Everything and anything

something i have been thinking about from pottery:

1. small early successes. I remember my first and second pots. They came after a slew of frustrating failures. They are pretty bad, with my current standards, but I was very excited to have something in recognizable shape. I don't know about T. She seemed not to enjoy her early pots as much as I did with mine, although they were equally bad.

2.success breeds success. I also remember my first presentable pot, an ash tray. I remember how careful I was with the tray, afraid that I would destroy it if I had done more with it. I needed something not just in any shape, but a decent shape. The tray was that first decent shape. After I have a few decent ones (now no longer decent any more), I began to be relaxed about failure. I'm not afriad of destroying my pots with some experimentation. Instead of keeping every little piece, no matter how ugly, I'm fine with throwing away pots that have defects.

3. moderate expectation. There was a guy in the class who makes really nice pots. He was however saying that after a year not doing pottery, his technique has regressed. I said I'd be very happy if I can ever make a pot like his, in my lifetime. What determines happiness is not so much the quality of our products, but the gap with our expectation. I could be happier with a much worse pot than the guy because I wasn't aiming for what he considered a good pot. But I raise my bar with gradual progress. So maybe one day I can actually make something like his. (I'd be really really happy then.)

... maybe I can learn something from this, and apply to research, or career in general. But it's hard. Stakes are different. I try...

My pottery teacher is a young African-American artist. Using my friend's words, he always seems to have something on his mind. Jamil doesn't teach much. When he 'lectures', it's more joke than serious contents. He gives demonstration from time to time, and every time we were all so amazed at his magical hands. Then he likes to just go around the room and see each student at work. Sometimes he'd stop and help with the student in whatever problem s/he has. With whatever criteria he has, he spends his time unevenly among students. I, for whatever reason, doesn't get much of his time. So I try to work on my own.

With Jamil, the way I learn is of course through observing his demonstration. But he does that only occasionally. So I try to observe and listen when he corrects other students of their problems. From that, I learned how to fight a wobbling clay, make the walls distribute evenly- both were big problems I had. Another way is to watch other students. Many students are very good. I look at how they do, get some ideas from their pots. Everyone has some special technique. The fourth way is my own experimentation, trying to find the weakness in my own technique and improve it based on basic reasoning.

All of these learning happen slowly very time. Often times, I struggle with my pots not knowing what the cause is and how to deal with it. Then accidentally from random observation or eavesdropping I'd pick up some clues as to how to improve.

I don't know if this is a good learning mode. THe disadvantage is that it takes much time, and each 'a-ha' moment seems so random and accidental. If I hadn't heard somebody talk about it, I would haven't picked it up... It almost feeling like reinventing the wheel sometimes when I come up with solutions after weeks that could have been taught by the instructor in minutes. When I finally figure out something, it then becomes so obvious that I'm surprised that I didn't see it earlier. Like making the bottom, it was only in the last summer class that I figured it out from watching other students. My pots always looked strange on the bottom, but I never knew why.

Is there anything worthy of this learning mode? a possible advantage may be that the learning sticks. A longer problem-solving struggling period, supposedly, leads to more better memory of the technique once it's discovered. That being said, I'm not sure of it.

I'm not even sure that this learning mode is a good one. If other students can learn the techniques in minutes and make nicer pots in shorter period of time than I do, am I learning in an inefficient way?

And I puzzle about this for my grad school experience. There're different learning modes. Some have professors who do very detailed and hands-on 'teaching'. Some are more laid back, drop a few tips here and there, and see if the stduents can figure it out on their own, like Jamil. I don't know which is better.

Maybe I will get some hints when I have a different pottery instructor next semester. He's said to be very good at 'teaching'.

Last night, shocking news came through email that a friend had a sudden stroke and was to go through immediate surgery. It sounds really surreal because he's young, my age, and very active in sports. In fact, he fell ill at the basketball court during a game. It was life threatening when he was taken to the OR.

We went to the hospital early in the morning and found him in ICU. He was put on breathing machine, and all kinds of tubes in and out. It's still unbelieveable to see an otherwise very healthy person in a medically dangerous condition like that. We were told by the nurse that the surgery went well and the bleeding was stopped and clog taken out. During the day, angiogram will be performed for further examiniation.

In the basement waiting room, we found his wife and other friends who were sleeping on the couches and chairs through the night. It was awkward as we were sitting around, looking at his wife, thinking what to say. Later the doctors came asking for her signature for the procedure.

The waiting period later got a little easier as people sat around and started chatting, about things outside of this incident, of professors, school, work etc. She also got a bit well-needed distraction. The hard moment came when the nurse asked us to go back to the ICU to see him and hear the results. I accompanied her. He was lying there, more sedated than in the morning, breathing from the tube, IVs on both wrists, blood stain. The nurse explained to us what the result says, and she can't be sure of the exact cause either. His wife wasn't talking, but held his hand. Tears dropped from her face. I held her, not knowing what to say.

Since the test was generally positive, we pursuaded her to go home for some rest before coming back. And we left the hospital too, back to our own business...

Such a fine line it is between life and death, and one may cross it so suddenly.

Yesterday, I went to a presentation given by a recent phd graduate from Stanford who is now quite well known for his comic strips about grad stduent life. It was a very funny talk.

The tiered lectural room was probably 1/3 to 1/2 full. Very good attendance, actually. "How many here are graduate students?" Hands were up everywhere. "How many here are undergrad?" -- Three hands. Hahaha. "How many are faculty?" Everyone looked around. In the back row, there's one brave hand up... Laughters.

The speaker did his phd working on robot. He showed a short video clip of a robot he made, like a mechanical cockcroach. Its eight legs were running like crazy on a moving belt, like running on a treadmill. Then a hand came down to pound the cockcroach. It was a funny home video. Then, he said, "I showed my robot because I think it's what graduate student life is like. You always feel like you keep running and running, but are going nowhere. And, from time to time, there is this professor's hand coming down to hammer you."

It's kind of morbid, but it's very true that for a lot of times grad students feel they work so hard yet can't see the light at the other end of the tunnel.

I think what I liked most about his presentation was the point about GUILT. That's the feeling I experience as a grad student, and see others go through all the time. There is the constant guilt that whatever you are doing, you could be using the time to do research. Like right now, I'm thinking in my head, I should be reading my notes, transcribing my data... It's the byproduct of freedom that most people don't think about or know. For many people, the flexibility of getting up whenever you want, going to office whenever you feel like, working for however long you wish... is the ideal life. As grad students, for the most part, enjoy this unmatchable flexbility, they also shoulder the consequences of it. That is CONSTANT GUILT. It switches us from being monitored and controlled by other people, to being controlled by ourselves. And, if I may say, self discipline is a very scarce quality, and is hard for many people. You can only be watched by others for certain periods during the day, but you can watch yourself for every minute, every second of your life. Consider the power of that  control! And grad students most often fall victim to themselves, to their own mind.

Hm, I didn't expect to write so much about guilt and internalized monitoring. An interesting thought... There're lots of other things to be said about the comic strip, and broadly grad life.

What's this strange creature called graduate student?

I will write more later.

Used 2-3 weeks and wrote outlines for two thesis ideas. Each has some issues but feel better, at least it's something. Went to talk to my professor yesterday. She said one idea is interesting, but worries that there isn't enough data. The other idea, you have data, but so what, i.e. why is that interesting? ugh. Can you bring the two ideas together? Hmmm, we brainstormed for a bit. There wasn't any easy solution. "i'm not sure i'm helpful," she said, "I'm stuck." I admire her honesty. But, my two ideas are shot down like that...

I got an email about a talk next week. Someone created a cartoon strip abotu phd, Piled higher and deeper, it's called. Sounds interesting. I will go and take a look. "A recent survey by UC Berkeley found that 95% of all graduate students feel overwhelmed, and over 67% of have felt seriously depressed at some point in their career," says the website. A depressed educated crowd...

Is depression a spreading virus?