One of the my main problems when going for running training used to be becoming hypoglycemic and dizzy during the first 15 min. Hence, I usually started my workouts by exhausting myself partially and subsequently taking a rest to let the blood sugar level go up again. Only then I started with my real exercise.
It took me a long time to figure out the reason – my false belief that going hungry into a run would compromise my running ability. This false assumption led me to always ensure I ate something before running. However, through trial and error I realized at some point that I can actually run perfectly well without having eaten for a few hours. Most importantly, by not eating before going for my running trainings I also avoid getting dizzy.
The simple explanation for this phenomenon is the meal-induced insulin release. The released insulin lowers the blood glucose level via a number of mechanisms. These include inhibiting new glucose production in the liver as well as inhibiting breakdown of stored glucose (in the form of glycogen) and release of glucose from the liver. Insulin also promotes the uptake of glucose into fat tissue where glucose is converted into fat. Finally, insulin inhibits the release of free fatty acids from adipose tissue and instructs muscle tissue to use glucose instead of fatty acids.
In short, insulin promotes glucose and fat storage and inhibits glucose and fatty acid release into the blood. If I start to exercise under these conditions and try to utilize glucose and fatty acids, it is no surprise that I run out of energy reserves and become hypoglycemic and dizzy.
Notably, the same mechanism forms the basis for a major hypothesis to explain the obesity pandemic observed worldwide over recent decades – the so-called carbohydrate-insulin model.
According to this model, the culprit of the obesity endemic is the abundance of palatable food rich in carbohydrates. Absorption of food high in carbohydrates (= food with a high glycemic load) rapidly increases the blood glucose concentration. This in turn stimulates the release of glucose-lowering insulin from the pancreas. At the same time there is a drop in the levels of another hormone, glucagon, which normally increases the blood glucose concentration.
High insulin levels and a high insulin-to-glucagon ratio have two obesity-relevant effects. Firstly, insulin promotes energy storage in fat tissue and suppresses the release of fatty acids from our fat depots, thus promoting weight gain.
Secondly, elevated insulin concentrations and a high insulin-to-glucagon ratio in our blood lead to a rapid drop in the blood glucose concentration to values even lower than the initial concentration. As a result, the individual experiences a deficiency of energy-containing substrates in the blood (via reduced levels of glucose and fatty acids) some time (around 3 to 5 hours) after consuming the carbohydrate-rich meal. According to the carbohydrate-insulin model, the energy deficiency in the blood is sensed by the brain,making us crave for food again. In addition, upon sensing of a low energy state, the brain also reacts by reducing our energy expenditure, further promoting weight gain.
The model suggests that fat accumulation is not primarily due to eating too much. Instead, because the carbohydrate-rich food we consume is deposited in adipose tissue and not used for energy production, we eat more to compensate for this state of energy deficiency. Jeff Flier, in his excellent commentary article recently published in Science, refers to the carbohydrate-insulin model as being a “pull theory” of energy deficiency (the body is pulling in more food due to the perceived energy deficiency), as opposed to the traditional “push” theory of overeating.
It is important to realize that the carbohydrate-insulin model is only a model, which is far from proven. However, Jeff Flier cites an important study by Shimy et al., published in 2020, in support of the model.
Shimy et al. studied 29 adults (aged 20 to 65 years) with overweight or obesity (body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2). Before participating in the study, the subjects had achieved considerable weight loss (10% to 14% of their body weight). During the following weight maintenance period, the participants were then randomly divided to consume three different test diets varying in carbohydrate content:
-a high-carbohydrate diet (with 60% of total energy content derived from carbohydrates),
-a moderate carbohydrate(with 40% of total energy content derived from carbohydrates), and
-a low-carbohydrate diet(with 20% of total energy content derived from carbohydrates).
The total energy content and protein content (20% of the energy content) were kept constant. During week 10 and 15 on the test diets, laboratory studies were conducted to measure metabolic fuels and hormones concentrations in the blood.
What did the study find?
The hormone measurements showed that the insulin concentration (measured as the area under the curve during the first 30 to 120 minutes after ingesting a meal) was indeed higher in the high carbohydrate group compared to the moderate and low carbohydrate groups. As expected, the trend was the opposite for glucagon. Remarkably, the insulin-to-glucagon ratio was 7-fold higher in participants on the high versus the low carbohydrate diet.
What about the energy availability (measured as the blood concentrations of energy-providing metabolites)?
The study found that the total early postprandial (30 to 180 minutes after meal ingestion) energy availability declined fastest in the high-carbohydrate group. The late postprandial (180 to 300 minutes after meal ingestion) energy availability was markedly lower in the high carbohydrate group (see figure below). These findings are consistent with the carbohydrate-insulin model.
Postprandial total energy availability of metabolic fuels (including glucose, ketone bodies and free fatty acids). The authors combined the postprandial energy availability for all 3 meals (dinner, breakfast, and lunch) to calculate a diet-specific mean for high carbohydrate (HC), moderate carbohydrate (MC), and low carbohydrate (LC) diets at each postprandial time point in minutes. The late postprandial energy availability was 0.58 kcal/L lower on the high versus the low carbohydrate diet.
The authors then wanted to determine which metabolites accounted for the decreased energy availability in the high carbohydrate group. As discussed, insulin lowers blood glucose levels. However, the researchers found that the decreased energy availability in the high carbohydrate diet group was not due to lower blood concentrations of glucose. Instead, subjects on the high carbohydrate diet had lower concentrations of two other important fuels, free fatty acids and ketone bodies. Insulin is known to inhibit the release of free fatty acids from adipose tissue and to also strongly inhibit the synthesis of ketone bodies, a type of fuel that is used by the body under conditions of energy starvation.
The important question then is how would a lower energy availability make us more hungry and what are the signals our brain senses to make us crave for food?
There are in fact several inputs into the brain to signal our fullness and energy availability.
We have both hunger-causing nerve cells and as well as hunger-inhibiting nerve cells in the hypothalamus in our brain. These nerve cells can directly sense blood glucose levels.
Our body also releases hormones that can regulate the activity of hunger sensing neurons. For instance, the hormone ghrelin is produced by endocrine cells in the stomach under conditions when the stomach is empty. Ghrelin increases the activity of the hunger-causing nerve cells and reduces the activity of hunger-inhibiting cells.
In addition, there are hormones, such as Peptide YY and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), that are released from the intestine in response to food in the gut and that make us feel full. Notably, recently developed GLP-1 mimicking drugs (or GLP-1 receptor agonists) have shown remarkable weight loss effects in initial human trials and have emerged as the most promising and effective anti-obesity medications that have thus far been developed.
Finally, another important appetite regulating hormone is leptin, which is produced by adipose tissue as a function of the fat content and then released into the blood. Leptin causes the brain to lower our appetite and increase our metabolic activity (or our energy expenditure). Hence, leptin is an important weight loss-promoting hormone.
Leptin is also acutely regulated. For instance, fasting dramatically decreases leptin levels, whereas refeeding restores them. Fasting is accompanied with increased blood levels of adrenergic hormones (norepinephrine, epinephrine), which have been shown to inhibit leptin release.
However, none of the described mechanisms is likely to be different between the high and low carbohydrate groups. The stomach and intestinal filling would be expected to be similar. Furthermore, the authors found no differences in blood energy availability derived from glucose as well as no differences in adrenergic hormone levels.
There are other proposed hunger and fullness sensing mechanisms, Some (but not all) research studies suggest that insulin (which IS elevated in the low carbohydrate compared to the high carbohydrate diet group) promotes leptin secretion. However, this would mean that a high glycemic load would, via increased insulin levels, decrease hunger, which goes contrary to the carbohydrate-insulin model.
On the other hand, leptin release from adipose tissue has also been reported to be stimulated by short chain fatty acids. A study published in 2004 reported that short-chain fatty acids with a length of 2 to 6 carbon atoms stimulate leptin expression via binding to the orphan G protein-coupled receptor GPR41 at the cell membrane. Of note, short-chain fatty acids are produced in large amounts in the lower intestine through fermentation of dietary fibers, which are expected to be more abundant in low carbohydrate diets.
Did the researchers find any differences in hunger and appetite between the different groups?
Surprisingly, the study found no significant differences in hunger scores between the three test diet groups. The hunger scores were obtained at each time blood was drawn and were based on ratings by the study participants in response to the question “How hungry are you right now [on a scale of 1 to 10]?”.
Even more surprisingly, the satiety scores (based on participants ratings in response to the question “How full are you right now?”) were lower in the low carbohydrate compared to the high-carbohydrate group during the early and late postprandial periods. This means that although subjects consuming the carbohydrate rich diet had lower blood energy levels, they felt equally hungry and more full compared to those on the low carbohydrate diet.
The authors discussed a number of potential explanations. For instance, self-reported scales may not reliably predict hunger and fullness. The authors also pointed out that the survey questions did not distinguish between the two types of hunger, homeostatic hunger (the motivation to eat due to declining energy stores) and hedonic hunger (desire to eat palatable foods). This is important because only homeostatic hunger would be expected to directly correlate with energy availability.
Nonetheless, the unexpected hunger scores pose a question mark about whether the carbohydrate-insulin model can truly explain the increase in food consumption in our modern society.
If I consider my own experience with reducing the carbohydrate content in my food, I find that my satiety level depends mainly on the food volume I eat, and less on the actual calorie content. For instance, I find eating soup more filling than dry food. I also do find that eating carbohydrate rich food makes me crave for more carbohydrate rich food, both early on and during later times after a meal.
Coming back to the paper by Shimy et al., it can be concluded that their study provides some support for the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity, where an elevated insulin-to-glucagon ratio in response to a high-carbohydrate diet directs metabolic fuels toward storage, resulting in fat gain and in lower circulating energy. The lower energy availability in our blood after consuming a carbohydrate rich meal may make us more hungry, although there are question marks about this conclusion. The results suggest that an alternative strategy to fight obesity is to reduce the total carbohydrate or specifically the high-glycemic index carbohydrate intake.
However, the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity is still far from proven. As Jeff Flier points out, the model may contribute to obesity in a subset of the obese population, for instance in those individuals who respond to a standard load of glucose with increased insulin levels.
With much uncertainty remaining, it is probably a good idea to listen to our body and to how hungry we feel in response to different kinds of food.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 12 – 18 JUNE 2023
More reflections on my teaching feedback
Two weeks ago I started discussing my teaching feedback for the past semester. The major concern that students voiced out was that my course felt too difficult and fast-paced. This perception was also prevalent in the mid semester student reflection videos.
It was the first time that I asked students to prepare video reflections. Many of the students expressed that they appreciated the prompt to evaluate how the semester has gone for them. I personally found a lot of value in this assignment, too. One of the various useful outcomes for me was that the videos served as an excellent way to obtain informal feedback and insights into student concerns.
A point that was raised by a sizeable number of students was their lack of motivation to study. Most concerning, even students who in principle are interested in their field of study expressed a lack of drive to study and a tendency to procrastinate.
This made me remember my own University days. For instance, I remember how at some point in Medical School I felt so burned-out that I went to visit my parents and told them that I just cannot study anymore. This happened during a period when we had weekly exams in different subjects but no formal classes. Hence, I just stayed at home to prepare for the tests. It was incredibly difficult to keep the motivation up and in some exams, I paid the price for being unable to stay motivated with some of the worst grades I ever achieved.
I am still “studying” and learning every single day, but I practically never feel not motivated. There are various reasons for it. There are firstly the study habits I have developed, which make studying part of my daily routine that I do automatically without asking myself whether I am motivated or not.
What matters even more is that I can choose what I want to learn about. What is more, although there are (real life) tests in which I try to apply what I have learned in experiments, teaching etc., it is perfectly okay to fail.
How then can I keep students more motivated in the setting of a University, where the teacher commonly chooses the topic and where tests have (or are at least perceived to have) high stakes. We could abolish grading students altogether, which is practice in some institutions. But this is less likely to happen in our University anytime soon. Hence, it seems important that I think about what changes I could make to help my students enjoy studying more. These changes should ideally not increase my workload and that of the students even more.
The last condition rules out one of the most effective approaches to get students passionate about what they learn, project work. While individual or group projects are simply the best way to ignite passion and curiosity, they involve a lot of effort on the part of the students. They also require prompt provision of feedback on the part of the instructor, which is a challenge in large courses.
What other approaches could I use to make the in-class work more fun?
Firstly, I plan to include more in-class group tasks, such as coming up with research questions or with approaches to test a hypothesis. Different groups could then exchange their proposals and evaluate what the other group has come up with, based on a set of agreed criteria.
Another plan I have is to use group work to let students master specific concepts. In this role play scenario, I plan to assign roles to each group member to explain a certain aspect of a concept to the other students by using an example of their own choice. For instance, each group member would explain one specific method through which the phosphorylation of a protein can be measured. The other group members then have to ask at least one question related to what the first student has explained. I will use a suitable platform to document the student discussions.
What about making OUT-of-class work more fun for students?
When I think of my own studies, the home-work that I dreaded the most was memorizing all the muscle, bone, blood vessel and nerve names for my human anatomy course. I remember how I used to walk back and forth in my room while reciting all the names repeatedly. On the other hand, I enjoyed home-work that provided some intellectual challenge, for instance drawing out cell signaling and concept maps for my biochemistry and physiology courses.
My Cell Biology is all about understanding research methods, scientific concepts (= knowledge tools to understand research data) and research based application questions. In addition, all assessments are in an open-book format. As such, students do not actually need to memorize facts during their revisions. I believe that this already makes studying at home less painful.
One thing I plan to do next year is to provide more practice quiz questions, which the students can do at home at their own pace, ideally with their teammates. Solving problems is a way of studying that most students enjoy. Although some students may perceive this as additional workload, many students have actually requested more practice opportunities. Thus, this optional assignment is probably acceptable to most students.
Apart from this, it might be useful to remind students that how we feel about our studies and home-work is our own choice. We can for instance ask ourselves the following questions:
Can we approach learning as an amazing opportunity and privilege that we are fortunate to be given?
Can we find ways to make our home work more fun?
Can we focus on the positive outcomes that studying could have (for instance being able to understand what is discussed in class well, being excited about the prospect of doing well in the exam) and not seeing studying as a way to avoid negative consequences?
Making learning more enjoyable is probably going to be my main focus during the next round of my Cell Biology module next year. Let’s see if at the end of the course there are students who reflect that they found their learning to be fun.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 5 – 11 JUNE 2023
More personal discoveries
Now that the semester and my conference are over, I finally started on seriously working on the things I really want to work on during my semester break. Hence, I currently have a long daily task list, which includes various things I just started on (preparing for my postgraduate module, learning about secondary school education, learning languages) or that I continue to work on (writing research manuscripts, writing blog and book chapters, learn about (health) coaching and running training).
This sounds like a lot (and it is). It also raises the question why I don’t want to take things easy after a roller coaster semester. That is in fact what I tried to do initially after the semester was over. The result was a drop in my daily happiness scores and a feeling of indifference and inertia. It was only when last Sunday afternoon I sat down and started to plan all my new goals and prioritize my existing activities that I felt my excitement and enthusiasm returning.
After going through my new routine for a few days now, I still feel excited. Not constantly, but frequently. More importantly, I feel that there is a purpose to my days and I feel satisfaction about accomplishing my daily tasks. I literally feel that every day I come a bit closer to my vision for my future self. I realized that if I get to do work that I find meaningful, I do not feel sorry at all for sacrificing time for leisure activities.
Needless to say, I do not get to spend excessive amounts of time to work on each task on a given day. I only complete short bouts of work on each item daily. I find this approach productive, because my experience is that the quality of what I do depends less on how much time I spend on a task, but more on how often I re-visit a project and engage with it. In addition, the approach motivates me and brings happiness by giving me a sense of daily accomplishment and working towards achieving a meaningful future. Naturally, this approach may not work for everyone. That is why it is important that everyone finds out for themselves what makes them happy.
This week I also finished reading Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” for the second time. After over three months, I also discontinued my goal to get rid of eight things per day. I have reached a stage where I am more or less happy with my amount of possessions. Nonetheless, I plan to continue to part with one item per day from now on. I hope that this will help me to keep examining my priorities in life and to ensure that I am surrounded by things that I truly enjoy.
As Marie Kondo wrote: “The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.”
When we dispose of things, we think and learn about ourselves, about what are our priorities in life and about what kind of life we want to live.
Finally, I succeeded to meet my target, to run below 21 minutes (by a few seconds), in our main 5,000m track event this year. And I was very happy about it!
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 29 MAY – 4 JUNE 2023
Teaching Feedback
This week I attended a two-day conference on how to make student feedback more effective. It was a topic that I am very interested in. During the conference, I took part in a panel discussion, which went well, except that I had so many things to share that I talked too fast.
The main conclusion I drew from the conference is that I should stop focussing on my scores, unless substantial changes are being made in the way these scores are obtained. Based on how most student feedback surveys are designed, the scores are no true representation of what students feel about a course.
A good example are my own feedback results for the past semester, which I also received this week. According to my score for giving useful and timely feedback, I am once again rated as average among my colleagues. This is despite not knowing any other colleague who goes out of his way to give the best possible feedback. I release all answers and explanations to assessments and exams immediately after the tests, provide instant feedback to in-class quizzes and try to email all students personally to comment on their video assignments (admittedly with great delays due to the class size).
My average score may be due to a number of reasons. There is firstly the so-called acquiescence bias, which means that students tend to give a positive score to most of their lecturers. This could for instance be because the students do not want to hurt their lecturers or because they are tired of answering so many questions. According to research, an even more important contributor to teaching score inaccuracy is the halo effect. Here students first decide whether a lecturer teaches well or not and then assign corresponding responses to all survey questions, irrespective of what the question is actually asking about.
As mentioned above, it became clear at the conference that instead of paying much attention to my scores for the various structured feedback questions, I should pay more attention to the non-structured, verbal comments that students provide.
During the conference, there was lot of talk about using AI and other tools to analyze the students’ comments and extract semi-quantitative results and common student sentiments. However, even with careful reading and some manual semi-quantification it is quite easy to get a good feeling about what the strong and weak points in my teaching are.
The overwhelming “negative” comment was that the course was too difficult and/or too fast-paced. In fact, around 60 out of the 184 students who responded felt the degree of difficulty was too high. Naturally, I could also look at the positive side and conclude that two thirds of the students perhaps thought that the course was NOT too difficult. But then again, if 60 students express a similar concern, it is likely that there are even more students who felt this way. Hence, it is an issue that I need to address.
I recently attended my first aid training course and realized again that I myself am very slow in answering multiple choice questions. In fact, I was the slowest. I had a similar experience when I took my coach theory courses at Republic Poly a few years back. This may be because I have the tendency to consider every option carefully, even if an option seems obviously wrong. I probably also lack the right “MCQ answering technique”.
On the other hand, when it comes to my own quizzes, I expect that my students answer my multiple answer questions within a very short time. But what about students who are like me?
Naturally, I do try to estimate how long it will take students to answer my questions and I even try to make conservative estimates. The problem is, however, that it is challenging for me to estimate how much time students may need because I know the answers and have designed the questions. Hence, I need to listen to my students.
I will make it a point to give more time for my quizzes next semester. This means that I need to move more content out of class into my pre-lecture videos. This may also mean covering less content and reviewing which topics help best in conveying the important concepts. Reducing the content I cover is fine, because my goal is not to teach students as much knowledge as possible, but helping them to be able to learn scientific knowledge on their own. As I heard from another lecturer once, it is not about how much we cover, but about how much we uncover.
Finally, to help students to learn, I also plan to provide more out-of-class practice opportunities. There is a lot more to say about my feedback, but I will leave this for another post in the next couple of weeks.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 22 – 28 MAY 2023
Interesting discoveries
One of my main objectives for the past couple of weeks was to improve my living spaces. For three months now I have been getting rid of initially 5 and then 8 things per day. Finally, some real results can be seen, in my office and especially at home after getting rid of some furniture in my room. This was not as easy as it may sound, as it required to first discard much of what was inside the furniture.
I now look forward to go to both my office and my home. As such, getting rid of things was really one of the most transformative things I have been doing this year. It has made a big difference to my life.
With regards to buying new things, I have also implemented a strict one-for-one replacement policy. If I want to buy something new, I need to get rid of a similar item.
I received a couple of new NUS staff runners singlets this week, which meant I had to get rid of some other ones, too.
By going through my possessions, I also found some very interesting things, for instance my first paintings as a 3-year old (which I kept because they still bring joy!).
My first ever painting – there is no title.
My second painting with the title “The beautiful “round” ball”
I like this painting, because it captures the essence of a teddy bear pretty well.
This is my favorite painting from my childhood: “Sunflowers in the vase”. I like the color combination.
This painting is from when I was 5 years old. The title is “I go shopping with my mom”. I am not sure why I painted my mom and myself wearing hats (we never did). But the painting brings back a lot of memories. It also makes me realize that the presence and care of my mom and my dad has been the one constant throughout my whole life.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 15 – 21 MAY 2023
Contemplating about happiness (again!)
The teaching semester is over. As a result, my days are much less structured and I have much fewer deadlines, in fact hardly any. Consequently, I had to depend on other ways to motivate myself. Thanks to having my routines and a daily work plan with tasks that I enjoy for the most part, motivating myself to do things has not been difficult. Nonetheless, I have noted that it has been more difficult to feel happy, which for me means to scoring above 5 on my daily happiness scale (where “5″ corresponds to a day where my mood was not super happy, but also not depressed and “6” to a day where the overriding mood of the day was happy and I felt truly happy at least once).
Compared to the semester period, the only things that are different now are firstly that I have more time (which should not make me LESS happy) and secondly that there are less highlights in my life. Having highlights, such as lectures, quizzes and tests, not only means a lot of work. They also bring a lot of excitement during the preparation phase and happiness after completion, if the outcome was good. Even if the outcome was not as expected, there is still the excitement of doing it better the next time around.
Having these highlights in my daily life also has the effect to make me appreciate the time I have for myself more. Thus, I have discovered that going for walks or sports activities becomes much more enjoyable when they serve as an change from a day packed with important commitments.
Hence, I am trying to build more highlights into my life. The first of which was going to watch the movie “Living”, which happened to deal with the very subject of happiness. It is a movie about a senior public service manager who only starts to seek happiness after he receives the news that he is going to die soon. What he realizes (not too surprisingly) is that happiness is not enjoying life’s pleasures, but making a difference, however small, to others.
Naturally, the urgency of knowing that one’s time is limited creates is a strong motivator to do meaningful things. Perhaps for the same reason older people tend to spend more time thinking about their purpose in life and taking actions to find meaning. On the other hand, I have been amazed to realize through watching my students’ reflection videos this semester that many of them do think about their purpose and happiness and take action to improve their mental health.
Going for a movie turned out to be rather effective in improving my happiness. I felt excited before the movie and happy afterwards while walking through the city and riding the bus back home.
This is a good discovery, because it shows me that a restful life is unlikely to be a happy life for me. I hence need to continue to work on being able have highlights that are challenging and that I feel excited about.
Another thing that made me happy this week was receiving this record from one of my favorite bands, the Innocence Mission, with a beautiful postcard painting and a personal dedication. How amazing is that?
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 8 – 14 MAY 2023
My goal review
After finally finishing all my exam marking, I took half a day off, went to the local hawker centre to have some coffee and relax for a while. It felt wonderful. And I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if I could do that every day, for instance after I retire?
The answer is of course NO. The reason why I enjoyed my time at the hawker centre, the reason why this was special, was because it felt like a reward after working very hard. Without the hard work and effort it would just be a routine.
Life is short. Before long, retirement will be here for me and I know it will be important for me to continue to do meaningful things.
There are still so many things that I am excited about and I sometimes feel that I am running out of time. Hence, it would be wise to get clarity about what is really important for me.
What is the vision that I have for my future self? If I close my eyes and imagine the future, what do I want my life, what do I want my days to be like … ?
The first thing I realize is that I don’t want to wake up in the room I am staying in. I like my office more than my room because my office inspires me. I could try to make my room more inspiring (and I am trying to), but what also matters is the outside environment.
For my future self, I hope to wake up in a place that “sparks joy”. (Marie Kondo writes “Putting your house in order is the magic that creates a vibrant and happy life.”) I also want to be able to step out into an environment that is inspiring.
I believe that how we feel when we wake up and when we step out from the house has a huge impact on how we perceive the things that lie ahead in a day. A positive morning experience allows us to look forward to what is to come. And then it almost does not matter what we actually do.
How to reach my goal then? I realized that the answer is easy – continue the things that I feel passionate about, which include right now writing, coming up with new teaching ideas and implement them, coaching in various shapes and forms and learning fascinating languages. There is no point to think too much where all these things may lead, because as Steve Jobs said, we can’t connect the dots looking forward, we can only connect them when we look backwards.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 1 – 7 MAY 2023
This week was “exam marking” week and the only special thing I did was my (not so) easy run (and walk) from Changi Point to East Coast Park on Labour Day, culminating with a swim. It was a beautiful day with beautiful scenery to watch, and I am looking forward to doing it again soon.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 24 – 30 APRIL 2023
Review of my recent habits
Now that the semester is coming to an end, there are two important things that I would like to review. The first are my habits. The second are are my goals (which I save for another time because I need more time to think about them).
With regards to my habits, some of the important questions are:
How have I progressed? What have I discovered? Do my habits serve me well?
A habit that I started three months ago was to stop eating soft bread and any sweet snacks. As I have alreadly discussed recently, achieving this has been surprisingly easy. I have not broken this habit on a single day since I started it and I have recently removed it from my daily habit check-off list in Habitshare. It is no longer a challenge for me.
In the process of pursuing this habit I have made some interesting discoveries. The first is that weight control has become a non-issue for me. I no longer need to think about how what I eat affects my weight, because it won’t. This also means that when I exercise now, keeping my weight in check is no longer a consideration. I exercise just for the experience and fun of it (and of course to improve my fitness).
One reason why I started this habit was my daily obsession with eating bagels. What has surprised me is that over the course of the the last couple of months my craving for bagels has disappeared. I don’t even think about it anymore. This goes to show that our eating habits have addictive traits and that by staying away from certain foods, we can change our preference.
I realized that I now feel that somewhat addicted to crisp bread. But I suppose it is a healthy addiction and based on my experience, I feel confident that I could change if I wanted to.
On the other hand, I sometimes still feel tempted to eat cake. The reason I don’t is because I am immediately aware of the consequences. By giving in to a temporary feeling of pleasure, I would lose my hard-won pride, happiness and choice of how I want to live.
Why would just one piece of cake make a difference? Because one piece would inevitably lead to another and before I know it, I will be back where I started from (i.e. being addicted to eating sweet stuff). Freedom is not to be able to do anything, but to be able to choose what we want to do (because it is good for us).
Finally, the decision to abstain from certain types of food makes my life so much easier. I was recently asked to choose between different unhealthy pastry menu options for our coaching breakfast meeting. All I had to reply was that I don’t require any pastry. We tend to spend a lot of energy choosing things in our lives. By limiting our choices, we can save our energy for more important things.
The second habit that I have been pursuing is to get rid of 5 things per day. I have also started re-reading Marie Kondo’s book on the life-changing magic of tidying up and realized that I am still enjoying it as much as the first time. And as a result, two weeks ago I have increased my goal to parting with 8 things per day.
Getting rid of things has been as exciting for me as buying things has in the past. This is partly because I get to discover clothes that I have forgotten and found new combinations of clothes that I enjoy wearing. Seeing space gradually becoming emptier is also very exciting.
It IS difficult to part with things, and deciding whether to keep or dispose of something requires a lot of mental effort and energy. As cliché as it may sound, using the criterion of whether something sparks joy or not is really the key, because at some point in the near future I would like to only be surrounded by things that I enjoy or that make me feel good.
I have noted that although it has often been difficult to decide whether to part with something, once I did there has thus far not been a single instance where I have regretted my decision.
Focussing on getting rid of things has also discouraged me from buying more. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, finding things that I have and truly enjoy provides a lot of excitement, that is similar to the thrill of buying new stuff. Before buying something, I also consider whether I really want to occupy the hard-won free space I have created with new stuff. Instead, if I do consider buying something, it is usually to replace things that I own with more special items. Lastly, experiencing how much mental and physical effort it takes to get rid of things makes me really think twice about increasing my mental and physical workload more through adding more things.
To end with this goal, here are two memorable quotes from Marie Kondo:
“The important thing in tidying is not deciding what to discard but rather what you want to keep in your life.”
“The real tragedy is to live your entire life without anything that brings you joy and never even realize it.”
One of my more difficult long term goals is to increase my sleep time. One reason why this has been difficult is because this goal conflicts with many of my other goals, which take time to do. Nonetheless, my sleep time has somewhat stabilized, despite a busy semester. This is largely the result of my tracking in Habitshare and that over time I have come to value feeling awake and energetic during the day. But I need to continue to improve!
While looking at statistics, there has also been a steady increase in my daily happiness scores over the past months, again, despite having little time for non-work related activities. But making it a priority to spend some time every day on things I enjoy has really made a difference.
One new habit that I started without intending to is to do some exercise every day. In the past, my goal has been to exercise at least 5 times a week, but somehow I have gotten into the habit of going out for exercise daily, despite my schedule not getting easier. The main reason is that I know it makes me feel good and is a great motivation booster for my work.
Last but not least, I recently have started a new habit – to be friendly to at least 5 people in a day. Based on my experience so far, this habit has the potential of being truly transformative.
Not getting upset when things do not go as planned has been something that I have been working on for a long time. In the past, I had tried to focus on not getting upset with others. However, this was never of lasting success because as soon as a more challenging situation arose, my habit failed and I got discouraged.
This time around I focus on building a positive habit of being friendly to others. This includes smiling at others, engaging in small conversations with others and saying things to them that might make them happy. All I have to do to succeed in my habit is to do this five times a day. If I still get angry on some occasions, it does not affect whether I have succeeded in my goal for that day.
Focussing on building this positive habit over the past two weeks, without worrying about inevitable failures, has been a lot more encouraging and sustainable. I can already tell that making the conscious effort to be friendly has changed my mindset about how I see others. I am becoming more sympathetic, understanding and polite.
I am hopeful that this habit will slowly change me to become friendly “by default”, and as a result help me to manage difficult situations better …
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 17 – 23 APRIL 2023
Being a leader or a doer?
As I have discussed recently, I have at the beginning of this year been in charge of organizing the Young Scientists’ Symposium and the launch event of our Departmental Healthy Habit Forming programme. Both took up a lot of my time and energy and prompted an important question: Why do I consistently choose to do most of the organizing myself?
Another point in case is my Cell Biology module, where I had 250 students this semester and pretty much handled the whole course without any help from others, except for one amazing office staff who helped to settle various administrative issues related to the side-term test and final exam. All of the routine handling of the course and all teaching related work I did by myself.
There are obvious disadvantages to this approach. These include that it tends to be a lot of work for me, that I don’t get input from others to improve outcomes, that nobody else can learn and that nobody else can take over what I have started. Finally, doing everything by myself is not an effective leader style. A leader should be able excite others and distribute the work.
However, there are also many pros to doing things alone. For instance, I can do things the way I want to, I can control everything and do not have to worry about others not doing their part. It is also often easier to just do it myself rather than convince others to join in and guide them to carry out the task.
Notwithstanding these advantages of doing things alone, one of the biggest reason for why I end up doing things alone is that it is difficult to find others who want to join to organize events and activities. This is likely not because I don’t give others the freedom to make their own decisions. In fact, I usually make a point to ensure that I give others great autonomy to carry out their tasks (perhaps too much?). It is more likely because others already have a busy schedule and there often is no obvious incentive or reward (other than the reward of organizing a successful event). And I tend to not ask people to do more than what they seem willing to do.
Hence, my default approach in the past has usually been to do things alone. In contrast, a good leader would be able to pull in people who are reluctant, because it would help to get things done.
In most cases, being pushed to do more actually helps the collaborator or student in the long run. For instance, some of my students have encountered difficulties because I did not push them to do all necessary controls and repeats in their experiments. However, I often find it difficult to ask others to do tasks, even when I know that it would be good for them. Instead, I tend to rely on others’ self-motivation to do what is necessary, which may be a convenient excuse to not do the uncomfortable thing.
There are, however, some examples where asking others to go to their limits is not difficult for me. For instance, in my teaching I do set challenging tests that force students to work hard. Likewise, when I lead the NUS staff running training, I do not feel reluctant to set challenging workouts (although in both teaching and running training I also emphasize fun).
I believe that what is different here is that the students or runners have already committed to learn something in a module or to improve their running performance. They are doing it for themselves. I have no personal gain if they study hard or run fast. My role is purely to help them to achieve the best possible outcome.
On the other hand, when doing research projects with students or organizing events with others, I clearly also benefit from the work that others do. For instance, students are not learning much if I ask them to repeat experiments. Although it may help them, it also helps me. Likewise, if I ask a teaching assistant to help in my course, it is me who benefits most, although it may also be a useful experience for the teaching assistant.
How do good leaders justify asking others for contributions that benefit primarily the organization as a whole. I believe that they adopt a different mindset. They focus on the big picture of pursuing a joint goal. They let the people who contribute feel that they are part of something bigger. They trust that in the long run everyone will benefit from the collective achievements.
I have been doing things alone all my life. Why change now? For instance, I look forward to teaching my module alone. I plan to organize a running event, and so far it has not occurred to me that I could do it with someone else. Involving others adds uncertainty, compromise and the need for meetings, and often transforms exciting tasks into work.
I am in the very fortunate position to be able to do things on my own. Hence, I will likely continue to do things this way. It is not a way to run effective organizations, but it is what makes me most happy.
As discussed above, it may prevent others from learning. But then again, should I really deprive others from the joys of learning on their own and making mistakes in the process. They may even find solutions that work much better than the ones I suggest to them.
NUS staff runners feeling happy after a tiring workout
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 10 – 16 APRIL 2023
Learning Outcomes – Are they necessary?
The answer to this question may seem obvious. Common sense says that of course we need learning outcomes. Without learning outcomes, how can we plan a course and how do we know if the students have achieved learning in our course?
Contrary to common wisdom, there are in fact various consequences of learning outcomes that have been considered undesirable or detrimental to student learning.
Perhaps the main argument against learning outcomes is that they may disengage the learner and stifle originality and creativity. By pursuing learning outcomes, we don’t prepare students for the real world, where the outcome is usually not known. In real life, professionals need to find answers to unsolved problems, and it is difficult to predict where this journey will take.
Other criticisms of learning outcomes include that they do not help students to cope with uncertainty, which they will face in the real world.To some, learning outcomes devalue the art of teaching and go contrary to the practice of good teachers to treat different students differently.
Finally, learning outcomes often cannot be standardized and vary based on each student’s goals. Some students may take a course because they view it as key to their future career, whereas other students take a course primarily out of interest in the topic or as means to fulfill prerequisites for another course. It is likely that the desired learning outcomes of these students are very different.
Hence a more qualified answer to the question if learning outcomes are needed would be ‘it depends on what we want to achieve in a course’. Hence, it is worth exploring when learning outcomes are actually useful and when they are not.
I do use learning outcomes in my own teaching. For instance, in my Cell Biology undergraduate module. my learning outcomes are specific skills and concepts. The skills include for instance research data interpretation, understanding of research papers and testing of scientific hypotheses. The concepts that I teach are meant to provide students with useful knowledge tools that they can use if they enter research and try to answer scientific questions.
But helping students to gain domain-specific skills is only one of the goals in my teaching philosophy. I also would like students to get excited about scientific research. And I would like to promote the development of meaningful transferrable skills, as for many students the content of a specific course may not be directly relevant to the career they will eventually pursue.
How do we get students excited about a topic? Most likely not by telling them the endpoint (learning outcome) at the outset. As pointed out by Northwood “… learning outcomes shift the emphasis from learning to achieving outcomes and [kill] the excitement in learning and the importance of creativity and discovery.” As such, learning outcomes are probably least helpful when we want to attract students’ interest.
As an undergraduate, the only time I was truly excited about learning was while doing my own research projects. What made my research exciting was the sense of discovering something that so far is unknown. As I became more experienced, I became excited about being able to explore my own ideas and use my own creativity without knowing where it may lead me.
A common approach to emulate this experience in teaching is inquiry-based learning. This approach can be and is often applied in small classes, for instance by letting students engage with real-life, unsolved problems in individual or group projects.
How can this approach be adopted in the class room with a large class and with limited instructor manpower?
Successful implementation of inquiry-based learning is dependent on immediate feedback and interaction with the instructor(s). Both are difficult to achieve in large classes due to the student number and limited number of instructors. Lecturers who want to introduce a self-directed learning element into a large class course frequently depend on a mix of assignments and traditional assessments. However, students often feel overwhelmed by assignments in large classes. This is because they need to complete these assignments in addition to the normal course work requirements (which tend to be rather heavy in the junior and sophomore years where most large class courses take place).
Including both assignments and traditional assessments in a course also means double work for the lecturer. What is more, the University system often does not recognize and reward the commitment of lecturers to promote self-directed learning. Similarly, students who want to engage in self-directed learning projects find this to be a challenge because they usually have to do it on top of their other course requirements.
Are there approaches that can be used to still promote inquiry-based and self-directed learning in large classes?
One thing that can be easily implemented in large classes are in-class discussions on open-ended questions. We can also imitate the scientific discovery process in our lectures. For instance, instead of systematically teaching students about cellular organelles, I use the cellular pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease as an example to learn about organelles function. I let students figure out cellular mechanisms based on scientific experiments that I incorporate into my lectures. I also ask the students to come up with experimental approaches to elucidate mechanisms and test hypotheses in open-ended discussions in the classroom or in turn-to-your neighbor exercises.
These approaches cannot substitute for the real life experience of doing one’s own project, but they nonetheless give students an idea of what figuring out a research question could be like.
In conclusion, learning objectives do not help to get students more interested in a topic, and they could even be detrimental to achieve this goal. Getting students excited about a topic involves imitating the discovery and problem-solving process of a research project in the classroom. The main obstacles to achieving this is a lack of time on both the lecturer and student side, as well as a lack of incentives to promote self-directed learning.
As discussed above, learning outcomes do clearly help when we want to impart meaningful domain-specific knowledge. To achieve that students learn the desired learning outcomes, it is critical to design assessments that test whether students have mastered these learning outcomes. This is important because students are most motivated to acquire knowledge and skills if they know that they will be tested.
One obstacle to assess whether students have achieved the learning outcomes of a course is the common practice of grading students on a curve.
I remember a seminar in which I described my approach of giving extensive formative feedback to students for a writing assignment and then asking the students to apply the feedback to improve their assignment. I then graded only the final submission based on whether the students have applied the feedback and mastered the desired learning outcomes. In response, one lecturer asked me if I help all students to achieve the learning outcomes, how do I distinguish between the good and bad students?
This question highlights that when grading students on a curve, some students must end up with low grades. It is hence technically not possible that all students achieve the learning outcomes, unless some students are getting a low grade despite having done well in the assessment and having achieved the intended learning outcomes.
Therefore, grading on a curve changes the focus of a lecturer from designing assessments that test learning outcomes to those that are sufficiently difficult to distinguish between “well-prepared” and “less well-prepared” students.
When giving my writing assignment, I was in the fortunate position that students grades were not moderated and I could just focus on helping students to learn what I think is important for them. However, for most courses lecturers do not have this luxury.
Finally, as discussed above, some students may choose a course for reasons other than acquiring the domain specific learning outcomes. For instance, the module may be a prerequisite for another course that a student wants to read. The module could be a compulsory graduation requirement, or a student may just be interested in the subject without wanting to pursue this area in the future. The student may even want to pursue an entirely unrelated career goal.
How do we provide useful content for these students? In my specific case, how do I design useful learning outcomes for students who are not interested in research?
Here thinking about learning outcomes that are transferrable is likely very useful. For instance, in my course my transferrable learning outcomes include gaining critical analytical and thinking skills with attention to detail, understanding how scientists arrive at conclusions as well as becoming experienced in group work. I believe that these skills are highly relevant for most graduates. And based on many feedback comments, these transferrable learning outcomes seem to resonate with many students.
When planning a course, it is thus useful to think about domain-specific as well as transferrable learning outcomes. But it is also important to keep in mind that to get students interested and excited, some learning outcomes should not be pre-determined.
Being excited about my research project as an undergraduate student
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 3 – 9 APRIL 2023
What is happiness and does it really correlate with income?
This week is Good Friday, which means I did not have a lecture on Friday. And this in turn meant that I could take off Wednesday and spend it outdoors. This was a welcome break after a much frustrating and tiring lecture on the previous day (see next week’s post). I went for my on-hour Kent Ridge park walk, which helped me to clear my mind and think positive thoughts. I then cycled to East Coast park and had a swim. As a result, I achieved a “7 out of 10” on my happiness scale yesterday, a result that I have not reached in a long time.
Coincidentally, I also read a new research article on happiness on the same morning. The article tried to answer the question ‘Does a higher income makes people happier’. Much to my surprise, I learned that there is scientific consensus that salary and feelings of well-being correlate. What is controversial is whether the relationship between log of income and happiness is linear or shows a flattening pattern at high incomes. While some authors have found a linear correlation, others reported that happiness only increase up to a certain salary threshold, above which more income does not produce a significant happiness gain.
On a sidetone, what was particularly interesting about this research was that the study involved a process called adversarial collaboration, in which researchers with different views attempt to resolve their disagreement by doing joint research with the help of a friendly mediator.
This approach is still uncommon, at least in my area of research. But it led the authors to solve the mystery of why different researchers had arrived at different conclusions.
The study found that the relationship between income and happiness depends on the level of happiness. Very happy people exhibit a linear relationship. In contrast, unhappy people see gains in their happiness in the low income range, but experience no significant gains in the high income range.
How can one explain this phenomenon? One possible explanation could be that unhappy people want to just have salary to live well. If they earn more than that, they may not know how to utilize the increased income to become happier. On the other hand, happy people might use their increased salary to do meaningful things.
It is also possible that earning more money is not the direct cause of feeling happier, but just a correlate. For instance, the observed effect may be because a high salary correlates with more autonomy and freedom to plan one’s work, which are important factors in determining our happiness level.
Why did the different researchers arrive at different conclusions in their previous studies?
According to the authors, this is because they measured happiness differently. The researchers who previously found a happiness plateau at high salaries measured happiness based on survey data. Here, study participants answered questions about whether or not on the previous day they felt happiness or enjoyment and whether or not they experienced frequent smiling, worry or sadness. However, due to the question content and question type (YES or No questions), the researchers in fact measured unhappiness instead of happiness. As a result, they were unable to detect the linear relationship between log of income and happiness level.
Aside from solving the controversy about the relationship between income and happiness, the study also draws other important conclusions. As pointed out by the authors, “… researchers should not take it for granted that their measures function as intended. In KD’s [one of the previous studies] case, a scale that was interpreted as a measure of happiness turned out to be a measure of unhappiness, with much consequent confusion.” In other words, the example shows that it is important to consider the orientation of a variable, in this case happiness versus unhappiness.
According to the authors, another common pitfall is that when researchers study the correlation between two parameters, they often make the assumption that the sample population is homogeneous. However, this often is not the case, as in this study, where the relationship between income and emotional well-being depended on the baseline happiness level of people.
However, what is most surprising to me is that there is any positive correlation between happiness and income. This goes contrary to my own experience and beliefs.
Things that make me happy are rarely directly related to my income or even spending money. Things that create happy feelings are for instance giving a good lecture, being able to help a student in some way, being outdoors and active, writing about things that I am passionate about or coming up with new ideas. My only happiness-creating activity that involves money is listening to records.
There are some potential objections to this view. The first is that having enough money for our basic needs is a prerequisite to feeling happiness. While this is certainly true, having enough money for our basic needs only eliminates feelings of anxiety. By satisfying our basic needs, we do not create actual happiness.
Furthermore, what different people consider to be basic needs varies widely. For instance, some people consider having a car to be a basic need, whereas someone else with similar living circumstances is able to get by without a car. While having a car makes our life more convenient, possessing a car can also be associated with significant emotional costs by worrying about maintaining the car or about someone inflicting damage to our car. In fact, I remember how relieved I felt when many years ago I decided to get rid of my car. Similarly, other possessions can come with emotional or actual monetary costs. Hence, reducing our basic needs can potentially increase our happiness.
Another important objection is that many people feel that money makes them happy because it allows them to go on exciting holidays, travel or do special things on weekends. While this may be true for many people, these things are rarely the main contributors to our happiness, because they only happen during certain times and hence may not affect our everyday happiness.
Of course, one could argue that looking forward to these special events also contributes to our everyday happiness. While this may be true, I do not think that one could feel truly happy by spending five days a week looking forward to feeling happy during weekends and holidays.
Nonetheless, the scientific data clearly show that happiness does correlate with income. I think here it is important to consider how the authors measured happiness.
As discussed above, the survey based approach to ask people whether or not on the previous day they felt certain emotions related to happiness was deemed as not suitable by the authors of the study as it measures unhappiness instead of actual happiness. I also feel that some of the sampled emotions measured are not true reflections of feeling happy.
For instance, with regards to enjoyment, I enjoy watching a movie, but it does not mean that this makes me happy. I don’t particularly enjoy my core and strengthening exercises, but after doing them I feel very happy.
Another example is smiling, which may be more determined by our genes and upbringing than our current mood. There are many happiness creating activities that do not make me smile. If I have helped a student in some way I often feel happy, but it is nothing that I particularly enjoy or that makes me smile. When I am feeling very happy, I might even feel like crying.
According to the authors, the gold standard of measuring emotional well-being is “Experience Sampling”. In this approach, people are prompted on average three times a day via their smartphone asking them to rate how they felt at the moment just before the signal. The participants provide a response on a continuous scale with end points labeled “Very bad” and “Very good”.
However, I feel that this experience sampling approach also does not measure what I consider true happiness. While the overall mood is important, what is also an important element of happiness is whether I experience truly happy moments, which are rarely measured by the scale.
For instance, in a relationship it is often stated that what matters is not how much time two people spend with each other, but how much quality time they experience together. Even though in absolute terms a couple may spend little time together, if this time is very meaningful and special than this is probably an important indicator of a happy relationship.
Truly happy moments in our everyday lives are based on my experience difficult to generate through buying things or using our income. They may require some money, but they can be generated without a high income. What matters much more is whether we know what makes us happy and whether we spend the effort and time to create these moments.
It is true that by creating the truly happy moments, we can also improve our overall mood. However, what we remember as happiness is usually not our overall mood, but specific things we did that made us happy.
Therefore I personally believe that the relationship between happiness and salary is only a correlation.
Feeling happy is dependent on having the opportunities to create happy moments. Jobs that pay well tend to also give us more autonomy and freedom to create such happy moments. Of course, it also depends on whether we make use of these opportunities.
Lastly, we also need to know (or make an effort to find out) what makes us happy. For me it was taking a day off and spend it outdoors.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 27 MARCH – 2 APRIL 2023
Teaching Awards
I recently wrote about what motivates me in my work. If I had to summarize my motivation, it would be making a difference for others and myself. This is what really matters. One would hope that this is what motivates most people, because the purpose of our work and our life is to make this world a better place for all of us.
If this were true, why then are there awards?
Our University and Faculty gives out teaching, research and mentoring awards on an annual basis. While it is quite common that people want to win if they join some kind of competition, I have not come across any lecturer who is motivated by the prospect of wining a teaching, research and mentoring award.
The reason is quite obvious. Teaching, research and mentoring are not competitions that anyone can win. Teaching, research and mentoring are things that we can work on to improve continuously. And almost by definition, improvement includes failure.
If awards do not serve as a motivation, they could in theory still provide a valuable recognition.
I have received a few faculty teaching awards (four to be precise, although no University award thus far, and it is unlikely that I will receive one in the future [see below]). I recently decided to no longer keep my teaching award trophies as part of my ongoing project to get rid of 5 things a day (see last week’s post). But I still have the pictures!
One reason for not keeping the physical awards is that I have no idea why I got them. In our award system, we have to first nominate ourselves or become nominated. We then submit a dossier that contains a lot of information and more recently also a video recording of how we have transformed our teaching. A committee then decides who the winners are and announces the awardees, without any explanation about what they did well or what the “losers” need to improve. Instead, if we are not selected for a prize, we receive a letter telling us that the applications were too competitive to award all excellent educators.
This process seems to go against important principles of good teaching practice, such as transparency of the evaluation and provision of constructive feedback.
What complicates matters is that these awards are viewed as boosting chances to receive promotion and tenure, which may potentially affect the decision process.
If these awards are to really serve to recognize excellence and provide valuable feedback, there should be a set of well-defined criteria that are ideally quantitative. Furthermore, the outcome of the evaluation should be transparent. This would inform the faculty about what the priorities are, encourage action and focus on relevant information during the application process.
What should these criteria be?
Potential questions that come to my mind are:
– Has the teacher introduced any new innovative teaching or assessment method?
– What percentage of the class time is active learning based? Describe the active learning-based approaches?
– How do you provide feedback to the students?
These questions go to the heart of what we want educators to do in their teaching. They encourage reflection and critical analysis of a teacher’s practices and approaches. The answers to these questions could also be easily scored by an evaluation committee.
To validate these teacher self-evaluations, students could be asked a complementary set of questions:
– What innovative teaching or assessment methods did the lecturer use?
– Which teaching approaches were effective?
– How did the lecturer provide feedback?
There are of course other approaches to recognize the best teachers. One common problem with teacher self-evaluations is that many of the things that really matter to students are difficult to capture and quantify. Things that make a difference to many students include whether they feel engaged, whether they feel they are learning relevant things and whether the lecturer shows care for the students, be it through sending personal emails, asking students about and listening to their needs, mentoring and advising, conveying of life lessons or career relevant advice.
Hence, one potential approach is to let the students vote based on some clearly defined criteria. There are various ways to promote student motivation to meaningfully participate in the evaluation process. For instance, it is important that students see the direct link between their votes and the award. This means that the actual results must be conveyed to the students. It is also well-known that letting students ranking their lecturers (as opposed to give scores to all lecturers) enhances deliberate voting and discourages mindless voting.
The student votes may be influenced by the number of students that a lecturer teaches as well as the level of the course. To address these, votes could be normalized to the number of students that a lecturer teaches and there could be separate awards for first/second year undergraduate, third/fourth year undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.
Yet another approach to recognize good teachers and mentors is to evaluate the success of students taught and supervised. This may sound difficult, but there are many ways to achieve this.
One could ask students what they have learned in a module and what new insights they have gained for themselves as a result of the module.
For undergraduate project supervision, one could use the achieved grades. To facilitate comparisons, the achieved grade could be normalized to the student’s GPA, although based on my experience with good supervision, any student can do well in a research project.
For PhD student supervision, one could look at a student’s career progression after graduating, one could consider the numbers of papers published, or score the quality of the students’ performance in PhD qualifying exams or PhD thesis submission and defense.
“Universities should reassess and overhaul policies, practices, and incentives that drive faculty behavior. Criteria for promotion and tenure should be established that reward contributions to the next generation of scientists. For example, such decisions should value teaching, mentoring, and successful trainee career trajectories.”
For myself, I have decided that I won’t be submitting any dossiers to be considered for a teaching award again. Teaching or any kind of awards obscure the motivation of why we do what we do. It makes more sense to spend my time on things that may make a difference to my main target audience in the University, my students.
Being inspired by my students
As a lecturer, I sometimes also get inspired by my students. In fact, I have been really amazed by the honesty and depth of the reflection videos that my students have submitted this semester, which I will write about some other time. This week I also visited two student performances.
The first was by my former student Diya, who performed her own songs in a concert, and I was simply astonished. The songs and her singing were beautiful!
The second was a breathtaking performance of the NUS student cheerleading team, which included my two current students Isabel and Germaine. I have not seen any similar live performance and I was not surprised to learn that the preparation involved training for 4 to 5 hours four times a week!
These are amazing achievements!
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 20 – 26 MARCH 2023
Fourth Round of our departmental Healthy Habit Forming Programme
As discussed in last week’s post, we have been conducting the 4th round of our Department of Biochemistry Healthy Habit Forming Programme, in which participants pursue a health-related goal of their own choice for a period of 4 weeks. Below are my weekly “encouragement” emails that I sent to our programme participants.
Hello everyone,
We had 19 staff and students who have signed up with a goal for this round. “Goal” is actually not such an ideal word because it is less about achieving a specific health goal, but more about making choices and discovering more about ourselves. Making choices in our lives means setting priorities. We can prioritize to live healthily. We can also prioritize to live happily.
Even though I had a very busy day today, I made it a priority to take my 1-hour lunch time walk today, which I know usually makes me very happy. And even though I now still need to prepare my lecture and quiz for tomorrow, it does not matter, because I have already taken care of myself. And tomorrow I will make it a priority to do my core exercise before my lecture, because I know that I won’t have the time and energy in the nighttime. This is what it means for me to make choices.
The problem is often that we know which choices we want to make, for instance to live healthier, but we don’t automatically choose to do them. That is why it is important to find ways to help us to choose, and accountability and habit-forming is a great approach for that. I can say for myself that this really works. Doing exercise 5 times a week used to be a struggle. I now almost do it automatically.
It is often said that it takes 30 days to build a new habit – which explains why we are doing this for four weeks!
Sometimes we don’t even know what choices are good for us. That is why we should try things that seem exciting and we might discover what we never expected. For instance, I can honestly say that my choice to stop eating sweet snacks and soft bread has made my life much more enjoyable because I have been able to focus on things that are more important for me. Of course, everyone is different and that is why everyone needs to discover by themselves what choices are good for them.
So thank you all for your choices. Reading your plans is inspiring, because it shows that you want to choose how you live.
I personally could not think of a good health goal (except sleep more, which I know I can’t achieve right now), but I am super excited about what I chose and about what I might discover.
From tomorrow on, we will be doing our daily tracking.
Best of luck to all!
End of Week 1
Hello everyone,
The first week is over and you can see for yourself how well everyone did. Some of you did amazingly well.
For those of you who have not managed to pursue their goal during the first week, perhaps it is because the goal is not exciting, not concrete, or too difficult (and you can always let us know if you want to amend your goal). It may also be good to ask yourself what are my real priorities? Completing the daily chores, which often take up most of our time, or doing something on a daily basis that helps us to change ourselves and improve our life.
For me personally it has been an exciting week. My goal (getting rid of 5 things per day) was quite a spontaneous decision. Getting rid of things can be difficult. But based on my experience, once I have decided to part with something, I am happy I did and I don’t regret my decision. As I have started doing it on a daily basis, I have become more and more excited about it. What has happened to me is that I developed a vision of my future self as someone surrounded only by things that I truly like and enjoy, which seems really exciting and motivates me to continue. It’s another example that having a vision can really make a difference.
Perhaps pursuing your goal has also encouraged you to think about your vision for yourself. Or if not, perhaps you want to spend some time thinking about it, because it might become a good motivation.
All the best for week 2!
End of Week 2
Hello everyone,
It is great to see that many of you have continued with their goals during the second week and have been achieving them. Thank you and well done!
The difficulty is of course to continue pursuing a goal over an extended period of time. How do we get to do something consistently? One strategy that we often read about is to do something for 30 days (or in our programme for 4 weeks) and then it has become a habit, which we would automatically continue doing. Based on my personal experience, this strategy has worked well for some of the goals that I have pursued, but not for others. For instance, doing exercise 5 times per week, stopping to eat sweet snacks, soft bread and rice have proved relatively easy to do consistently. On the other hand, I have struggled for years to achieve my minimum sleep target of 6.25 hours and to do my daily dental care before going to sleep.
When I compare the goals that I have achieved consistently with those I have been struggling with, two differences emerge: the things that I do consistently are either fun or they provide “net value”.
For instance, some types of exercise I do I truly enjoy, whereas others provide value by making me feel good and look good, which I don’t want to live without.
Not eating sweets also provides real value to me, because it makes me feel good about myself and allows me to focus on the important things.
Getting sufficient sleep also provides value – my days are so much more enjoyable if I have managed to sleep enough and do not feel tired all the time. But it also deprives me of value – time to do things I want to do when I am supposed to sleep, which seems a lot more important at that point in time. Hence, the goal we pursue needs to provide NET value.
These examples highlight a number of points.
Firstly, knowing that something is good for us is often not enough to do it consistently.
Secondly, it is relatively easy to stay consistent with a goal if we are enjoying it. For instance, if we find vegetable and fruits delicious, it is easy to eat them regularly. Hence, if we don’t particularly enjoy something, can we find ways to make it more enjoyable?
Another strategy to do things we don’t particularly enjoy consistently is to ensure that they provide some value for us. For instance, for me eating fruits and vegetable has always been a way of not eating carbs or sweets, which helps me to control my weight. For some of you controlling weight may not be an issue. Perhaps you can add value and fun by doing it together with your family and even have a family challenge.
In my case, I have recently started to try to value going to sleep with clean teeth. So far this seems to show good success. Based on my experience, establishing and maintaining a self-image (of someone who exercises regularly, who does not take sweet drinks etc.) can be a strong motivator.
Lastly, we can try to change the “value equation” by removing value from what we don’t want to do. To sleep earlier, I could just stop my work at a time that still gives me enough time to do the things I want before sleeping.
As this shows, there are lots of things we can potentially do to make habits stick. It is up to us to think about ways that might work for us!
All the best for week 3!
End of Week 3
Hello everyone,
We had again 12 people who over the last week achieved their goal for the most part. Really well done! Looking at the chart really makes me happy and impressed about what you have done!
I personally actually caught a bad flu two weeks ago. I had fever for several days. However, even after the fever had gone, I did not get back to normal. I felt sleepy, weak and lacking motivation for another week. This experience triggered an important realization: When we are not 100% well, it is very difficult to feel happy. It made me think of all the people with chronic diseases. By affecting their daily well-being, their illness must certainly also impair their happiness.
According to my own philosophy, any day spent not feeling happy is a lost day. If we cannot feel happy, we merely exist to do more or less useful things. But without feeling happy, these things lose their meaning and purpose.
Being healthy is not a guarantee to feel happy, but a prerequisite. Even if we are healthy, we still need to seek ways to bring more happiness into our lives. But making an effort to remain healthy is an important first step. Sadly, too often we only realize the importance of this step when we are not healthy. But then it may be too late.
All the best for the last week!
Thilo (who feels happy again!)
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 13 – 19 MARCH 2023
Giving engaging or meaningful talks?
I have recently given two short talks. The first was at our departmental staff and student welfare event, in which I tried to convince our departmental members to participate in the latest round of our Healthy Habit Forming Programme. The second talk was the closing speech of the Young Scientists’ Symposium for polytechnic students.
For both talks, I spent a lot of time to prepare meaningful and engaging content and to try to present it in an interesting manner. I must say that I myself find the content of my talks interesting and meaningful, and this was also echoed by some of the audience feedback I received. However, I must also say that I was once again disappointed with my delivery, especially in my departmental health talk. I sabotaged myself, by saying wrong words (for instance ‘meaningless’ instead of ‘meaningful’), mumbling some words, using way too many filler words and having too many disruptions to my speech flow. Things went somewhat better at the Young Scientists’ Symposium, even though I was already very exhausted by the end of the day when I was giving my speech. But perhaps this made me more relaxed and care less. I also managed to involve the audience more in this talk.
Preparing meaningful speeches and then failing in my delivery (at least based on my standards) is a recurring theme for me. Perhaps there are certain physical limitations that are difficult for me to overcome.
After this experience, I have decided that it is more productive to focus on delivering meaningful messages, which is something I can control. While it is great to be an amazing orator, it is difficult (although probably not impossible) to overcome my speech habits and limitations. What I can control is to display enthusiasm, sincerity and care for the audience. After all, I personally often feel moved and excited by presenters who are not amazing public speakers, but who spread thought-provoking ideas.
My Young Scientists’ Symposium speech was not recorded, but here is a “slightly” edited version of my departmental health talk.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 6 – 12 MARCH 2023
What are my priorities?
As discussed last week, organizing the Young Scientists’ Symposium has cost me a lot of mental energy and time. This made me wonder about an important question: What drives me to do the things I do in my job? And what rewards am I seeking?
While feeling exhausted at the end of the event, I realized that the most important reward is to witness students who are excited to present their work, who absorb information and ideas from the invited speakers and who even thank me at the end of the day. In addition, I learn things, too, for instance improving my own presentation skills while preparing and giving my closing speech. And perhaps one day I might even succeed to become a better event organizer who is able to lead without doing most things on his own.
Do I need any other recognition?
The answer is no, because any additional recognition would not make any difference to my motivation to organize the event and to do it well. I am immensely grateful that I have the freedom to choose how I want to use my time. I choose to spend it to help students to succeed, whether it is through organizing events, coming up with more effective teaching approaches or spending time to advise, mentor and interact with students. I also choose to spend my time doing things where I myself improve as well, so that I will be able to be more effective in helping others.
One would think that these are the natural things that anyone who has the choice would do. However, they aren’t, because they take time and effort and the University reward system does not exactly incentivize these activities.
While University administrators generally agree that outreach, teaching innovation and mentoring are important, research-intense Universities like ours evaluate their Junior Professors primarily based on their research papers and grants. As a result, many Profs choose to spend most of their time to succeed in their research.
Years ago I proposed a departmental funding scheme where Profs who spend time innovativing their teaching get awarded with some research funds. My proposal was based on the reasoning that there is a trade-off between spending time on innovating teaching and doing research (and securing funds for it). The response I received was that doing well in teaching should not require additional incentives, because it is part of our job.
The problem is of course that one can do his or her job well or not so well. As long as the University only assesses if we are doing our job by measuring how many students we supervise and how many courses we teach, the quality with which Professors do their non-research tasks is unlikely to improve.
It is intuitive to use the success of those that we supervise and teach as an important criterion in our evaluation. Yet, this is almost never done. Have I helped a student to land a job by taking time to carefully draft a reference letter, or have I jeopardized the student’s chances by asking the student himself to draft the letter and then just sign it, which is a rather common practice in academia. This is where our actions or non-actions can really make a difference.
Of course, there are awards to recognize outstanding qualities in teaching and mentoring. But the way they are commonly administered they rarely provide any incentive. But I will leave this topic for some other time.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 26 FEBRUARY – 5 MARCH 2023
Young Scientists’ Symposium (YSS2023)
It has been 4 years since we last held the Young Scientists’ Symposium for polytechnic life science students. It was also the first time where organizing the symposium and teaching my Cell Biology course by just myself co-incided. Thus, as the main organizer of the symposium, the past month has been one of the busiest periods in my life.
Nonetheless, witnessing that the event went very well, experiencing the enthusiastic student presenters and seeing many smiling faces (especially of students who won a prize) made it all worthwhile.
Seeing students so excited about winning a prize does always make me somewhat uncomfortable, though. Students who did not win may feel that the research they did was not deserving of a prize, when in fact it is impossible to compare research projects.
What can be compared are the presentation skills, and perhaps we should give prizes for the students with the best presentation skills? For instance, all Toastmasters clubs hold regular competitions in public speaking, culminating in an annual world championship.
But even when it comes to presentation skills, prizes are not a necessary incentive. For instance, many people would love to be able to give a TED talk, even though there is no prize or financial incentive involved. Presenting on a TED stage is considered to be a major achievement that requires no further incentive.
The real incentive to attend a scientific conference is to share our research with others, get their feedback and hopefully their encouragement. The biggest “prize” is other researchers visiting our poster, showing interest and providing suggestions and praise.
Perhaps one reason why prizes are so important for many students is that they do not encounter words of praise and encouragement often enough. Based on my experience, many Profs and lecturers use them very sparingly, which is likely one reason why many students loose motivation.
The best example that there are also other effective motivators and meaningful outcomes of giving speeches are our invited recent Poly graduate speakers, including my former students Vernice and Jeff. Both of them put a lot of effort into their talks and delivered amazing speeches that exceeded all my expectations, even though there was no prize or promised monetary compensation for them. What they did receive was recognition and gratefulness from the audience. They also gained experience, self-confidence and the realization that they can actually engage an audience of 100+ students. In the long run, these things are more important than winning a poster or oral presentation prize.
I myself felt immensely proud to see Vernice and Jeff rise up to this occasion with so much passion and maturity. Thank you!
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 19 – 25 FEBRUARY 2023
It has been four weeks since I stopped eating soft bread, cake and sweet snacks. Five years ago, I could never imagine that I would be able to accomplish this, or even that I might want to pursue such a goal. But as we make small changes in our lives step by step, achievements that originally seemed completely unrealistic become possible. As we change step by step, we even end up taking steps that our old self would have never considered.
It is a good reminder about how most people who achieve amazing things go about doing it – they start with a single step, and one step leads to another and then another.
With my soft bread, cake and snacks goal, there were two things in particular that really surprised me. The first is how easy it was for me to stick to this new habit. There has not been a single time where I felt seriously tempted to eat bread or something sweet.
What I believe played an important part in this is firstly that I found things I also enjoy instead, such as apples, my crisp bread or vegetables. Secondly, the cold turkey approach that I have applied has proved very effective for me. This approach draws a line and has the effect to change my mindset to consider the other side of the line as something that is not a possibility.
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with eating bread and cake, and the primary reason why I started this habit was not to be healthier. My primary goal was to change my mental focus. I did not want to constantly think about eating things that only provide a brief sense of satisfaction and make me want to eat more and more.
As it turns out, this desired outcome has really materialized, much more than I had expected. I can honestly say that my constant urge to eat something delicious is gone. As a result, my life has definitely become happier. I feel proud of myself and more like the person I want to be.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 13 – 18 FEBRUARY 2023
Feeling Happy is a Priority
The first 11 weeks of the new year have been one of the busiest periods in my life. In addition to teaching my undergraduate module, which unexpectedly had twice the number of students compared to previous years, I have been organizing two events. All this has been taking up a lot of my time and energy. Most things have worked out well so far, and putting in the work and time has been worthwhile.
But here comes the surprising part for me – despite the inevitable stress and lack of “me” time, my average daily happiness score has continued to go up over the past months. This is very important to me, because I want to avoid all “just survive” periods in my life. “Just surviving” or “just hanging on” periods are a waste of my precious time in this life.
MY HAPPINESS SCALE:
1 = really depressed
2 = depressed, lack of motivation
3 = slightly depressed, still motivated to do things
4 = a day where my mood was neutral to slightly depressed
5 = a day where my mood was not super happy, but also not depressed
6 = a day where the overriding mood of the day was happy and I felt truly happy at least once
7 = a day where on several occasions I truly felt happy and the overriding mood of the day was happy
8 = I am so happy to be alive
9 = almost the best day of my life
10 = best day of my life
Over the past months I have spent time thinking and exploring what creates feelings of true happiness for me. I define true happiness as being consciously happy to be alive and able to experience and cherish the moment. And I came to the conclusion that the best way to trigger true happiness for me is to be outside in nature.
Having realized this, all it took for me was to make it a priority to create time for being outside every morning, irrespective of how busy my day was. This sounds easy. Yet, most people (including myself in the past) either do not know what makes them happy or they do not give it the priority it deserves. We often put off the things that are important for us for later in the day, in the week, in the year, in our life. And in the end, we never do them, because there were always things that came up and that seemed more important. But will these things really matter if we have not even felt happy?
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 6 – 12 FEBRUARY 2023
Last week I felt excited when I heard the doorbell ring and I saw the Fedex delivery man holding my highly anticipated package in my hand. There they were, perfectly packaged with a big “Do Not Bend” signage – some of my favorite Thai pop albums, re-issued on vinyl. Getting these records seemed pretty unlikely, as based on my online research they were only sold in Thailand and I don’t know any Thai. But somehow I had managed to contact a Thai seller, convince him to send the records to Singapore and settle the payment. Holding these records in my hands gave me a sense of happiness. And it still “sparks joy” to know that I have these records in my collection.
However, this experience goes against the idea that material possessions usually do NOT create meaningful happiness that lasts, an idea that I am trying to adopt as my own mindset.
Many studies have shown that earning more money does not correlate with feeling happier. When we chase financial wealth, we often put off happiness until we achieved an imaginary sum. But when we have achieved it, our expenses have gone up and we need to keep earning more and more to satisfy our lifestyle.
To break this cycle of earning more money and needing more money to support our lifestyle, the best approach is of course to simplify our lifestyle. As Joshua Millburn wrote in “Everything that remains”, the best way to give yourself a pay raise is to buy less and need less.
While trying to earn more money is likely not a good strategy to feel happier, what about spending money to buy things we desire? To find an answer, I decided to read up online and find out what it is about buying records that makes me happy.
An article with the telling title “Scientific proof that buying things can actually create happiness – sometimes”, suggests that whether buying things creates happiness depends on what we buy.
Purchases that can make us happy are for instance those that can create an experience. A good example is a bicycle, because it opens up lot of new opportunities for outdoor experiences.
Does it matter what kind of bicycle we buy? I think yes. I currently have a simple mountain bike, which is enough to let me exercise and go to places. But in my twenties I had a road bike and I remember how much I used to look forward to ride it. Being on my bike and wearing my cyclist outfit made me feel like a professional cyclist – example that creating an experience through buying can trigger happy feelings.
Records of course can create an experience, too, which for me can come from simply holding them in my hand.
A second type of purchases that tend to create happiness are those that match our personality or help to create our personality, for instance by making us look cool. It is often said that our personality is our inside and not how we appear on the outside. But I think that expressing ourselves to the outside is an important component of our personality. And in a way everyone does it, even by showing that one does NOT care about what clothes he or she wears.
So it is all about purposeful buying, buying of things that will actually make a difference in our daily life.
Based on my own experience, things I bought in the past can also be an important source by creating memories. For instance, I bought this US copy of Rubber Soul for $5.99 in Boston back in 1994 while on exchange, during a time when my daily budget for food was literally 2 dollars. So it took me a long time to save $5.99 and I remember how I used to visit the record shop repeatedly to check if the record hasn’t been sold, yet, before I finally had saved enough.
Or I remember how after buying this copy of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band I crashed from my bike when a driver opened his car door and I got caught in it. The record, which was hanging on my handle bar, survived the crash. But I broke my finger and for the next couple of months I had to do experiments and write my lab book with my left hand.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 30 JANUARY – 5 FEBRUARY 2023
Inspired by Joshua Millburns book “Everything that remains”, I started two new goals this week. Joshua described how he has pursued some pretty interesting goals, including purchasing zero material possessions for one year, going internet-less for one month, going phone-less for one month, and yes, going goal-less. I was surprised to read that Joshua no longer eats bread. Instead, he cooks meals that contain more unprocessed carbohydrates.
I have already given up eating rice years ago, and no longer eating bread sounded like an exciting idea. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with bread, although according to this google search, bread is not our most natural type of food to eat.
Our ancestors in the palaeolithic period, which covers 2.5 million years ago to 12,000 years ago, are thought to have had a diet based on vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots and meat. Cereals, potatoes, bread and milk did not feature at all. (I assume rice didn’t either.)
The reason why I want to stop eating bread is mainly that I have become a little too dependent on it. Once we get used to something too much, it is often a good time to change it.
For instance, it has become my habit to have a bagel whenever I go to Starbucks. I don’t even consider having anything else. And I have even gotten upset in the past when a Starbucks branch had ran out of bagels. Hence, it would be interesting to see if I can also “live” and be happy without eating bagels and other types of bread.
Of course, one might say why don’t I just eat less bread. The reason is firstly that eating less bread would not be a challenge and would not be exciting. And secondly, it is much more difficult. By stopping something, I establish a new rule. Eating less of something on the other hand is not a strict rule. One piece of bread easily leads to the next and sooner or later I will be back to where I started from.
I also enjoy these challenges, because they make me realize that I am holding many assumptions that are not grounded in reality (in ontological coach terms). And taking up challenges makes life exciting and new again.
Joshua Millburn writes:
“… I limit myself in the short term so I can learn more about me, learn about my psyche, and ultimately identify what is meaningful in my life.
Often, my post-experiment changes stick; they become empowering habits that make my life more meaningful. Other times, they don’t, but I still gain a deeper understanding of myself.”
Based on my experience, to succeed in a personal challenge, some prerequisites must be met. Firstly, I must find an alternative that I also enjoy. In my case, it is crispbread, which is now available at Cold Storage supermarkets. Secondly, I must believe that it is possible to succeed with my challenge. And for these reasons, it would for instance be very difficult for me to give up drinking coffee.
Crispbread, available at Cold Storage supermarkets
I have already gone for one week without bread. To my big surprise, it was not that difficult. I also noted some interesting and unexpected outcomes.
One disadvantage of eating bread is that I find it very hard to stop eating. I constantly feel the urge to eat ‘just one more piece’. Because bread is quickly processed to glucose in our gut, it rapidly raises the insulin level in our blood and we want to eat more to avoid becoming hypoglycemic.
Crispbread has the advantage that it has more fibre, and like other fibre-rich types of food, creates the feeling of being full more quickly.
Because the goal of stopping to eat bread sounded very exciting, I added a second one, which is to quit eating sweet pastries or snacks.
I had already limited myself to eating only one snack per day. My surprising discovery over the past week has been that not eating any sweet snacks or pastries has been much easier than limiting myself to one per day. My new goal has helped me to stop thinking about having snacks because it is no longer an option. This has certainly made my days MORE and not LESS enjoyable. Eating sweet snacks is no longer something that I consider, at least for the moment. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is to maintain these goals over time.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 23 – 29 JANUARY 2023
Everything that remains
I am back to reading about minimalism.
Joshua Millburn, one of the authors of “Everything that remains” points out that there are two parts to it. There is firstly the ‘getting rid of stuff and (importantly) not adding new stuff’ part.
Joshua highlights the difference between a minimalist and an organized hoarder. Organizing our possessions so that our space looks neat is not minimalism. Minimalism means actually getting rid of most of our things.
Deciding whether to keep or toss things is easy for possessions that bring joy or that add value to our lives, or that do NOT. But it becomes much more tricky for possessions that we don’t use but that we MIGHT enjoy one day or that COULD be useful in the future, or for the possessions I have a lot of – the BACKUP stuff. Joshua calls it the “just in case” possessions. And I agree with Joshua that in the vast majority of cases (more than 90%), we never want or need these “just in case” items, or if we really need them, they can be easily replaced.
Nonetheless, my experience is that parting from many “just in case” items is difficult. What if I get rid of some backup stuff and the original gets spoiled and I won’t be able to find a replacement? What if I throw away some of my favorite clothes from the past and they come in fashion again?
The truth is, though, that I have never owned a piece of clothes that went out of fashion, came back in fashion and I then wanted to wear it again. Once I stopped liking something, it was usually terminal. Even if something sort of came back into being fashionable, there were other things that I preferred wearing.
When it comes to my favorite records, I have the habit of buying two copies (one “just in case” copy). Has there ever been an instance where I was glad to have a backup copy? I cannot really recall such a case. Of course, there may be the unfortunate event when due to whatever reason I lose a large part of my record collection. But having back-ups of some records (stored in a different place) is going to be unlikely to make me much happier about the loss.
So it seems that I have already convinced myself (through the power of reflecting) that there really is no point to keep stuff that I no longer enjoy or to buy backups for things I like (unless something really wear off over time …).
Now let’s get to the second part to minimalism – the question of why we are doing the minimalist thing in the first place. Sure, it feels great to have less stuff and be able to enjoy a less cluttered atmosphere. But the main purpose of minimalism is to give us time to focus on the important things in life and to adopt a mindset to pursue the things that are important. In other words, the main purpose is to de-clutter our mind.
This raises one important question. What do I actually enjoy and currently do not do enough of. Apart from my work and trying out new things in my life, what I really love is to have quiet time, take walks, sit and listen to music. And I certainly don’t get enough time to do it.
Joshua said something that really stuck with me is: We can say that we are passionate about all kinds of things, but if we don’t do them on a daily basis, it is not a passion and a priority. I could say I like reading and painting. But I don’t actually do it much, and the same applies to taking walks and being in nature.
How to make something a priority? As the word indicates, we should do it first, or as early in a day as we can. Else, it would most often end up as something that we wanted to do but did not have enough time for at the end of the day. And as a result, we live our lives without living, but by just completing tasks.
On Wednesday I took a walk around NUS “first”. (And that was good, because it started to rain afterwards.)
And on Thursday, after the rain finally ended, I rode my bicyle to the Choa Chu Kang Christian cemetery, where I had an amazing quiet time, raising my happiness level to the highest score in a long time.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 16 – 22 JANUARY 2023
Cell Biology introductory videos
My new experiment in my Cell Biology course this semester is to ask students to prepare short introduction and reflection videos. My initial plan was to have three videos over the course of the semester, but after realizing that the student number in my course had more than doubled compared to last year, to 250 students, I settled for two videos (I may make the third one optional).
This week, I completed watching the 250 intro videos. It took a lot of time, but it was an amazing opportunity that I am really thankful for. I was able to learn what students think about, what they worry about and what excites them. It was also wonderful to get to see and know the students with whom I will spend a semester, and actually recognize them in the lecture hall (at least some).
What made the process of watching the videos much more enjoyable was that I did not have to grade the assignments. The experience made me realize again that grades really take the fun out of teaching (as well as learning).
I have started to re-watch some of the videos because there were some really amazing things shared by the students that really inspired me: reflections and mindfulness, enthusiasm, students willing to take risks by for instance starting their own business.
The last points brings me to an amazing quote I found this week while re-reading Stephen C. Stearns article “Designs for learning”:
“Not taking risks is the biggest risk of all, for it yields an uninteresting life.”
Will I do have the intro video assignment again next year? YES, and the main reason is that it creates a personal connection and makes the course more human. (I would not mind, though, if in the next round the student number would be a bit lower …)
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 9 – 15 JANUARY 2023
It was the first week of a new semester, which kept me very busy. I gave my first live lectures to a large class in two years and it was fun to interact with students again face-to-face. Nonetheless, I do miss the zoom chat function, which makes it so easy to get answers to all the questions I am asking students throughout the lecture. In the live setting, my questions become mostly rhetorical, because with 200 students present, most students seem reluctant to speak up. I could of course try to use some chat function during the lecture. The main problem is that unlike in zoom, it is difficult to display the ongoing chat and the lecture slides simultaneously. Without seeing the diagrams or data that we discuss, it becomes difficult to comment on what students type in the chat. I will continue to explore chat platforms that can be used in a live lecture setting.
This week I also passed my Inline Skating Certification Program (ICP) level 1 final exam, thanks to my great “mock student” Rebecca, whom I had to teach how to stride. Preparing for the exam required a lot of effort to plan lessons and think of effective practice exercises, but I did learn a lot during the process.
And I attended a fun and entertaining play, “The Mama Medallion”, by the King Edward VII Hall students. I am always impressed by the acting skills of the students. Acting involves using one’s language, body and emotions to embody a character. This is really difficult. I have been struggling to use my language, body and emotional expressions more effectively when giving presentations. Hence, I am really amazed by how well the students can do it.
The play highlighted a number of problems related to the role and treatment of women in our society in an entertaining manner. While this approach made if fun to watch the play, I felt that the casual approach somewhat diluted the message and the play probably stayed short of really making the audience think. It seems to me that there is a common perception and expectation in our society that all content has to be entertaining, because that is what people are used to. When content becomes boring or too serious, most people would stop watching and move on to other content.
However, the commitment of a theatre audience to sit down and watch a play with their mobile phones switched off is a good opportunity for confrontation with content that is more difficult to digest.
In an ideal scenario, a play would not only make the audience stop and think, but also incite them to act. This is an ambitious and hard-to-achieve goal, but one worth to at least sometimes aim for.
Nonetheless, it was a great play and a great performance that I enjoyed very much.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 2 JANUARY – 8 JANUARY 2023
While on holiday in Germany, I finally wanted to catch up with the reality of a war that is going on in a country that borders on Germany’s neighbor country Poland, where the front line is only 1300 km away from where I stayed with my parents, and where civilians and soldiers die on a daily basis. I wondered how civilians and especially soldiers tolerate the constant fear of dying on the frontline.
I read about an amazing New Zealand doctor, who volunteered for the International Company in the Ukrainian army. In her own words:
“I don’t know what makes one man afraid and another man unafraid. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But, what I know is I am genuinely not afraid to die.”
Although it appears that she is not aware from what she derives her courage, she offered some important insights:
“I’ve had incredible privilege, made all these friends and travelled all over the world. And if it had all ended yesterday I would have been stoked”
and
“Some people think I’m reckless … but it’s making peace with your own mortality – death is inevitable for all of us, it is just a little more immediate for us on the front line.”
I also learned from a post by Artem Chekh, a Ukrainian soldier and writer. He writes “I forbade myself to believe that I and the people I love or like will survive. It is hard to exist in this state, yet accepting the possibility of one’s own death is necessary for every soldier.”
Most people tend to avoid thinking about our own mortality. However, not thinking about something scary does nothing but make it worse. If I am afraid of a difficult task, like giving a presentation or any other challenge, it is best to first feel the fear and anxiety and learn about what it is that I am afraid of. Likewise, when it comes to death, I should consider the possibility, and think about what it is that makes it so scary for me. In the past, it was not having settled all my personal practical matters and affairs, which I thankfully have finally done this past year.
Besides this, I feel afraid that I would miss out on so many things. Here, an attitude of appreciation and recognition of all the wonderful things I got to experience throughout my life helps greatly. Thinking about my life makes me feel very thankful that I have been so lucky to have a loving family, got to experience so many cultures, did so many interesting things and have experienced so much happiness. How much better can it really get?
