How ChatGPT is helping me study

and other day to day uses for the bot

Even though in my circles it sounds like everyone is experimenting with generativeAI or using it in their day to day, I know it’s not the case.

But, while I started using it to help me write and to play around, but without realising it, it’s become a day-day source of help.

This realisation hit me as I started using it for my new project: getting a Pilates Teaching qualification!

Using GenAI to Help Me Study

I know I said I’d keep this writing space AI-free, but you know, if I have to summarise what Pilates is, I’m going to struggle. So here’s a definition from chatGPT:

”Pilates is a low-impact exercise method that emphasizes core strength, flexibility, and overall body awareness through controlled movements and breathing techniques. Developed by Joseph Pilates, it aims to improve posture, balance, and coordination, making it suitable for people of all fitness levels.”

You can see, this is the lazy version of using genAI to help with studying. (I know, but it’s Friday, late in the afternoon, and in the heat… and and and…)

Instead of thinking through the practice of Pilates, its benefits, etc, and coming up with my own definition, and then checking it through genAI to see whether it was accurate, or missing something, I asked the bot to do the thinking for me.

As I have experience of Pilates, I know that it’s a very good summary of the practice and its benefits. I’ll be using it in the future!

But you might be pleased to know that this is not how I’m planning to use it for my certification. A part of me is thinking, oh, I could get it to write my coursework for me…

BUT, I’m doing this course because I want to LEARN to teach Pilates.

So I won’t be doing that.

A Very 21st Century Study Aid

Back in the early 90s, when I was studying for my Biology degree, my favourite part of studying was going to the library to look for recent research on whatever topic I had to write about, and then look through the journals to find the original referenced articles. I spent lots of pennies on photocopying, and a lot of time scanning paragraphs and paragraphs looking for those two sentences that told me what I wanted to know.

Then, as the internet grew and grew and Google became a verb, I started using the internet to access journals, and often ended up going down research rabbit-holes.

And now… you know what’s coming next!

Maybe I also need to take a drawing course…

As part of my course, I have to pass two vocational exams on anatomy and physiology.
I am loving going back to studying human biology.
It was the reason I studied a degree in Biology in the first place.
Only the part that interested me about it, anatomy and physiology at a macro level, was a very small component of it.

Now I get to study the part I love!
It’s great to go back to something you have a foundation in, but where you still have knowledge gaps.

And I’m using ChatGPT to help me.

This part of the course (Levels 2& 3 Anatomy and Physiology) is being delivered online, in some good ol’ fashioned e-learning. No audio, no person talking at you, just small snippets of text on the screen with simple exercises to carry out, and a multiple choice test at the end of each unit, for you to see whether you have understood/retained anything - I mean, everything.

Our knowledge will also be assessed in the traditional way: in an invigilated environment, without any study aids to hand.

But for now, I get to study at my own pace, making notes on my Remarkable as I go along.

And every now and then, I go: “Huh? Why?”

For example, when looking at the factors that affect blood pressure, I came across this: “ingesting salty foods can increase blood pressure momentarily because the sodium makes the body retain fluids”. That’s it, no more explanation. Going into more detail is not within the course’s remit.

But I wanted to understand more. (And unfortunately, biochemistry wasn’t my strongest subject back in the day…)

So I went to ChatGPT, asked it to explain that to me. It gave me a step by step breakdown of the effect of sodium in the body, and then summarised the answer:

”To sum up, the ingestion of salty foods leads to higher sodium levels in the body, which causes the kidneys to retain water. The increased fluid volume results in higher blood pressure because the heart has to pump more blood through the blood vessels, putting extra pressure on the vessel walls.”

I also asked:
”Why does weight influence the amount of osteoblasts in the bones, and how?” and followed up with: “How is this reaction similar or different to that stimulated by weight bearing exercise?”

My course also told me that Sprains are more common in ankles than in other parts of the body. I knew this, but had never thought about why. I asked ChatGPT, and it gave me a few anatomical, functional and situational factors, along the Biomechanical Considerations, and in true, helpful ChatGPT style, some Prevention and Management.

This works so well for me.

I can ask the most basic of questions without holding back the class, and I can go on a tangent without going down rabbit-holes.

As with any time when you ask genAI for information, this also works because I have some knowledge of the topic, and I’m not going to use this information for anything important, or to make any decisions. If I needed to do this, I’d verify it in another way. (Google!)

But for now, this works for me.

Other Day - Day Uses

As always, I’ve gone on longer than expected with this post, but I wanted to share with you these other ways in which I’m using ChatGPT for the day-day. (I seem to use Claude for writing, and ChatGPT for the shorter, snappier questions.)

How to do long form multiplication
I never thought I’d see the day when I forgot how to do long-form multiplication of large numbers. But recently, I got a calculation wrong (as part of one of those multiple choice tests on the online course) and I wanted to know what I’d done wrong. So I asked ChatGPT to remind me how to do it.

Understand financial information
I recently got an email from a company I hold a very small amount of shares with. They’ve just received a large investment and our shares have got “diluted”. I had a sense of what this meant, but I wanted to make sure there was nothing else to be aware of.

Follow up on news item
I wanted to find out what had happened to a podcaster who stopped podcasting after being accused of a “minor transgression”, so I asked ChatGPT. After accessing the internet, it first gave me a nothing answer, and when prompted, it gave me the juicy one. (I also asked it whether the transgression could be classified as a “crime” or a “misdemeanour”. It can’t. It’s a minor transgresssion.)

So there you have it.
That was kind of my week.

Any questions about using genAI, Pilates or anatomy, shoot them over!