Ten Observations From Our Flying Telescope

“Go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you. Your mind will play tricks, but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth.”

— Don Miguel Ruiz

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

— John Steinbeck

South Demerdji, Crimea by Alexander Trashin

js

another math post…. but i have some bio notes on the way!!! those r normally more interesting. hehe

Why I nearly failed my first year of college/university - and what to do instead

Hey everyone. I haven’t written a studyblr post in ages but I had the idea for this post in the car and I thought it couldn’t hurt to share it. As some of you may know, I graduated from uni last year and I’m going to start my Masters next year! But, a couple of years ago, I was failing my first year of university and things were dire. So I thought I’d write about the reasons I ended up in that situation, and how to avoid it.

1) I couldn’t make it in time for my 8 a.m. calculus class. 

I commuted every day to university with my sisters and some of my cousins. Which meant that - every morning - somebody was running late and the earliest I’d get to class was often a good fifteen minutes in. Which was often the most important part of the lesson, and I’d struggle to find a seat at all (thanks to the commerce kids attending the science calc class -____-). This ended up being so demoralising I sometimes didn’t even bother attending the class or watching the lecture recordings because I was so far behind.

What to do instead: if you miss a class, watch the lecture recording on the same day. If there’s no lecture recording, find out what topics were covered and self-study from the textbook on the same day.

2) I didn’t know how to catch up on work.

I was one of those annoying students in high school. I’d go to school about three-four days a week (thankfully my mom was very lenient) and still keep up with all my classes with barely any effort. So when I got to university and missing a class meant that I missed a whole lot of work, I had no clue how to catch up. I didn’t know how to check the syllabus for the topics I needed to study, how to ask my friends what we did or how to find the material in the textbook or online notes. I had all the resources but I didn’t know how to use them.

What to do instead: learn how to study. The studyblr community has great advice on this! You can also ask your friends for help, or even other students who are a year or two ahead of you!

3) I didn’t do my homework properly.

The biggest trap at university is homework that you’re assigned but won’t be graded on. For calculus and maths-related courses in particular. Because you don’t have to hand anything in…it’s super easy to just not do the work. I spend all our tutorial classes chatting to my friends and not even asking for help - because I didn’t do the homework in the first place. It meant that I didn’t get any practice at using calculus until I crammed for my first test and was promptly handed back at 23% (yes…23%). My grades only really improved once I started doing the homework problems we were assigned. For my physics class, where our homework problems were graded so I actually worked on them every week -  I passed without a problem (though my grades were just average)

4) My mindset was all wrong.

This is something that I’m still working on. In high school, my natural “intelligence” got me straight As with zero effort. But at university, that “natural intelligence” wasn’t enough and I was failing HARD. I thought there was something wrong with me. That I somehow wasn’t intelligent at all and that’s why I was failing - because I wasn’t smart enough. I can now confidently say that I was completely wrong. I was failing because I wasn’t doing my work (see Step 3). It wasn’t until I overcame this mindset (known as a fixed mindset) did I start improving (around the time I actually started doing my homework). Natural intelligence can only take you so far. Eventually, you need to do the work. So don’t pay attention to anyone else who seems to be just breezing through university without effort - they’re either cheating or working hard when you don’t see them. 

What to do instead: research the “growth mindset”. If you have time, the Coursera course “Learning How to Learn”, as well as the ethos of Khan Academy, concentrate on developing a growth mindset.

Also: Do the work. 

5) I didn’t know where to study.

Finding *your* study spot is something that really takes time. When I tried to study at first, I couldn’t settle on a good spot. I’d try to find somewhere I could hang out with my friends at the same time (bad idea) or I’d go to parts of the main library that were dull and uninspiring. At home, I could do some work, but I also got distracted easily. I only really found my ideal study spot in my 2nd year of uni - a small, quiet, botany library with ancient-but-beautiful books, natural light, overlooking the street without being distracting and most importantly fairly secret and quiet. I could study undisturbed there and the surroundings helped me feel calm and comfortable.

What to do instead: ask around for good study spots and try them out. Older students especially! They know all the good spots because they’ve been around for a while! 

I hope you found this post helpful! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send me an ask or a message. If you’d like to see more of my postgrad life, please give me a follow. I also have a bookstagram account where I occassionally share some of my planning and artwork as well.

Happy studying

xx Munira

Astronaut Journal Entry - The Last Week

Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above our planet at 17,500mph. Below you will find a real journal entry, written in space, by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle.

To read more entires from this series, visit our Space Blogs on Tumblr.

I can’t believe that Expedition 55 is already over. Today is Sunday, and we will depart the International Space Station (ISS) next Sunday morning (June 3). 

168 days in space. 

There have been many challenging moments, but even more positive highlights of our time on ISS. The new crew from the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft (Oleg Artymyev, Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold) joined Norishige Kanai (Nemo), Anton Shkaplerov and I last March. Since then, we have completed two spacewalks, captured and released the SpaceX Dragon-14 cargo craft, captured the Cygnus OA-9 cargo craft and completed a myriad of maintenance and science activities. 

The team on the ground controlling, monitoring, supporting and planning has been amazing. It is always great to work with them, and especially during the moments where the equipment, tools, procedures or crew need help. It is incredible to see how much a good team can accomplish when methodically placing one foot in front of the other. 

I have been lucky in that the first crew (Mark Vande Hei, Joe Acaba and Alexander Misurkin (Sasha)) and the second crew (Drew, Ricky and Oleg) were all amazing to work with. I do believe the planets aligned for my mission onboard ISS. 

Drew and Ricky have been friends forever, and listening to them nip at each other provided a ton of great humor for the ground and for us. Their one-liners to each other reminded me of several scenes from the movie Space Cowboys. 

This a great example that happened as I was writing this log entry:    

Ricky:  Hey Maker, is this your smoothie?   

Maker:  No.  

Ricky:  It must be Drew’s.

 Drew:  Hey Ricky, don’t drink my smoothie.

Ricky:  What smoothie? This one has my name on it (as he writes his name on it).

 Drew:  Okay, Grandpa Underpants, hands off my smoothie.

Ricky:  Okay, Feustelnaut – we have rules around here, so this is my smoothie now!

All:  Much laughing. (To quote my kids: “LOL!”)

One the hardest things to do in space is to maintain positive control of individual items such as tools, spare parts, fasteners, etc. We try very hard not to lose things, but even with all of the attention and positive control, items can still float away and disappear. 

We generally hold items in a crew transfer bag (CTB). Inside the CTB are many items for the system that it supports. When the CTB is opened, the items are free floating inside the bag and tend to escape. It is very difficult to maintain control of the items – especially if they are small, do not have Velcro, or when the daily schedule is so tight that we are rushing to stay on time. We always try to close the CTB’s and Ziploc bags after removing or replacing each item to maintain positive control, but this takes much more time to do for individual items, and if the timeline is tight, we absorb more risk by rushing. 

The same applies for tools, which we usually keep in a Ziploc bag while working on individual systems and tasks. Last month, I was installing a new low temperature cooling loop pump that had failed a month or two earlier. I gathered the needed tools into my modified (with Velcro) Ziploc bag as I always do and floated over to the work area. When I got there, one of the tools that I had gathered was missing. I looked for 30 minutes, and could not find it. Lost items are very hard to find because the items that escape are usually barely moving and blend in with the environment very quickly. A lost item could be right in front of us and we would never see it. 

Our crew, after learning these lessons, decided that when anyone loses something, we would tell the other crew members what we had lost with a general location. This has had a huge impact on finding items. If a different crew member can help within the first minutes of losing an item, the new crew member has an excellent chance of finding the item. We have proven this technique several times during the expedition – and Nemo was the very best at quickly finding lost items. But, in my case, we still could not find the missing tool. Our amazing ground team understood and vectored me to a replacement tool and I finished the job. I spent the next 3 weeks watching, looking and never forgetting about the lost tool. Then, one day last week, Oleg came to the lab and handed us a tool he had found in his Soyuz spacecraft, way on the aft side of the ISS. Amazing. We finally found the tool and I was happy again. This was a lucky ending. ISS has many corners, crevices and hard-to-see areas where missing items could hide and never be found.

We captured a Cygnus cargo craft last Thursday. I was very impressed with the entire team. Our specialists and training professionals in Mission Control did a great job preparing the necessary procedures and making sure we were proficient and ready to conduct operations. The robotic arm is a wonderful system that we could not operate ISS without. Being in space, however, it has some very unique handling qualities. If you think about a spring-mass-damper system just as you did during physics or control theory class, and then remove the damper, you will see a system that is very subject to slow rate oscillations. 

In test pilot terms, damping ratio is very low and the latency is well over a half of a second. Also in test pilot terms – this is a pilot-induced oscillations (PIO) generator. These characteristics require crew to “fly” the robotic arm using open-loop techniques, which requires a huge amount of patience. Test pilots are sometimes not very patient, but understanding the system and practicing with the incredible simulators that our ground team built and maintain help keep our proficiency as high as possible. The capture went flawlessly, and I was very impressed with the professionalism across the board – crew, flight controllers and training professionals – what a great job!

Drew, Ricky and I got to play guitar a few times while on ISS. This was fun! Drew connected pickups to the acoustic guitars and then connected the pickups to our tablets for amplification. I’ve never heard an acoustic guitar sound like an electric guitar amped up for heavy metal before. We had a great jam on the song “Gloria”, and a couple others. Rock on!

Last night we had our last movie night. The entire crew gathered in Node 2 and watched Avengers Infinity Wars on the big screen. We enjoy each other’s company, as we did during Expedition 54, and this was a welcome break from the daily grind of trying to complete the required stowage, maintenance and science activities while preparing for departure.

Our last full weekend here on ISS. I gave myself a haircut. We usually clean our spaces each weekend to make sure we can maintain a decent level of organization, efficiency and morale. This weekend is no different, and it is time for me to vacuum out all of our filters and vents. You’d be amazed at what we find!

The top 5 things I will miss when I am no longer in space:

The incredible team that supports ISS operations from our control centers

The camaraderie onboard ISS

The breathtaking view of the Earth, Moon, Sun and Stars

Floating/flying from location to location with very little effort

Operations in the extreme environment of space

Find more ‘Captain’s Log’ entries HERE.

Follow NASA astronaut Scott Tingle on Instagram and Twitter.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

6 Steps in Learning to Love Yourself

1.See the good in your past. There will always be things that we wish had never happened; there will always be bad memories and things that we regret. But they are part of who you are – so accept that they have happened and celebrate the person they’ve allowed you to become.

2. Invest time in the things that bring you happiness. It’s important to identify the things that you enjoy, and that make you come alive, and are all a part of “you”. Spending time on those things will help to raise your self-esteem, as you’re valuing yourself when you pursue happiness.

3. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. We all make mistakes - and when we think of them we cringe. But that doesn’t make you any worse than other people. Just learn what you can, and then move on with your life.

4. Stop criticising yourself. So often we’re really our own worst enemy. We look for our flaws, and we put ourselves down – instead of being understanding of our own limitations. It’s time to change that behaviour – so start loving yourself.

5. Listen to your instincts and your intuitions. If you want to love yourself, you must listen to yourself. Pay attention to those instincts and your instant gut reaction – and trust that you are right when you hear that inner voice.

6. Appreciate your life. Of course there are things that you wish that you could change. But some things are good, and are worth appreciating. So, focus on, appreciate, and make lots of your strengths.

How to Science: a guide

1. Science is done in a coat. So you will need one of those. If you are doing evil science you will probably be meddling with the fabric, so your coat can have things on, like stains and legs and holes into space. Good science requires a coat which is clean, white and that somebody has used an iron on. If you do not have an iron or the inclination to use one then your only option is evil science, sorry. This is just one of the many barriers to Science.

2. Top Sciencers have stuff that goes through tubes and also bubbles. Your stuff will need to be in a range of primary colours. Observe it through your glasses but not too closely, you can make measurements with your eyes because you are a Sciencer. Also because occasionally your things will blow up the building, but not if those kids get there first.

3. But not all Science is done in a coat. Some of it is done in a brain. It is harder to purchase a brain than a coat but Sciencers are people of great ingenuity and will probably find a way. If you are this sort of Sciencer, you will need to write equations on things. Walls, windows and cake are all examples of things.

4. Have you sewed a head onto a body? It’s not rocket science. This is a mistake that too many people make. In fact it is the reason that the International Space Station has to have extra shielding. However if you can sew on a head without blasting it into space then you have probably made it in Science, well done.

5. Alternatively, you can follow a quirkier path. For example, try having a vole in a trap or maybe something else that explodes that is not a primary colour or a vole. You cannot Science unless something is at least a little bit explodey. Or at least you can try, but your Science will have no piquancy or zing.

6. Modern Science requires public presence and engagement with the general brain-soup. If you have a vole and it has not yet detonated then it can do tweeting for you. Otherwise, try holding the world to ransom with a technology doomsday device. This should bring attention to your chosen field.

7. Alternatively, try saving the world. This option will probably require ironing, however.

Please help me :( I'm in my 2nd year of studying physics and I was doing good in terms of grades until now but we're doing quantum mechanics now and I feel so behind on everything and I feel like I don't retain anything for long and now it's kinda too much to catch up and I'm freaking out, I don't know how or where to start and it's making my procrastination issues so much worse, I don't know what to do anymore

I don’t really know how to solve your problems anon, but I can give you some advice that’s worked for me.

If I understand your ask correctly, you’re having memory and retention issues that are negatively effecting your confidence and motivation. Or maybe you’re also having issues with your motivation and confidence from something else too. I’ve been there. I am not a perfect studying machine, in fact, I’m far from perfect. I know what the “I suck, so I won’t do the work, and now I suck even more” cycle is like. This is not unique to you, you’re definitely not alone. Millions of other people have felt this way. And some of them have overcome it! So it can be done. Here’s how I specifically combat the cycle. these are things I have learned and things that I do (Sometimes) that actually work.

(This is the point where some people might want me to add that you don’t have to go through with this if it makes you miserable, but I think it sounds like you’re not planning on quitting anytime soon, so feel free to ignore that, or don’t.)

Troubleshooting Tips For Educational Distress

RESPECT YOUR NEEDS: 

When I started college, I was way too used to being micromanaged by my parents and whatnot. It felt like a load off my shoulders, but what I found is that I lacked the self-discipline to actually lead a healthy lifestyle. My grades and ability to understand content paid dearly, and they do every time I slack off on myself. So let’s get one thing straight if you don’t have it right already: 

YOU ARE A BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM THAT DOES NOT RUN ON WILLPOWER ALONE. 

You have needs. If you put off those needs, you’re at a disadvantage because your body is in sub-optimal condition. Your needs are the highest priority. What kinds of needs might I be talking about?

SLEEP: We all need ~8+ hours of sleep a night. I’m terrible at this, by the way, but I can tell you that I ran an experiment three years ago for an entire summer where I recorded the hours I slept and how long it took me to complete one “Hard” difficulty sudoku puzzle. On days I got 8+ hours of sleep, I was able to complete it in 13 minutes or less. On ~6 hours, it took me 20 minutes. and on 5 hours or less, it TOOK MORE THAN AN HOUR or never got finished. Now just imagine the effect it had on my ability to do my real analysis homework, which was probably harder. SLEEP REALLY DOES HELP YOU RETAIN INFORMATION AND DO THINKY THINGS, THERE’S SCIENCE BEHIND IT. I for one at least recognize I need sleep, even if I go back and forth between not getting enough and being hyper vigilant about it. pinpoint the things that keep you from getting enough sleep and fix them if you can.

FOOD: you also need proper nutrition, you can’t run on granola bars and coffee alone. Become friends with someone who’s taken a nutrition class and let them help you come up with a plan. They’ll probably be thrilled someone actually wants them to use what they learned.

EXCERSISE / Breaks: Gotta get that blood pumping my friend, daily exercise is good for the brain and has been proven to help your cognition. Not that I would know, my roommate and I have been struggling to hit the gym for two and a half years now. That being said, I go out of my way to take stairs or go the long way around campus when I can. I also find my ability to work tanks at about 2 consecutive hours of sitting down. Don’t do that. Get up and walk around.

COMFORT: BITCH YOU CAN’T DO SHIT IF YOU’RE NERVOUS, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, A ROBOT? Cut negative influences out of your life, don’t try to study through a panic attack (unless the panic attack is mild, is about not studying, and can only be helped by studying, in that case, you should probably study), and do your best to find a spot where studying is enjoyable. I can’t study alone, but I also can’t study around other people, so I find an open place where people are walking around and I bring my huge studio headphones and listen to a special kind of music that I find boosts my focus and blurs into the background. 10/10 would recommend. Makes studying feel mature and responsible.

SELF-ACTUALIZATION: Feeling good about yourself is an important need. You can’t get shit done if you feel like a failure. On your breaks, do something you’re good at or pick up a hobby that you can become good at. Avoid videogames IMO, maybe pick up something creative like drawing or active like running. Avoid activities you think are meaningless, they’ll drain the shit out of you without you realizing it. Facebook scrolling? probably not good. Doing things you don’t care much for, like laundry? Outsource it to a friend who’ll do it for five bucks or something. Volunteer work for a cause you care about? Fantastic. Pay attention to how these things make you feel and avoid the things that feel like a waste of time. Also write down your goals and stick them somewhere visible.

IF IT WORKS, IT’S NOT THAT SILLY, IS IT?

“SILLY” TECHNIQUES LIKE MNEMONICS, FLASH CARDS, POEMS ABOUT MATERIAL OR RAPS ABOUT METHODS SEEM REDICULOUS BUT I SWEAR TO GOD THEY HAVE HELPED ME:

Remember important linear algebra formulas I would have forgotten otherwise. (I still know them and I have no reason to!)

Recall important and complicated integration formulas more than two semesters after I studied it.

Recall how to preform nearly every single proof off the top of my head in my complex analysis class. (Flash cards with facts on the front and proof sketches in the back.)

Memorize in detail entire chapters of music history/theory notes, and get a 106/100 score on my “Future Music” midterm that had a mean score of ~75%. Plus, the professor loved the poem I wrote on the exam (Hence the 6 extra points.)

You might wanna consult some studyblrs on more studying techniques, I’m not exactly a poster boy for, uh, study techniques. 

That being said, when I feel behind and struggling, flash cards have saved my ass. every. single. time.

USE YOUR STRESS FOR GOOD:

If a spontaneous realization that you have to do something you’ve been putting off lights a fire under your ass, maybe drop everything and do it right there. UTILIZE ALL YOUR TOOLS:

The following actually work for me.

Go to office hours

Go to tutoring

Work with classmates if you can!!!!!

Study with classmates

USE THE FUCKGIN INTERNET TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS?!?!

Read your textbook! Like actually sit down and read! Don’t skim! Read!!!!! Take notes in the margin and underline! (Very useful.)

Make stories about the material.

Teach others.

Work on your own projects or learn extra things that force you to use what you have learned! Be a slut for knowledge!

If there’s a fire under your ass to do the thing, do the thing.

to do lists.

SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY (HOLY FUCK) (very useful, tell someone you want to respect you that you will do the thing, make sure they expect you to do the thing.)

I hope this will help you shock your cycle enough to get out of it, best of luck my physics friend!