Sunday, May 26, 2013

Mulling a true return to blogging

I started this blog around this time last year, so perhaps this is the right season for a little writing and self-expression. You probably assumed that I've been too busy to blog, and that's essentially true. This semester I barely had time for my reading project- I'm now 5 books behind and I made a pledge I wouldn’t be taking on more unless I could fulfill this goal. Of course, those of you who have followed my blog in the past know that not having time is a false excuse.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I'm sitting in my hotel in the middle of the jungle in... Argentina! I'm with my parents at one of my dad's conferences at Iguazu Falls. Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly remarked "poor Niagara!" upon seeing Iguazu. I'll try to post some pictures when I get back. 

For now, here's one ripped from the web:




I intend to focus on catching up on books for the first few days. The idea is to create some mental distance, and not think about my past semester or future plans at all. To create true peace of mind, I'm going to write it all down, publish this blog entry, and be done with it.

This is the perfect time for a break. It's the start of summer. I just finished one of my projects, and now I'm gearing up for a final push on a second. And so after I've completed my trip, it's high time to carefully re-examine my goals, work habits, and life pursuits. Blogging will probably be essential.

My craziest semester ever

A quick update on what I've been up to, plus some thoughts:

Manuscript: I wrote my first first-author paper ever, and the revision was submitted yesterday! I mastered techniques an adapted my work habits to dramatically increase the number of experiments I could perform in parallel. My procrastination levels were by far the lowest in my entire life. However, I quickly became aware of my next challenge: I was too busy churning out data, and had not nearly enough time for high-level thinking. In other words, "needs to read more." Time to stretch my abilities, acquire new skills, and experience some discomfort. The goal is to come up with a big idea that I can call uniquely mine.

Presentations: my lack of time for high-level thinking became obvious once I had to prepare my first hour-long presentations on my own research. I struggled to meet this challenge. My earlier presentations were much shorter, and only involved generalities. Even for those, I had to space out my revisions over the course of a month or more. Now I had one week. Of course, feelings of self-doubt arose. Do I truly belong in a PhD program? But I fought through it, and my time invested last year in cultivating productive thought patterns paid off. I took brutally honest feedback to heart. And therefore both presentations ended up as resounding successes.

Teaching: I love teaching. I refuse to blow off teaching as a distraction from my oh-so-important research. So I deliberately approached the department where TA's have the heaviest teaching responsibilities. Yes, there is a hardass professor and a few whiny pre-meds. But most teaching headaches can be addressed by breaking away from institutionalized teaching methods. If one dares to do things unconventionally, one can have the best teaching experience ever. I came up with fun silly metaphors for abstract concepts without any idea of how students would receive them. They were making their own metaphors by semester's end. 

When the professor deliberately made the first exam incredibly difficult to force students to work hard for the rest of the semester (the average was a D and the class is not on a curve) I told my students a personal story of failure and the lessons I learned. By teaching them methods to study more effectively, I convinced them that they need not feel guilty about not being smart enough or not working hard enough, because those were not the core of the problem. They only needed to learn how to learn more effectively, and with that message they became more motivated than ever. No eye-rolls. The result? For final grades, 12 out of 16 A’s and A+’s were in my section. They even made me a card, and I honestly cried when I read it.


The most useful tactic for tackling multiple big projects


From reading above, you might imagine I was hectically moving from one task to the next. After all, student emails arrive at random times, multiple overlapping experiments are going at once, and I have random meetings and seminars at all times of day.

But probably the best advice I got was from Cal Newport, who advises doing everything in series, not in parallel. No rapid switching between teaching and research tasks. One day is entirely devoted to research. One half-day devoted entirely to teaching and answering student e-mails, or one half-day devoted entirely to meetings and small tasks. Labwork needs to be done everyday, so I can't devote a full day to other things, but I try to reach the ideal as much as possible. 

If anything, this greatly decreased my stress levels. Every activity comes with its own anxiety traps, and trying to juggle them all at once causes those anxieties to compound, so its impossible to focus on one thing and do a good job. Better to tackle one mine at a time in an obstacle course than to navigate a whole minefield.

A return to blogging?


With me adding more plans on top of what was a very busy schedule, you might think returning to blogging is ridiculous. But as I recently read, blog material is a natural byproduct of what you do during a PhD, and it takes minimal time to transform it into blog format. In fact, it may even speed up your work, since communication and teaching rapidly clarifies your thinking. As I taught my students, explaining things to others is the best way to make something stick.

About Me

MD/PhD student trying to garner attention to myself and feel important by writing a blog.

Pet peeves: conventional wisdom, blindly following intuition, confusing correlation for causation, and arguing against the converse

Challenges
2013: 52 books in 52 weeks. Complete
2014: TBA. Hint.

Reading Challenge 2013

2013 Reading Challenge

2013 Reading Challenge
Albert has read 5 books toward his goal of 52 books.
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Goodreads

Albert's bookshelf: read

Zen Habits - Handbook for Life
5 of 5 stars true
Great, quick guide. I got a ton of work done these past two weeks implementing just two of the habits described in this book.
The Hunger Games
5 of 5 stars true
I was expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't.

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