Public Health Student, Brown University
“I’m trying to understand public health at a systemic, population level view in the US, but also in the world. I want to contribute to getting better value for health care, especially in the US; it’s not a place where we get the most value. Right now that means getting through my classes.”
Learning with Surf
“In another browser, I would be reading things and taking notes for my classes. But Surf helps me learn things at a deeper level … I can make different connections.”
Subject Areas
PHP Readings
“I have a Surf Context for my Public Health readings, assigned by my lecturer. It has textbook chapters, lecture slides, articles from the New York Times, New Yorker.
If it’s a particular topic, say end of life care, palliative care — I’m able to look at all of these documents at once and say ‘what does the Professor want me to take away from these readings? What are the key insights I should be learning and how might these different articles be related?’”
Chemistry
“My Chemistry context has a lot of lecture slides and lab notebooks. Lab notebooks is a usecase too. I’m able to connect procedures in [a specific] lab to what I’m learning in the textbook. I can say ‘Why am I taking those steps?’ And normally the answer is in the textbook and lecture slides.
I can understand why I'm doing what I'm doing and not just sit there and follow steps. I'm great at following steps. But that's not going to help me long term."
Math
“With this math textbook, I can drag in a screenshot and ask it to ‘give me a step-by-step explanation and relate to topics discussed in Section 14.1’ or ‘Give me a derivation for the definition on my screen, it takes the autoscreenshot, which is great and then [it responds]‘“
Own Research
“Sitting in public health class, the professor would present questions and say you know ‘why is this this way?’ and some of those questions were more interesting to me than others. So I also have a Surf Context for my own research that I’m starting to do. Readings both from the class, but also that I found online.
I’d Google you know ‘why don’t people see primary care physicians as often?’ or ‘Outcomes related to use of geriatricians.’ I’d find a good article, I’d save it into Surf, into this Context here. This is just a collection of interesting articles to me related to these topics.
My research is early on in the sense that I’m still trying to find a professor to take me into their lab. But I’m looking into two areas.
One, how we might be able to potentially be able to better manage chronic diabetes in our healthcare system if we had better access to primary care physicians? The other potential avenue is end of life care — how geriatricians drastically improve the care of elderly people. There is such a shortage of geriatricians.”
Overall
“One of the things they talk about at Brown is the importance of a liberal arts education and they have this thing called the open curriculum where you take any class you want. The whole point is that the best education is one that is well rounded, one that is multi-disciplinary.
When I go into a lecture, and I’m learning some sort of a concept or I am reading through a textbook, what Surf allows me to do is connect the random single bits of information that I’m picking up and its able to say ‘how does this fit into the larger perspective on healthcare in the United States’?
Surf is the browser thats grabbing from whatever areas of your life, putting it in a bubble and saying, let’s connect all of this together. Let’s learn more about this, based on everything you already know.”