Charged Magazine

Day: April 24, 2024

  • “When” to Do Things by Daniel H. Pink

    “When” to Do Things by Daniel H. Pink

    Nowadays, I “read” books mostly by listening to them. When you have to read textbooks and research papers all day, it’s easier on the eyes and the brain to just have someone do all the reading for you. One of the first books I listened to after realizing this is When, the pop science/self-help book by Daniel H. Pink.

    Now, hear me out. I’m usually a hater when it comes to self-help books: I don’t like their overconfident, salesman-like tone, and I don’t like the insinuation that you can change your life with a “few, simple tricks”. I despise buzzwords about “hacking your brain” or “maximizing productivity”. I’m not trying to make my body a more efficient machine–I’m just trying to get by and be happy.

    This book doesn’t overpromise on how it will “change your life”. Its tagline, “the scientific secrets of perfect timing”, is a little clickbait-y, but it really does cite scientific literature. Rather than telling you what you should or shouldn’t be doing, Pink tells different stories: anecdotes of folks who run marathons at the end of a decade (19 years old, 29, 39, 49, and so on), research about night owls versus early birds, scheduling customs around the world, etc. And it definitely makes the message sink in more than if he delivered it like a TED talk.

    This tone really stuck with me as a highlight of this book. For as long as I’ve been aware of time, I’ve been anxious about it. I’ve worried about running out of it, I’m terrified of wasting it, and I am constantly checking to see if I am using it right. I procrastinate and waffle around and scroll Twitter for too long and suddenly it’s bedtime. If I might be allowed to generalize my neuroses to everyone, I would say that humans just can’t really conceptualize time (see my article on Existential Physics if you want more about time). So, it scares us.

    This book sat me down and said, “don’t worry so much”. Like this TikTok comment I saw floating around the internet says, “the time will pass anyways”. Apparently that’s a Earl Nightingale quote?

    The time will pass anyways : r/Wiseposting

     

    Take the example of the post lunch slump. I have always noticed that I really get things done from 11-12pm, 3-6 pm, or 9pm-12am (I’m currently writing this article at 10pm!). For the longest time, that stressed me out. If I couldn’t get work done during the typical 9-5, how would I ever be able to keep a job? What would I do? From this book, I learned that my biological clock is just tuned a little bit differently. Instead of trying to fight it, I should make the most of it. During the dead zone around 1-2pm, I don’t even try to do computer work. I’ll walk around, chat with a coworker, or deal with a task that makes me move. Then, when my energy hits a peak again, I tackle those mentally draining activities.

    This book didn’t change my life, but funnily enough, it came into my world at just the right time. When you’re a college student juggling work, research, classes, chores, a social life, and your own physical and mental health, it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed. Up to this point, our time has been highly budgeted by parents, teachers, and other authority figures. And then, suddenly you’re just expected to be able to do it all yourself. This book was a small step in learning how to be at peace with time, and be a little more kind to myself in the process. If that sounds like something you’d like, do check out this book. It’s well worth your–nevermind.

  • Janna Levin’s Black Hole Survival Guide

    Janna Levin’s Black Hole Survival Guide

    What would happen if you fell into a black hole? It’s a question that you want answered fast. After reading verbose academic articles all semester, Black Hole Survival Guide feels like a breath of fresh air. At a slim 190 pages (just 3 hours in the audiobook), author Janna Levin answers just that. Nothing else. No frills, no fuss.
    Okay–I lied. There’s a bit at the beginning where the astrophysicist reminisces about how her wonder about black holes led her to pursue her career. And a bit at the end where she details the day the first image of a black hole was taken: the excitement, the awe, the tears. And it’s this personal, lively, and engaging tone that made this book so easy to read. And that’s not something I thought I’d say about a book about black hole theories!
    The title of this guide is slightly misleading: there’s likely no chance you’ll survive a black hole. Probably. Levin discusses the different parts of a black hole, circling it in a dance before she takes you into it. The big black hole theories are discussed, from the boring (you’ll lose consciousness before you see anything), to the deliciously macabre (your legs will fall in at a different speed than your head, pulling your body apart limb from limb), to the weirdly existential (time will slow so much that you will see whole galaxies extinguish in the blink of an eye). Her prose is electric. Listening to her describe what it would be like to look out from the event horizon, I can picture myself there now. Just take a look at this video of her explaining black holes to people of different education levels.
    Black Hole Survival Guide is a bite-sized romp into the world of the black hole. If you listen to the audiobook, it’s like an audio only NOVA documentary with a wry attitude. I don’t even want to spoil any more of the book than I already have. Dr. Levin doesn’t mince words, and neither will I. Just like with a black hole, you’ll really only understand it if you dive in headfirst. Go read it!

  • Diary of an Undergraduate Thesis: The Finale

    Diary of an Undergraduate Thesis: The Finale

    This is a continuation of my first article from last semester where I started my undergraduate thesis writing process. You can find that here.

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    January 24nd, 2024

    Just submitted my methods and materials section. Honestly, at this point I’m a bit more stressed about actually finishing data collection than the actual writing. I’ve kind of reached a “well it’s just an undergraduate thesis and not the end of the world” mentality, which is helping a little. To be honest, I did have a couple stress dreams last week (one was where I was scrolling through an endless Excel sheet of data that I had to analyze), so just accepting that it’s not that deep is good to me. But we keep working. 

    I also had to peer review one of my classmates’ methods section. We had this set up last semester too, where we had to peer review other people’s proposals. This semester, I’m paired with a group of other neuro students, so I feel like there’s a lot more back and forth I can actually have with them and their research. For this student, since we had similar experimental setups, I was able to see what she did well, and it also reminded me of things that I need to add to my section.

    One thing I’m trying to do this semester is to work on my thesis stuff more consistently, rather than pushing it all to the few days before the deadline. For that reason, I’ve blocked off an hour every workday on my calendar as a reminder to work on my thesis, even if it’s just for 15-30 minutes. I’ll let you all know whether this is helpful or if it stresses me out more to have my thesis on my mind all the time.

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    February 27, 2024

    As always, problems come up right when you don’t want them to. The stereotaxic frame got broken, so we had to send it in for servicing. This means no surgery practice this month, which sets me back on my deadlines. Luckily, I’ve figured things out with my PI and my thesis class professor, but it’s still disappointing.

    Still, the time will pass anyway, and I did practice with perfusions and drop fixing in the meantime. It turns out that I had gotten rusty with these basic skills, so the time spent on that still felt worthwhile.

    While I’ve been waiting on unforeseen circumstances to clear up, I’ve continued working on my thesis results and discussion section. You might ask how I could write those parts without having data, but I did a method my professor calls “Mad Libs” writing, where you leave blanks where you don’t have the information yet. This has been helpful, since I have been able to get an outline of what my results and discussion sections will look like.

    So, I’ll see you in a month, when I hopefully have some data I can cut my teeth on.

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    March 30, 2024

    Well, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with surgeries, and next week I’m planning on doing my first optical implant. If all goes well, I can hopefully collect some data in two weeks. I’ve definitely been stressed about completing this thesis, and part of the process for me this semester is learning to deal with/live with the stress. This isn’t something I can finish in a weekend, after all, so I need to learn to work with this “unfinished task” bell dinging in my head until I turn this thing in. I really really want to have data collection done by the second week of April so we can do data analysis and I can submit the drafts to my readers. It feels like this semester has flown by faster than I thought, and I am worried about the deadline.

    In terms of what else I can do on the writing side, I am working on the schematics that will take up part of my figures in my results section. This is something you never really think about when you think of writing a thesis, but working on making good figures is difficult and time intensive. However, it feels good to be able to make those to have in my paper for now.

    There’s a lot going on outside of this thesis too–I’m getting ready for graduation, writing term papers, studying for tests, and looking at housing after graduation. It’s a lot to juggle, and I hope I’m doing okay. I’ve been reminding myself that I’m basically in the final lap of this process, and that I can do it.

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    April 23, 2024

    Finally got some data this month, and I was able to write it all up and make a complete thesis of it all. It was stressful surrounding the data collection, but actually doing it went pretty smoothly. I typed everything up today and sent it off to my first and second readers.

    Really, I don’t know what to say here. After actually sending it off, I felt a little relief, but it wasn’t a super big change. That being said, I think I’m still focused on my work because I plan to continue it after graduation, and so my work doesn’t really feel finished. Still, I’m really happy that I was able to turn everything in with time to spare. By having it done about two weeks before I have to submit, this gives my readers enough time to give me feedback and turn in everything to UROP (undergraduate research office that approves undergrad theses).

    Now, it’s time to focus on everything else I need to complete before the end of the semester: term papers, exams, and graduation. But tonight, instead of working on it all, I gave myself the evening off. It’s something I deserve after all this, I think.

    Am I happy I did all this? Was it all worth it? I think it might be too early to tell, but I think it was well worth my time. I learned so much about research, working on a long term project, and scientific writing. But if I could go back in time and do one thing better, I would try not to stress as much about it. I think during this past year I’ve given myself so much unneeded pressure that never helped make my thesis better in the end. But I doubt that August 2023 me would have taken that advice to heart anyway. In any case, this is my last entry, because I consider this chapter of my life complete. I hope you enjoyed this mad little journal. I’m out.