all throughout China and have had some cases arise in the U.S., causing more of a scare. I think that we shouldn't be worried about it because one, it's mostly in China and the death rate for it isn't high. So as long as we stay clean human beings, I think we should be fine. Also, the way the news corporations portray it is not just reporting the news but trying to get a rise out of people. Also, we've had other "scares" like the Ebola virus and the Zika virus. Both spread to the U.S., both had worse death rates, and both disappeared from the news months if not weeks later. I think we have the knowledge and capabilities to keep the virus from getting out of hand in the U.S. But those are my thoughts, let me know what you all think about how serious this is for us.