Okay, we're going to get into some cases today, but I'd like to snip it a little anatomy and then talk about Pirates 2.0, which Includes both diffusion-related MRI T2 MRI But pushes down dynamic contrast enhanced MRI a little bit so that we don't Quantitate or semi-quantitate DC MRI. We're just going to look at positives and negatives and we'll elaborate on that in a few moments There is an axial image of the prostate showing the region of the urethra The peri urethral glands with some gland openings and it's not uncommon as you see as you've seen in prior prior snippets For these to dilate and for you to get little cysts Peri urethral cysts sometimes arising from the prosthetic Utrical or the region of the virumontanum which we see here in the coronal projection you all know that the Prostate gland is divided into a central region and a peripheral region The central region is composed of the transitional zone Which when you're younger is not that big but houses about five percent of the glands and the central zone which when you're young is pretty thin and These together are central region. Sorry central zone or region and these together make up the central portion of the gland Whereas the peripheral portion of the gland consists of the peripheral zone which has most of the glands as many as 75% of the glands The peripheral zone has about two-thirds of the cancer is sometimes reported as up to 70% Which makes sense because that's where most of the glands are and that's where most of the cancers arise from There's a coronal projection showing you the course of the urethra right down the midline Which separates the gland into a right half and the left half and also into a base and an apex And it is the apex and the antioapical region that is most difficult for urologists to see and or get to Either with biopsy or with trans rectal ultrasound these little nubbins of blue Color represent the periprostatic venous plexus and as mentioned before although not drawn in We have the neurovascular bundles which are going to be at seven o'clock and five o'clock in our clock face in the axial projection Here's a magnified view of the axial projection, which is going to be our guts projection our hallmark projection for assessing Prostate carcinoma with the coronal and the sagittal being used to modify Position and nomenclature. So here we are again in the central region of the prostate gland Which contains the urethra some peri urethral tissues some glandular tissue the transitional zone Which is now more enlarged and an older patient and the central zone gets bigger too although not quite as big as the Transitional zone and sometimes we'll get pressed together as a fairly thin area here We've drawn it in very clearly in yellow and together these make up the central region of the prostate and here in brown Is the peripheral region or zone of the prostate? Don't forget there is an anterior fibromuscular stromal area Which becomes very important when you have very far anterior cancers that infiltrate into this area and become very hard Not only to diagnose and see By the urologist, but also a little bit confusing for the radiologist because remember this is an anterior fibromuscular Stroma and that stroma is dark and the cancers are going to be smudgy and charcoal like and they're also going to be dark So they could blend together kind of wax on wax off appearance And it may be very difficult for you without diffusion restriction and some of the other components of prostate MR to make a proper Diagnosis it's going to be much easier when you have a nice simple round hypervascular Neurovascular diffusion restricted nodule in the peripheral zone. That's easy anybody can figure that out after a short discussion Like the one we're having today, and then we now have drawn in the neurovascular bundle at the seven and five o'clock positions in the axial projection This is a sagittal projection lying on its side This is the front and is showing you the the length of the anterior fibromuscular zone It is in this location the patient is lying on their back It is in this location where the cancers are very difficult for the urologist to see and where MR is at its Absolute strongest and this is the central region of the prostate Notice the peripheral zone or region of the prostate goes all the way around and especially when you're off to the side It forms almost a complete envelope all the way around the central region of the prostate So you have to be very careful in the sagittal projection to inspect all the way in the back All the way down and around and all the way peripherally in the front So these paris sagittal views can be very helpful, but also a little bit confusing unless you understand the 3d anatomy Here we are again back into the coronal projection showing you the neurovascular bundle out to the sides and the base and apex and mid portion of the prostate gland with some Vascularity including the urethral branches of the vascular anatomy which penetrate the prostate and sometimes you'll actually be able to see Small dots in the prostate that represent vessels Sometimes you'll see small dots that represent Prostatalists or calcification and these are two features that may completely confuse you when you're looking at the diffusion Maps or the ADC maps these may show up as darker areas and may produce some confusion in the high-rats 2.0 diagnosis Then I've got a very simplified diagram of the prostate Helping you understand the base the base and apical anatomy of the prostate gland base up near the bladder apex down below We've got the external sphincter drawn in very nicely here, which by the way you can see in the coronal projection You'll also hear nomenclatures in some other Cultures and countries describe the prostate gland as a proximal zone and a distal zone and a mid zone Here in the United States We use most commonly basal mid and apical the mid portion of the prostate, which is the widest is often Divided into a lateral or outer one-half and an intermediate or inner one-half at the mid level So this is a coronal core terminology that you should be aware of Before we get into our pirates 2.0 at designation I'd like to talk about Gleason grading and scoring So if you're interested come on on to the next vignette and we'll help you understand what Gleason really means


It's no secret that there are a lot of bad ideas that spread, which make most of us rational thinkers wonder what's going on. It's 2020 and there are entire conventions of people who believe the world is flat and that make TikTok videos like this. You ready? You got it? Yep. So, take this ball here, pour a whole bunch of water on it and watch none of the water fall off the bottom. It all sticks onto it. And while that's happening, that's happening and the water stays stuck. Not only that, you're at 1,000 miles an hour spinning this way, which also at 67,000 miles an hour, 67,000 miles an hour while spinning 1,000, you're circling around the sun. And while that's happening, you're also chasing the sun through the Milky Way at 514,000 miles an hour. And every single night, the stars are exactly the same. Every single night. Every single night. The stars never change. Polaris is always exactly where it is. Meanwhile, QAnon is being banned from most social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And it seems like YouTube may follow suit soon. As you may remember, last month I had a video debunking QAnon COVID conspiracies wrongly taken down by YouTube. Fortunately, it was put back up because I was explaining how absurd it is for QAnon to tell people not to wear masks during a pandemic. I often sit back and wonder how so many people can share so many bad ideas. So, when I heard that Gad Saad had a new book coming out titled The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, I did what I usually do. I set a calendar reminder so I can get it on launch day and check it out. Prior to stumbling across his book, I knew nothing about Gad Saad. But after some research, I found that he's a professor in the field of evolutionary psychology since I loved Good Reasons for Bad Feelings by Randolph Nessie and Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright, I figured this would be a great book to check out. I think it's important to make it abundantly clear that I had no prior knowledge of who Gad Saad was before getting this book because after reading his book, I'm sure his loyal followers will call me a quote unquote snowflake for pointing out the many flaws in his arguments. As we'll discuss later, while God and others accuse people of pandering and identity politics, it's blatant that they're doing the exact same thing for a niche group of followers. Aside from pandering, there's hypocrisy littered throughout the book. And I think it's important that we criticize weak arguments from those we hold up as intellectuals. Now, before moving forward with my criticisms, I do want to say that I agree with Gad Saad's overall thesis, which is that we should be able to have mature debates while using science and evidence to back our arguments. In his book, he brought up some interesting and solid points about biological differences and I thought his argument comparing criticisms of Islam and Christianity really interesting. Gad Saad definitely knows his stuff, but it's clear that it's only in specific fields of knowledge and that's not said to diminish him in any way. I believe that the sign of a true intellectual is having the humility to admit that you can't be an expert in all things. He's extremely well versed in biological differences and certain areas of psychology. The optimist in me wants to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just doesn't know about the solid research in certain areas of psychology. But I could see how someone could argue that he purposely neglects certain research because it doesn't fit his narrative or his brand. Finally, I think it's important to make clear for anyone who doesn't know me that I'm a 35 year old dropout nerd who just loves reading books about psychology, philosophy, politics, and other areas that teach me about human behavior. In his book I learned that Gad Saad often likes to bring people onto his YouTube channel to debate and while I'd be flattered, I'd be the wrong person to debate him. Gad Saad has an obvious pattern of behavior where he not only panders but he picks the lowest hanging fruits. It appears that he purposely argues with people less educated than himself on specific topics to not only win easy battles but he then uses fringe examples as antidotes to say this is how everyone thinks who disagrees with me. For example, in his book he explains going to dinner with one of his students to celebrate an occasion and the student brought someone he knew Gad would not agree with. Gad shares the story and the student he was debating was obviously a typical college student who thinks they're a lot smarter and profound than they actually are. But at best it's ignorant of Gad Saad to use it as an example of what the quote unquote left thinks and at worst he purposely uses these examples to appear as though his arguments are flawless. One of Saad's weakest areas of arguments comes in the realm of inequality and bias. Well yes, there are many people who see all of their disadvantages through the lens of identity. Saad acts as though these biases are some sort of pseudoscience. So in this first section we're going to discuss Gad Saad's views on inequality and bias and then we'll see what science has to say. But before we get started, if you're new to the rewired soul, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Here we use critical thinking and skepticism with a variety of different subjects to improve our overall well-being. And as always, if you want to check out any of the books I referenced in this video, my affiliate links for each book will be listed in the description down below. If I had to break it down into percentages, I'd say I agreed with about 45% of what Gad Saad had to say. Yes, it's less than half, but I don't disagree with too much of what was in this book. In fact, towards the beginning of the book, I thought it was going to be all bad, but he actually sold me on quite a few ideas that I hadn't considered. Unfortunately, unlike other chapters in the book, when he discussed racial and gender biases, he used zero scientific research. I want to make it clear that he used scientific research and evolutionary biology and some psychology to explain gender differences, but he basically denies that biases exist, which is completely absurd. As a recovering drug addict who had absolutely nothing eight years ago and worked extremely hard to get where I am today, I was a hardcore meritocrat for many years. Like Gad Saad, I believe that if you worked hard enough, you can achieve just about anything. But as I've educated myself more, I realized that hard work doesn't guarantee anything. Gad Saad's primary argument is that he's Lebanese and his family fled persecution when he was younger. Much like Candace Owens, Gad Saad believes that since he was able to rise up the ranks, that nobody else faces discrimination and that his experience trumps everyone else's. What people like Gad Saad fail to realize is something that I failed to realize for a long time, which is that we're the exception and far from the rule. When denying that racial, gender, and other forms of discrimination affect people, he doesn't cite a single study. I think it's important to point that out because for many of his other arguments, he uses research to back up his opinions but not here. Rather than making any valid arguments backed by science, he simply calls people snowflakes. After reading Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt's book, Bias, Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that shapes what we see, think, and do, it's hard to deny the reality of implicit bias. Gad Saad argues that the IAAT, or Implicit Association Test, is some kind of wacky test that just calls everybody a racist. On the other hand, you have Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, who has been studying racial biases for years and is a psychology professor at Stanford University. Dr. Eberhardt covers dozens of peer-reviewed studies that go beyond the IAAT, and she's hired by police departments around the country to teach them about biases. Like I said, Gad Saad loves picking fights by punching down, but I'd pay good money to see him debate someone like Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt. And if Dr. Eberhardt is unavailable, I'd gladly watch him debate the author of the book Blind Spot, Hidden Biasis of Good People from Dr. Mazarin Banaji. I absolutely agree with Gad Saad that some people are prone to outrage culture, and I've experienced it as someone who was canceled in 2019. When all of the protests and riots were breaking out on college campuses because they refused to let certain conservatives speak, I thought it was ridiculous. But it comes off as hypocritical when Gad Saad cherry picks which science he wants to believe. In my opinion, a much better book on this same subject is The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukanov. What separates these two books is while Gad Saad denies biases and prejudice, play any significant role in our society, the other authors are intellectually honest and explain that these are issues, but there are better ways to resolve them. In fact, Gad Saad may benefit from reading my favorite Jonathan Haidt book, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt is a moral psychologist and he does an excellent job explaining how we're guided by emotions rather than rationality. He points to studies where something as simple as having hand sanitizer nearby makes people more conservative because they're subconsciously reminded of plensliness, a core value of conservatives. If something as seemingly meaningless as hand sanitizer can make someone more conservative, how can Gad Saad deny biases when we're so easily primed? I could go on and on about peer-reviewed science that make Gad Saad look silly in this regard, but I highly recommend he and his followers check out the book Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by the behavioral economist Dan Ariely as well as Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. But moving on, in this final section, I think it's important that we discuss how these quote-unquote intellectuals are often pandering hypocrites who are profiting off the polarization of the current political climate.    While Gad Saad will try to argue that he's a principled man who is only doing this because he believes in freedom of speech and the sharing of ideas, this is not the case. I'm a biracial straight man who looks white and I'm pretty progressive, but I do believe that there are some far-left people who have gone way off the rails. Years ago, I respected the opinions of people like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Tim Pool. Like all of these examples, Gad Saad found a niche as being the anti-Snowflake advocate while becoming progressively worse. It's no longer about compelled speech. These men found an audience and decided to double down. Now, they've sacrificed their rationality for their brand. Do I think it's a jerk move to misgender a trans person? Absolutely. But do I think it should be against the law? Nope. Do I disagree with race-based genetic science in certain aspects like intelligence? Yes, but I also agree with Dr. Frederick DeBoer in his new book The Cult of Smart, How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice, that there are individual genetic differences we shouldn't deny. Personally, I agree with people like Gad Saad that it's silly that some people who mock climate change deniers also pick and choose which science they want to believe. As someone on the left, I know there are plenty of people on the left who disagree with science that offends them. But this is no longer the core of what people like Gad Saad are arguing against. Instead, they're pandering and their loyal followers don't see the hypocrisy. Throughout his book, he makes similar arguments as height in the coddling of the American mind that so-called social justice warriors catastrophize everything. There is a set of people who believe the world is going to come to an end if someone they disagree with ideologically comes into power. While height makes logical, evidence-based arguments against catastrophizing, Gad Saad calls them snowflakes and then proceeds to do the exact same thing. Within just a couple of chapters, Gad Saad equates progressives to 9-11 terrorists and then proceeds to call them catastrophizing snowflakes. His brand agenda has become so important to him that he neglects to see his own hypocrisy. Lastly, I think it's important to state that one of my favorite books is Science Fictions, how fraud, bias, negligence, and hype undermine the search for truth by Stuart Richie. There's a lot of bad science out there, and it's important that we know how to separate good from bad studies. Aside from shady tactics that researchers use, like p-hacking, Gad Saad is a prime example of using selection bias for his arguments. I'm sure if Gad Saad wanted to, he could refute a study or two that someone like Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt references, but Gad Saad uses selection and confirmation bias to only discuss research results that agree with him. Something I've come to respect from true intellectuals is their ability to try and refute their own points while making their argument, which is something Gad Saad does not do. So, is The Parasitic Mind a good book? Not really. To me, it's a clear cash grab to exploit anyone who has ever called someone a snowflake. Aside from just being a lazily written book, Gad Saad didn't say much that people in his circle haven't said a million times already. The target audience of books like this are people who want to go deeper into their echo chambers, and this is a weakness from influencers on both the left and the right. My final thoughts on Gad Saad as a person? He's a troll, and as someone who is a troll in my teen years and early twenties, I respect a good troll. Unfortunately, his brand is being an intellectual, but he merely punches down and debates non-experts. I don't think anyone should take him seriously until he debates experts in opposing fields. And for anyone who is leaving this video thinking that I'm just protecting the left, my next video is going to be about a book that I just finished that criticizes someone on the opposite side as Gad. Alright everybody, thank you for checking out this entire video essay, and sorry I've been gone for like a little bit, it's been like a week since I've uploaded, but anyways, I've just had a lot of stuff to do for my regular job and I've been hanging out with the kid and all sorts of stuff, but anyways, I have another video that is almost ready to go, so that'll be up soon, and I want to get out some videos for Halloween and spooky season and dive into some of the psychology and philosophy around some different topics and everything like that. I've been asking you guys on Instagram what movies or topics you'd like me to discuss, so I got some cool stuff planned as well as a bunch of other video ideas. But anyways, for those of you who aren't, make sure you follow me on social media. I've been posting weekly reading lists over on Medium, like last week I posted nine book reviews. I've been plowing through books this year. I'm at almost 200 books for the year, and I love reading them and I'm like, I need to start reviewing these, so I do that over on Medium if you want to check it out. I'll share the link over on my Twitter and my Instagram and stuff like that. Anyways, follow me over there, but anyways, I'm going to let you go. This video has been long. Thanks for watching, and if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up, and if you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell, and a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel, whether it's over on Patreon or using my affiliate links in the description for all those awesome books I recommended that help support the channel. You're all amazing. Alright, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.


One of the main problems I find is that all our learners come to our classes mainly to develop their speaking skills and become better communicators using the language and what happens is we tend to focus a little bit more on other aspects of language development so we have load on grammar and vocabulary and writing and we tend to focus a lot on assigning homework tasks that really help them develop those skills or those systems of the language. So yeah, I think I can live with that. I'm fine. There. Okay, so go back. That's fine. So we have that, we have the need that comes to our classroom really focuses on the communicative aspect of the language and in particular the oral communication but what happens is that we don't really cater for that because it's quite difficult to think about it. It's quite difficult to say to learners, go home and do this activity for speaking because sometimes we think, you know, how are we going to assess that? How are we going to help them develop that we're not there? We know that's the only way to improve our speaking skills is by noticing active noticing, which means that the person speaking at the same time as performing the act of speaking develops that ability to notice what's getting out of their mouths and whether it's accurate, whether it's appropriate and whether it's fluent and how effectively that message comes across. And we as teachers need to help our learners develop that skill first before we focus so much on, you know, be more fluent, do this task, speak better, try this again and again. And I believe that by giving them some extra activities to do at home, which focus on speaking, we can help them become better monitors of their own linguistic performance and their own linguistic output. So that's not a new idea and it's not my idea. The first time somebody talked about it was in 2001 when the idea of speaking at home was out there. And the most important thing is that it helps learners use the language that they would not use. I mean, you might have here is a different case obviously because an English speaking country. So when they leave the room, they will have to speak English, but most of our learners usually socialize with people of their own nationalities and their own, their own mother tongue. So when they leave our room, they start speaking whatever language they speak. So their opportunities they get for speaking practice outside of the classroom are minimized. Now, why speaking homework? Well, there is low stress because the teacher is not present. Low stakes because you have nothing to lose. Your colleagues in the room, your other, your co kind of students will not kind of judge you if you're afraid of that. It's a great opportunity because it allows non-native speakers to speak to non-native speakers. And that's very important if you come from another country and you find yourself in Dublin, in Ireland, where everybody is saying, oh, English, and you don't know what to do. And it can get really stressful. But at times, it's helpful when you speak to somebody from another nationality, perhaps, that you don't share the same and one, but it does allow you to use English to communicate with them. The other very important aspect is that out of class setting, which I find very important anyway with whatever it is that we do as language teachers, but the most important thing of all is that we break away from that artificial environment that a classroom has because you walk into that door and usually there is a sign that says, you know, English only. And we talk about specific subjects and we give them tasks that resemble as much as possible a real life scenario, but they are all controlled by the teacher. So it's not very, very helpful for them, but if you make them and give them opportunities to use their language outside the classroom, it's a little bit more authentic for them and a little bit more meaningful as well because they can see their relationship between what they're doing and what the real outcome for them will be. So, some of the ideas that I have here and that I've tried with my learners are these aids and I'd like to talk about them one by one.  I find them dull and not interesting and at times I think it's great to have my learners, especially if they're young learners or teenagers, to act out those dialogues from course books when they're at home. That's an activity that I would not encourage to do in class.  I don't see the point of it when you're in class because that's a valuable time that learners pay. But when they're at home, they can practice doing that. They can actually go and record themselves acting out those dialogues, focusing on pronunciation, focusing on making those associations between letters and sound, focusing on making the dialogues a little bit more interesting because especially if you have people of higher ability, pre-intermediates and above, they can change the dialogues, they can make them a little bit more interesting. You can give them a task where you say, take these and make it better or make it relevant to you or how would you say, to whom would you say, change the characters, give them life. If there is anybody here working with young learners, you will know how important it is that the content you have is relatable to them, that they can actually identify with the characters of a course book or a short story. And that's something we can do at home. Prediction tasks, most of you have gone from training, you would know there would be somebody in your training like me saying, you need to make them predict because that would help them anticipate what's coming, which would activate those neurons in the brain that would help them get the gist of the text better. But that's something that you don't really need to do in class. Learners can do all the predictions at home. They can actually receive the title of the text. They can receive the pictures that come with the text. And you can give them a particular task saying, go through these four titles, think about what this is all about. And they can have an all-round, if you like, response to the task that you receive. And when you start your lesson next day, you can start with their output, which in this case will become the class's input for listening, where they will all listen to their voices talking about whatever the text is all about. And then you can present them with the text. And this will save a little bit of time, of class time for you to do more meaningful activities, more comprehension tasks. If you are preparing learners for exams, you would know that most of the higher level exams require learners to summarise information and present it. IO, CA, ECP, they all need to make sense of a particular prompt. And this is a great opportunity for learners to practice at home. You can give them a list of bullet points. They can see them and then they can summarise them orally. The same can happen with texts, with pictures, with a story, with something they watched with whatever they liked. And they can start focusing on oral summaries, which is something we sometimes neglect to focus on, because we tend to think of summary as a written genre only. Storytelling is, again, great for teenagers. It's great for young learners. It's great for adults and the best I have found that works for mature students that sometimes come to refresh their English. Again, you can have storytelling activities that they can do at home. Report it for a day by far my favourite, where you send your students to do or go out in the street and ask people about something and interview somebody that goes well with number seven. If they are in their home country, they can interview their parents or somebody from their family. But if they are here, it's very easy. Just go to the supermarket and ask somebody for something and record that. And the last activity I do is an oral learning diary to help to promote a little bit of learning autonomy. Wherever Friday, they need to go home and record themselves talking about the week where they say, this is what I learned. This is what I liked. This is what I didn't really like. Please don't do it again. Which is very helpful for me, but it's also very helpful for them. Now, the way I do it is I use voice thread. It's a website. It's also an app. It's free. You don't need to pay. The only thing that you do need to do is you need to register. If you have, though, younger learners, minors, or anybody with issues of consent when it comes to online data protection, you can use vocaru.com, which does not have any sort of registration sign up signing. You just record your voice and send it to the teacher's email. The same thing you can do with your phone if you are in a high-tech environment. But the beauty of voice thread is that it creates threads. So, if you have a class and you have a prediction task, say, rather than seeing this here, you can see the title of a text or two or three pictures, and you can, if I'm the student, I go to the link that my teacher sent me. There is an ad button there. I click on that ad button and I add my comment orally. My comment does not go live until I ask it to go live. So, I can listen to it. I can see if I like what I said, if it was accurate or not. I can pause. I can redo it again, which is great because it gives rehearsal time, which is very important for speaking development. Then, when I'm happy with my final outcome, I can press publish, and all the other students in the class will listen to me, and they will respond to me orally, and all that stays there and the teacher can control. So, it also promotes self-correction, peer correction, and it gives you loads of material to use as input on subsequent lessons for some feedback and error correction.


Hello everybody. So our last two videos we talked about rib cage shape and we talked about spinal curve And I wanted to talk about those first because I think they set this Necessary, you know as we're getting into these more advanced topics. They set these necessary guidelines And this this you know kind of helpful way to think about the landscape But now let's make it more complicated because it usually is so what if I see somebody doing a push-up And their elbows look like this Left elbow flares right elbow tucks harder So to me I See this one a lot. I don't see it the other way. I honestly I don't I've never noticed it I'm always looking for it this way now because I notice it But I've never seen it this way. What is going on? So if you're familiar with the Common compensatory pattern that that people take The shape of the rib cage is generally less wide on the right and wider on the left Okay, and it kind of looks like this More relaxed it might look like this. Okay If I if I take that into function, then it generally looks like this right because my elbows might my Well, let's start further back my if my rib cage is wide on the left the left Scapula is being externally rotated and pulled outward It's externally rotated and then downwardly rotated and to get stability I can't do this because if I'm if I'm positioned this way I can't get the the Glenoid head in the socket of the labrum So what I have to do is do something like this and now I can kind of move it a little bit and I can kind of stick it together a little bit Similar idea here if everything's short I can just pin it because it's got some leverage and pin it closer to my side So maybe if you're seeing this asymmetrical elbow flare and you need to look Here you need to look at what this is doing when one visual tests you can do is you can look for shoulder height I don't think that tells you everything because if I have a Depressed rib cage on the right and an elevated rib cage on the left, but I have an elevated shoulder on the right Sometimes you know something is off, but it's still it looks kind of level right You can see my head is tilted, but my shoulder level is you know not that far off So it's misleading. It doesn't tell the whole story Other things you can look at visually you can just say hey if I draw a line if I look at the middle of the sternum Is it in the middle of the body for one and is it? Equally distant equidistant between both axilla so axilla is armpit Draw this line from sternum to armpit and I just try to check the width you could have somebody take their shirt and make it really tight and You know, let's try to exaggerate it. Not that I need to try very hard And sometimes when you're extra bad, you can you can see a little bit more width on the left and less on the right I could look for pectone Sometimes the left pect looks really broad and that's kind of tying into this sternum to axilla Thing and sometimes the right pect looks really tight, but short Just just a bunch of different things you can look at The other thing that I like to try is just different side plank variations. So can you Crunch over one of your sides. Can you exhale while you're there and how does it feel? So if you feel like you're not feeling it, but I could I look at it and I say that doesn't look quite right Then I know you just you're not getting there. You can't get there so I need to find another cue or another exercise and If if you are doing it and you're like, whoa, that is crazy. Oh my god, it's cramping I got to stop I got to stop and then then maybe it's too hard or maybe if you know You have the guts you just you're sick in the head enough and you just double down and you try it some more You know a lot a lot more theory in this video a lot less Applicability but once you start to address asymmetries like this, you're not really sure what's going on But I can tell you generally there's some sort of rib cage asymmetry And if they're left elbows flared and the right elbows tucked You've probably got a wide one on the left and a narrow one on the right now It's not always that simple because sometimes the lower rib cage is doing something different than the upper rib cage But after you you don't need to worry about it until you've secured the lower rib cage So make sure I get rid of the flare That you know the rib flare that might stick out of people's shirts when they do bench presses and whatnot And then just reevaluate where you're at if you're still noticing it It's probably gonna have gone away a little bit because when I secure this I start to be able to rotate to this way and I start to be able to draw more air into the upper rib cage on the right side But sometimes it's not enough and sometimes you need to look at something else. Sometimes you need to drive more Apical lung expansion on the right side. Sometimes you need to ask yourself. What is going to do that? Sometimes you need to say how can I ensure that they keep the left Lower rib cage secured over here because if you're anything like me, that is just the first thing to go No matter what you can you can drive apical lung expansion for me But I'm gonna try my hardest to get rid of my lower rib cage security so maybe I need to consider how I'm securing myself over there with these muscles with the ab with the Shortening of the inner costals maybe even a little bit of the left lat But we don't want to really you know, it's not that you need to do pull downs, right? So that can be a little misleading obliques is a big one the serratus over here and even you'll feel some of the Lower trap and you know, I had my lower trap cramped the other day as I was queuing this I think I was even doing a bench press and it was crazy So you'll feel all sorts of stuff on that left side if you need to secure this lower left rib hump or rib flair and Then after that, maybe I need to look into more expansion in the right upper Lung what's going to do that? What's going to open up these upper ribs? Well, the neck can do it, but I would venture to guess you probably don't want their necks to turn on or your neck to turn on anymore Other things what is connected to the rib cage via muscle it is the Shoulder blade And the shoulder is what's going to dictate a lot of this stuff So if I can secure over here, I can use the pressure of the air to just kind of float up this way But I want to make sure I'm not getting it with the neck I want to make sure I'm getting it with arm muscles or with just pressure from holding this over So again, we secure over here, but Maybe we need to pull the upper ribs up via the pec minor via scapular posterior tilt Maybe we need to get posterior tilt and and a little bit of downward rotation with the long head of the triceps on that side Maybe we just need to focus on intercostal inhibition and we need to reach or we need to hang from a bar those are just Bunch of different ideas. I think I've said everything I can say on a single video about a Symmetry in the rib cage and the push-up and elbow flare and blah blah blah blah blah If you have any questions, which I'm sure you do feel free to leave them below and I'll try to answer them


Hello and welcome to this video about personal statements. This video is suitable for all prospective undergraduate students who are applying to university and as part of their application will be writing a personal statement. My name is Dan, I work at Sir Ash University of London. Today we'll be looking at what a personal statement is and then I'll tell you who reads the personal statement. I'll then give you some advice about what you might want to include and avoid and we can think about structure for your statements and then I'll leave you with some further information and links. So what is a personal statement? Well it's one part of your overall UCAS application. This part of your application is the section that you can write that you can personalise and customise to allow yourself to stand out. This is really your opportunity to promote yourself using your own words. So this part of your personal statement really is your opportunity to actually tell us who the person is behind the overall application. Most of the application will be information about you and your grades, where you went to school etc. But this allows you to explain why you think you're suitable for the courses you're applying for and you're looking here to persuade the universities you're applying to to offer you a place. It's important that you know some of the practicalities of the personal statement too. You are limited in how much you can write, whichever of these you hit first. So 4,000 characters or 47 lines of text in the personal statement application box. It's also important to know that in the application box where you submit your personal statement, it won't allow or process any formatting such as bold, italics or underline. So that's something to be avoided. On top of this you'll probably also want to avoid any non-standard characters in case they don't quite translate into the application box. A common example here is the pound sign for currency. If you write that it will actually convert in the application box to GBP for Great British Pounds and that might take up more of your characters than you're expecting. So that's something to be aware of too. UCAS have got a whole list of information around the things that can't be submitted and on the final slide it'll be on one of my links. So if you do want to look at this further you can check that out at the end. Something else to bear in mind that there's also no spellchecker. So if I were you before you submit your personal statement into the application box I'd probably write it in a word processor. That will allow you to do any spelling, punctuation and grammar checking as well using some of those inbuilt facilities. It's still a good idea to actually proofread your personal statement because sometimes things won't get picked up but you can use those tools in something like a word processor. And when you're getting started you might find it helpful to use the personal statement builder tool. This is available in the UCAS hub and you can see a screenshot of it on the right hand side and this will help give you an idea of how you might like to structure your personal statement and think about some of the things to include. It's also important to bear in mind who at the university will be reading your personal statement. So as there are two main audiences and this is similar for many universities you have admissions tutors and admissions staff. Admissions tutors are academics they're experts in the subject they know it like the back of their hand it's what they're dealing with every day and they're actually the people that could be teaching you in the future if you join the university. Therefore they really want to know about your interest in the subject where that came from and that you'll be someone who's really passionate about studying that subject and you'll be able to engage in the subject really well when you're at university. Admission staff on the other hand are more broadly experts in university admissions it's what they do deal with on a day-to-day basis. They have a very broad knowledge of the entire application process and they know what a wide variety of subjects are looking for. As well as this they want to see your overall suitability for the university taking into account your skills and your hobbies and interests and how you'll be a generally good fit for the university. It can be difficult to know what to actually include in your personal statement. I would say just bear in mind that the things that I'm about to talk about don't necessarily apply to every single personal statement you might not want to include everything that I mentioned this is just to give you an idea especially if you're starting out. So the things that are coming up now are all different topics that you might want to think about including. You'll notice that the first three that I include there are all subject focused and that's because it's really important that you get across your interest in studying your subject in your personal statement. Then there are other things that you can include as well and these are all sorts of demonstrating your overall suitability for university and they tell us a little bit more information about you. When you're thinking about those different topics it's also important to consider the structure. So the structure you could decide to go with in one that I've outlined here is very basic and that is because you are limited as I said earlier in how much you can write. At start with an introduction it doesn't need to be massively long but in here you want to grab the reader's attention and hook the person who's assessing your application. They could have read several applications before yours so you know make sure that as much as possible yours is interesting and authentic. Here perhaps you could start with thinking about your motivation to study your subject and that would allow you to then move on to the bulk of your personal statement and this is where you really need to talk about your interest in the subject. You could follow that with some of your extracurricular activities and the skills that you've built up from that before rounding it off with a conclusion. Similarly to your introduction this doesn't need to be very long but it's nice to wrap up what your personal statement is saying and to conclude in a way that you think is most appropriate. So considering those things that I've mentioned before let's just look at where they could fit into this structure. As I've mentioned although we've got a section here about subject interest your interest really should span the entirety of your personal statement. You'll see it there at the top and really it should be something you come back to throughout the entire personal statement. In your subject interest section though if you're thinking about what you actually might want to write in here you can look at your experience studying that subject so far. If you've not been able to study your subject before then think about where you could get some subject experience from. This could be in the form of subject hasted days or master classes or insight days that universities put on. There are lots of these available so check out university websites for them. Thinking about the extra curricular section there are a number of things you could include in here. One might be personal achievements but it's important that you consider personal achievements that are relevant to academia and the overall skills and suitability that you're bringing. You could include some of your work or voluntary work experience and you can think about the skills and qualities that you've built up doing that work. Those skills and qualities as well you can talk about ones that you've gained in the subject side of things and that helps wrap together that whole middle section. One way in which you could conclude and this is by no means how you have to conclude is talking about any gap year and future plans. This could be how you want to use your degree in the future and what you plan to go on to do perhaps further study or a particular career. However as I've said you don't have to necessarily go with that order you could even open up your personal statement in the introduction with your future plans and how you plan to use your degree. This is just one idea of how you might want to structure things but as I've said a couple of times now there is no exact science to the structure of your personal statement so long as you keep it predominantly academic then you should be okay. If you are looking for a rough split for academic to extra curricular then I'd go with roughly 75% academic to 25% extra curricular. That hopefully shows you that as long as you're focusing on the academic side of things everything should be okay. When you're considering structuring the points that you're making during your personal statement you might want to bear in mind the ABC rule. This will allow you to write concisely and to not waste any characters so you start with an activity then you think about what you've gained from doing that and then you link it back to your course. I said to give you an example maybe your activity is that you've done part-time work and the benefit of that is that you've gained a variety of skills but you could focus in here on your problem solving ability and linking that back to the course being a good problem solver will help you to think outside of the box and consider new perspectives when you're facing challenges during your degree. So that's one way in which you might wish to structure the points that you're making. We're very much aware at universities of the challenges that you've faced and it's been especially difficult over the last year or so to build up some of the skills and gain lots of the experiences that you might want to put in your personal statement. So I thought it'd be a good idea just to talk through some of these. On the left hand side is a column of different skills that you might want to include in your personal statement and on your right hand side are places in which you can get experience to talk about in your personal statement and this experience is really focusing on the subject that you might want to study. So these are all generally geared towards humanities and social sciences and languages degrees in general. On the right hand side there are ways in which you can open your eyes to different parts of the subject you're interested in by doing things such as independent reading, watching documentaries or listening to podcasts about your subject. A really good thing you can do is to take a MOOC which is a massive open online course and lots of universities run these so as we have a couple as well and MOOCs really give you a flavour of what it might be like to study that subject at degree level. Universities will really appreciate seeing you do something like this especially if you've not been able to study your subject before. You might also want to look out for some virtual work experience that's available, some companies and industries offer insight days or you could get a week-long work experience. You might also be able to go to museums and galleries as things are opening up more and that could be a really good way as well to broaden your horizons and find out more about the subject you're interested in and in a similar way to open online courses you could consider taster lectures as well and many universities run these and again that's a good way of finding out what what a subject is like at degree level. The skills on the left hand side are things that you could draw from experiences that you've already had and that could be at school or college or from other experiences that you might go on to do so these are all helpful things to think about you can read through this list and just consider where you might have picked up these skills so far. So we've spoken about what to include in your personal statement but now to think about what you should probably avoid. First up is negativity. It's very important in your personal statement that you're as positive as you can be and that you talk about yourself in a positive way. If you use negative language to describe yourself then that won't leave a great impression on the person who's reading your personal statement. Second is overusing quotes. You're limited in how much you can write and quote are other people's words. We really want to hear from you so it's important as much as possible to avoid using too many quotes and to actually use your own words to describe your achievements so far and your interest in studying that subject. One quote might be okay if it's if it's relevant but please don't feel like you need to put quotes into your personal statement. I'd also be careful when it comes to naming a university if you're applying to say five universities and you say that you have an absolute favorite and you really want to go there that might leave the others feeling a bit put out so just be careful. The one exception here though is if you've completed a course or similar with a university you can definitely say that you did that course with them that's great to hear but yeah you should just be careful otherwise saying that you've got a favorite university. Your personal statement is your opportunity to use your own words to talk about your interests and the subject that you're applying for. There's lots of information in your application already so you don't need to repeat all of that so for example you don't need to explain to us where you went to school or college you don't have to explain the A levels or subjects that you've taken as well we can see all of that on the rest of your statements so don't use up your characters there. I'd also be careful using humor. Humor is very personal and subjective and it doesn't always come across as well in writing so I would stick to just writing in a slightly more factual way. It's really important that you check your spelling punctuation and grammar people who are reading your personal statement as I mentioned earlier many of them are academics and they want to see your academic ability so it's not going to look great if you make any spelling mistakes. Next up is dishonesty. If you claim to have a certain qualification or award UCAS can actually ask you to provide evidence of this so it's really important that everything you write in your personal statement is genuine and true and you can back it up.  When you submit your personal statement it will actually be checked against some plagiarism detection software in the UCAS application box so if this will look for any similarities between the statement you've submitted and the statements that other people have submitted and also other common personal statement tools and resources on different websites so it's important that you're careful here and you don't copy anyone else's work. If it does come back and detects over a certain percentage of similarity then the personal statement will be flagged and sent off to the universities you're applying to. This will be highlighted and then they can make a decision about where to go from there. It is important to know though that if you have applied to university previously through UCAS then your personal statement won't be compared to anything that you've previously submitted so that's okay. Although that might seem a little bit concerning please don't worry as long as you're honest and write your personal statement yourself then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. There is a link on the last slide with some further information about this if you need it. So when it comes to the actual process of writing your personal statement some people get stuck at the very beginning and find it difficult to start so I've outlined a couple of steps that you might want to go through. To begin with you can just brainstorm all of your ideas all of the things that you think could be relevant to your personal statement then you can look through these sort through and decide which you think are most relevant and that you're going to use in your statement. Then once you've got your idea sorted you can organise the structure that you're going to use and then comes the important bit it's time to write with clarity and use positive language. Then you should proofread your personal statement for any spelling punctuation and grammatical errors. After you've done this you can think about whether this is the best version or whether you should redraft it. Most people need to write several drafts of their personal statement before they submit and finally something else to be aware of is supplementary statements. A supplementary statement is submitted in addition to your regular UCAS application and regular personal statement. In a supplementary statement you would submit any information that's specifically relevant to your application to us at SOAS and this has to be information that you were not able to include in your regular personal statement. For example if you're applying to four history courses at another university at SOAS you're applying to history with a language and your personal statement hasn't allowed you to address the language aspect of the course you're applying to at SOAS that's when you might want to submit a supplementary statement but you should bear in mind only some universities will allow you to do this. It's not expected of all students even if your university does allow it but there may be some cases like the one I outlined previously where it might be applicable. If you are writing a supplementary statement you should contact the admissions team directly by email about this and that's also how you would submit the statement. When it comes to submitting your supplementary statement make sure you include information about yourself including your UCAS ID number so it can be attached to your application and considered at the same time as your regular personal statement. And here's some further information. The top three links are ruled from UCAS. You have the UCAS hub with the personal statement builder tool. You have all of UCAS's dedicated personal statement information and you also have the specific information from UCAS about similarity detection and fraud or dishonest state in case you need want to read about that further. Then you have some trusted resources and advice from the student room and the uni guide and finally you have a blog post from a current SOAS student with their personal statement top tips. Thank you for watching this video. I hope it was helpful for you in your personal statement writing. If you do have any inquiries about SOAS in general or the content of this video you can get in touch at study at soas.ac.uk. Thank you.