My plans to go home this week to celebrate Christmas with my family did not work out, thanks to catching Covid. Hence, I once again “celebrated” with my parents and sister’s family via skype. It went to show how amazing technology is, but also how important being physically together is, in spite of all technological progress.
One of the things I did instead of going home was go for a movie (after being negative again!). I watched “A Year of no Significance” at the new Projector cinema at Cineleisure in Orchard. I realized again that my favorite type of movies are those that portray everyday lives in ways that make me realize new things about myself and about our society.
The movie told the story of a Singaporean Chinese family in the 1970’s. There was the grumpy and self-centered father and his two sons, one of them Chinese educated and the other educated in English speaking schools.
The Chinese educated son, who was the movie’s main character, was an architect. He faced great difficulties in his firm when during the 1970’s there was a gradual shift towards the use of English in workplaces in Singapore. Hence, he could not understand many work-related discussions and had to spend the evenings translating his work reports from Chinese into English using a dictionary.
Similar to this main character in the movie, many people face generation gap related problems in their daily lives as they get older. In my case it is not a language problem, but the continuous need to learn about and use new technologies and phone apps in my daily and work life. There is also a lack of data science literacy that limits me in my work life.
In particular the increasing penetration of technology into many aspects of our personal and work lives is one factor that makes life more difficult, more stressful and less enjoyable as I get older.
Of course, in principal there is no reason why I cannot learn these things. However, when we learn new things, we prefer to build on knowledge that we already have and to use familiar approaches to acquire new knowledge and skills. If we need to learn something that is completely foreign to us or that involves approaches that we are unfamiliar with, we tend to become very reluctant and apprehensive.
I in fact experienced the effect that failing technology has on me this week when my mobile phone stopped working. The realization triggered an immediate frustration of being unable to fix it, of worry about things I can’t do, of anger that I have to invest time to address this and of irritation that technology has become something without I literally cannot function. But I then tried to quickly remind myself that there are much worse things and that there is no reason to feel upset about such an incident.
The increased reliance on technology in all spheres of life does not only cause increased frustration, but also affects the quality of life that I experience. Apart from a loss personal conversations and human contact, most frustrating for me is the disappearance of quiet places and of people engaging in what I consider meaningful activities that build connections between people.
In the movie, the English-educated son was able to communicate with everyone and faced no difficulties in his work. He seemed to have a well-going business of selling new gadgets and also had a family with a wife and two sons. Yet, he was not happy either. His relationship with his wife was breaking, he had an affair, his sons were spoilt and selfish and the only thing from which he seemed to obtain some temporary satisfaction was the thrill of selling new gadgets like cigarette lighters or microwave ovens.
I was asking myself what aspect of their lives the people portrayed in the movie truly enjoyed in their lives. The fact that there weren’t any was rather depressing. The people seemed to live from day to day without being able to give true love or find true meaning. It seemed that they had so many problems that they could not even think of how to be happy.
Nonetheless, the disappearance of external problems does not automatically lead to a meaningful and happy life. More likely, pursuing a meaningful and happy life may lead to the disappearance of some of our problems, and it may change the way we look at others.
Most of us are truly fortunate to live lives with few major problems or difficulties. It is up to us to find ways to make these lives meaningful and happy!
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 18 – 24 DECEMBER 2023
How do breakthrough discoveries happen?
Several weeks ago I attended an amazing talk by Noubar Afeyan, who is Co-Founder and Chairman of Moderna and Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering. According to their website, Flagship Pioneering is “a biotechnology company that invents platforms and builds companies that change the world” (such as Moderna!). It took me a while to write a post about this talk, partly because I failed to take some notes right after the talk (!) and thus had to read up some information.
Noubar Afeyan talked about how breakthrough discoveries happen and about his company’s unorthodox approach to come up with ideas.
Some of his often seemingly provocative points were:
Ideas are not rare and finding new ideas is not difficult.
Great ideas do not need to meet current needs.
Great ideas may initially sound like bad ideas.
Great ideas may initially seem like infeasible ideas.
Discovering a flaw in an idea is not necessarily the end of this idea.
Experiments at the early stages of the discovery process do not have to be totally reasonable.
Noubar Afeyan described that he prefers to start the discovery process by posing a “what if” question.
In the conventional approach, companies (and I should add academic laboratories as well) try to come up with new ideas that address a specific problem and that leverage on recent discoveries or trends. For instance, to overcome problems of drug delivery, one tries to come up with ideas to make better liposome drug carrier formulations. To advance gene therapy, one attempts to come up with novel approaches to improve CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.
The problem with this approach is that other companies and researchers are likely to address the same specific needs and have access to much of the same information. Hence, they likely have similar ideas, resulting in a lot of competition. In order to be successful, one must proceed quickly and weed out any ideas that do not look promising. As a result, the failure rate is high and the discoveries that do reach the clinic or the market tend to be incremental rather than ground-breaking improvements.
In contrast, Noubar Afeyan’s Flagship company takes a different approach. The scientists in his company try to ask “what if” questions in areas where little research has been done. They do not ask these questions with a specific problem in mind, but they pursue big questions that are daring and potentially have broad applications. For instance, two decades ago scientists at Flagship asked the question ‘Could messenger RNA be a drug?’. What eventually emerged from this question is Moderna and a new approach to produce a vaccine.
Another example that Noubar Afeyan gave is the question whether there might be endemic viruses that co-exist with humans without producing harm. Such viruses could be a new and much safer vehicle to deliver genes into human patients. This approach is very different from the more prevalent strategy to optimize existing adenoviral or lentiviral gene delivery systems. By asking a very speculative question that few others or nobody else has previously pursued, there is a much higher chance to eventually make a breakthrough discovery.
As Noubar Afeyan points out, the ‘Flagship’ approach requires a very different mindset. In the conventional approach hypotheses must quickly be proved correct. New ideas are being pursued until a roadblock appears, at which point the project is often abandoned in favor of more promising projects. Internal and external reviews will focus on weaknesses and kill any project that faces significant challenges.
In the Flagship approach “hypotheses need not be true at the moment they are posed.” Everyone assumes that there are flaws in the hypothesis. Failed experiments are not a reason to “kill” a project, but are viewed as an opportunity to understand more about the problem and the underlying reasons why the experiment did not work.
Below are three quotes from Noubar Afeyan and Gary Pisano’s article “What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation” in the Harvard Business Review, which describe the required mindset excellently:
“… to foster emergent discovery in your organization, you need to make it acceptable to consider the seemingly impossible.”
“Early in the process, leaders and team members must be willing to suspend disbelief and to reserve judgment about whether a hypothesis is true or not. Common (and very reasonable) questions such as “Why do you believe that’s true?” and “How do you know that’s the right thing to do?” tend to shut down the process of inquiry.”
“Leaders must make it acceptable to defy dogma.”
One reason why many researchers shy away from asking unconventional questions is that they presume that there will likely be a high failure rate. This highlights that when trying to solve seemingly unsolvable problems, it is also necessary to change how we approach the scientific discovery process and how we perceive failure.
According to Afeyan, in order to achieve scientific breakthroughs, we can get inspiration from nature, which through the process of natural selection has time and time again come up with the most amazing inventions.
Natural selection starts out with variance generation in the form of genetic DNA mutations. This is followed by applying selection pressure that selects for the most advantageous variation. Naturally, most variants turn out to be detrimental. But on rare occasions a beneficial variant emerges. After several re-iterations of this natural selection process organisms will eventually emerge that are much more adapted to the selection pressure. Nature has made a leap forward.
Afeyan points out that this principle can be mimicked in scientific discovery by starting out with variance generation. For instance in the case of utilizing mRNA to create drugs, this could be the generation of many possible mRNA modifications that might increase stability or avoid immunogenicity.
Subsequently selection pressure is applied (testing of the variants in a relevant model). Based on what is the case in natural selection, it is in fact expected that most of the variants will be dead-ends. However, if even only one variant offers an advantage, there is a way forward. By repeating this process, breakthroughs will eventually happen. To continue to find new ways forward and overcome failures, an important factor is interdisciplinary collaboration and seeking the opinion of many experts in different areas.
What this shows is that breakthrough discoveries usually do not come from sudden moments of inspiration. Instead, they can be achieved through a rational and systematic process, provided we are willing to ask unconventional questions and do not get discouraged by early failures.
On a side note, one of the leading scientists at Moderna, John Joyal, who is Vice President of Biological Research at Moderna Therapeutics and who was listed as one of the “Top 50 University Alumni in the Pharmaceuticals Industry of 2022“, was my fellow lab mate during my undergraduate research time at Tufts University. And so whenever I hear of Moderna and Covid vaccines, I am reminded in a personal way of how much impact a researcher can have.
John and me in the lab
John and me in Washington
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 11 – 17 DECEMBER 2023
My graduate course teaching feedback Part 2
In last week’s post I talked about some of the student responses to the feedback survey we conducted during our final class session. One of the most interesting survey result emerged when I asked the students about the attendance recommendations and requirements of the course.
In the timetable, I indicated that classes were either compulsory, recommended or optional. The classes in which attendance was compulsory were the various graded oral assignments. The recommended sessions were those that were meant to help students do well in their writing assignment.
In addition, I also conducted a number of other classes on unrelated, yet important topics, such as creative scientific thinking, scientific presentations and productivity and motivation during graduate studies. These classes were denoted as optional and consequently, the participation rate was very low.
In general, I do not care much on how many students attend my classes but try to focus on providing a meaningful experience for the students who do attend. However, for my class on motivation only one student showed up, which made me very disappointed because despite preparing a lot for this class, I could not conduct the class as I had planned.
This prompted me to include in my survey a question in which I tried to get some idea why the students did not attend this session:
For those students who did not attend the motivation session, why did you not attend?
The answer options were:
“I always feel motivated”, which got zero responses,
“I thought that it may not be that useful”, which had two votes and
“I had other more important things to do”, which received 4 votes.
The responses were exactly what I had anticipated. We always tend to think that the current most pressing needs (doing experiments, complying with the demands of the supervisor) are the most important ones right now, and put off those that really matter to a later time, which usually never comes.
The only way we could pay attention to the things that really make a difference to our daily lives and our future is to find some way to force ourselves to do so. This could for instance be by forming the habit to reserve time for our important activities or by having someone else put pressure on us. In this regard, the most interesting response in the survey was the one to the following question.
What is your opinion about attendance recommendations/requirements?
A. The recommendations/requirements for this semester were good – 4 votes
B. All classes should be compulsory – 3 votes
C. All classes should be recommended – 0 votes
D. All classes should be optional – 0 votes
E. There should be no recommendations for attendance – 0 votes
I think the response to option B speaks for itself. It appears that sometimes we are not helping students by giving them too many choices.
On a different note, this week I got some particularly beautiful flowers in my office. Having flowers around has really contributed to my mental well-being! Sadly, gerberas seem to be the most short-living flowers …
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 4 – 10 DECEMBER 2023
My graduate course teaching feedback
During this semester we introduced one major change into our module: In addition to the 3 min-thesis presentation (in which students give an engaging short description of their PhD project geared towards a non-expert audience), we gave students choices to do alternative assignments that they might find more interesting or useful.
When we solicited feedback from the students at the end of the semester, we asked them to score how useful they felt the various assignments were. (The students had to attend all sessions whether they presented or were only participating as audience.) The scale was 1 to 5, with 1 being not useful and 5 very useful. Based on the survey, the average scores were:
3 min-thesis presentation: 4.1/5
Sharing session on failure during postgraduate studies: 4.0/5
Teach-your peers assignment: 3.7/5
Debate on new modes of publishing and peer review: 3.1/5
The results suggest that the 3 min-thesis presentation is still considered to be the most useful assignment. It is undeniable that being able to explain one’s research is a relevant skill. This skill is frequently needed as students attend conferences, apply for jobs or talk to lay people. The skill to communicate one’s research to a general audience is also important. Given that most of the students’ research is funded by the public, students should also be able to explain to the public what they are doing with the research funds.
The sharing session on failure received the second highest score. This confirms my expectation that failure during graduate studies is indeed a relevant topic for PhD students. The class session was inspired by an article entitled “Full disclosure”, which describes how two graduate students decided to share about their failures during a retreat. The impact was immense because the graduate student audience all could relate to what the two speakers shared.
In research, we commonly hear success stories, but most of the time researchers fail. But because we usually do not talk about it, students think that only they are failing and that therefore something must be wrong with them.
During our session, our two student panelists who signed up for this assignment shared a story of a personal failure. They also covered two important points – what they would have wanted to be different, and what it would take to make their lab more accepting of failure (or what does their lab is doing well).
A major point that was brought up by both students is that students often compare themselves with others. Students also focus a lot on what they think others expect of them. In contrast, they spend little time considering what is important for them and what they expect of themselves. or with what they think they should achieve.
Focussing on others’ achievements or imagined expectations is probably the major reason why personal failure is so discouraging and often leading to depression.
Interestingly, during our feedback discussion one students brought up how helpful it was that I also shared about my own failures in one of the class sessions. Because Professors almost never talk about how often they have failed in their career, students can get the impression that they could never achieve the level of mastery required to become a Professor. The same probably applies to every other career, but I find that other professionals (for instance entrepreneurs) tend to be much more candid about their frequent failures.
I ended the session by letting students think and discuss among themselves about their vision for their future self. What I wanted them to realize is that most things that we worry about on a daily basis have no effect on whether or not we will achieve our vision, and hence there is no point to be preoccupied with these worries. I am not sure how effective these discussions were because there was no time for a debrief. But speaking for myself, thinking about my vision helps me greatly to evaluate my everyday life and to stay motivated and excited.
The third option for students to take up was a Teach-Your-Peers assignment. Only one student actually chose this assignment and taught the other students a concept of her choice. But based on the feedback most students did find the session useful.
The reason I wanted to include this assignment and session is because I find it important to introduce students to how teaching could be approached differently from the common lecture teacher monolog (didactic) teaching style. This is important because graduate students will be teaching others in some way or another, whatever they will end up doing.
Specifically, I wanted to impart in students my 3-step approach to teaching a concept:
1.Introducing students to the topic through the productive failure approach (students are confronted with a problem that they cannot solve with their current knowledge)
2.Letting students figure out the concept using provided examples
3.Provide practice opportunities to apply the concept
The student who taught the class did not exactly follow this format, but she did really well in engaging the class, letting the audience participate and do “work” during class. It was very notable how actively the students participated in the session. I believe that the students realized that a class by a fellow student can be more engaging and effective than that by a Professor. What matters is not how much a teacher knows, but how he or she approaches to transfer knowledge and get students involved.
None of the students took up the last oral assignment option, a debate on new modes of publishing and peer review. It is, however, possible that the students did not choose the assignment because they only wanted to do one assignment. Therefore, I asked the students about how useful they felt the topic would be, given that I had also provided some readings on the topic.
The students seemed to find the topic moderately useful. However, I am not sure whether the students in fact read the recommended articles and hence whether they made an informed choice.
Irrespective of the students’ responses, the topic IS clearly important for graduate students because the current changes in the publishing and peer review of research articles will impact them.
The ongoing changes in the scientific publishing landscape are trying to address the demand for wider and faster access to new research findings and for de-emphasizing the focus on the scientific impact of publications. The latter is in part responsible for excessive and often unreasonable demands of peer reviewers, resulting in wasted time and resources. The desire and pressure of many scientists to publish in high impact journals in order to advance their career often also results in overstating conclusions. As such, the push to publish “impactful” research contributes to the lack of reproducibility that is prevalent in scientific research.
To address these problems, there have been various efforts to introduce radical new models of peer review and publishing. The best known example is eLife, a scientific journal that has introduced the “publish first, then peer review” model. In the traditional approach, peer reviewers first evaluate the soundness of a research paper, and often also how impactful the findings are. Based on their judgement, journal editors then decide whether to accept or reject papers.
In the eLife model, the journal publishes papers first and then peer-reviews these papers. After the peer review process, the peer review comments are published and the authors can make the decision whether they want or can address the suggestions and criticisms of the reviewers. As such, a paper is not formally accepted anymore.
The “publish first, then peer review” model in fact addresses the major concerns with the current peer review process. Papers are published and accessible immediately. The authors have control over what suggested revisions they feel they want to make or have the resources to do. Finally, because papers are not formally accepted by the journal, the reviewers do not focus on the impact but only the scientific soundness.
However, the publishing model raises some important questions. For instance, if the decision to address any reviewer comments remains with the authors, journals would no longer perform a quality check by only accepting papers that are of high scientific quality. Thus, how would scientific soundness and reproducibility of published papers be ensured under the new publishing model?
A new publishing system that does not focus on scientific impact is also likely to have profound consequences for how scientists are evaluated, which is especially relevant for young scientists such as graduate students.
Traditionally, when scientists apply for jobs, funding or fellowships or when scientists are being appraised, an important criterion is the so-called impact factor of journals in which the scientist has published. If journals no longer accept papers based on their apparent importance, how can employer and funding agencies judge the “quality” of an author’s published output? There are other potential measures, but it is important for graduate students to be aware of these developments and changes in evaluation criteria because they will affect their future.
In conclusion, it appears that all the assignments are useful and it would be good to keep them in some form. Going forward I plan to only give the students the option to choose between the 3 min-thesis presentation and the Teach-Your-Peers assignment, and recommend participation in the failure sharing session and the debate on new modes of publishing and peer review for all students.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 27 NOVEMBER – 3 DECEMBER 2023
How to stop buying things?
Last week I wrote about how I want to live by enjoying my favorite activities, my work and my possessions in the moment, and why I feel it is important for me to be not overly attached to my possessions. Another important question is why I want to buy things in the first place? Thinking about this question yielded some amazing insights.
When we go online to search for things to buy, or if we go to a physical store, we do it because we anticipate pleasure, or a dopamine rush (see my post from the beginning of October). We do it because we remember the pleasure that buying something brought us in the recent past. This experience eventually turns into a habit that we pursue in order to potentially feel good.
For instance, I used to stop at every sports shop to look for running singlets. I am no longer tempted to search for running vests, partly because I have enough, but more importantly because I have not been doing it for a long time. As a result, I have overcome the habit of obtaining pleasure from it. It is no longer imprinted in my brain that buying running singlets is a way to derive pleasure.
When we want to buy things, we tend to want to not just buy random things, but those that evoke pleasure based on our past experience. That is why we tend to buy more stuff even though we already have a lot of similar things. That is why other people often cannot understand why we are addicted to buying certain things. Buying the same things would not evoke pleasure for them.
This explains why I can have very different standards for different types of clothes. For instance, I used to buy lots of casual shoes to wear on normal days, but I have never cared much about what my running shoes look like. In fact, it is difficult for me to understand why other runners spend so much money to constantly buy the latest shoe models. For me, running shoes are a utility that I buy when I need new ones because the old ones are worn out. It would be good to take up this sentiment to other possessions as well. Notably, I have not bought any new casual shoes in over a year, which has resulted in disappearance of the desire to search for new shoes.
The answer to buying less then seems very easy. I just need to resist the temptation to seek pleasure from buying pleasure-evoking things for a while and my brain will eventually forget. The difficulty is to resist buying while we still remember the pleasure it can bring. Perhaps meditation helps or being aware of the end goal (not to save money once but to reach the state where buying certain stuff is not important to us anymore).
I feel excited that I have something new to try now! For a start, I will try to not buy any more clothes (except those that I really need) and not go to any physical record stores. I have made similar resolutions before, but the difference is that I was not conscious of the dopamine release effect that going shopping online or visiting a record shop just once has.
The same approach can be applied to other areas as well. The pleasure of searching for things online (for me it is to search for music, for others it may be to visit social media) creates a kind of pleasure (or dopamine rush) that we want to experience again and again. The only way to break this cycle is to un-train our brain to view our habit as a pleasurable activity.
This is in fact what my own experience has confirmed. I have not been eating cake since the beginning of this year and my brain no longer reminds me of the pleasure that eating cake can give me. Eating cake once could send me back to where I started. I will try to apply this lesson to other areas of my life as well.
One of the last record shops I have visited is the Analog Vault, one of the coolest record stores in Singapore. Some of the really cool records I bought are by Arabic music icon Warda, by 1960’s Vietnamese Rock’n Roll singer Phuong Tam and a Duke Ellington’s “Ellington Indigos” re-issue (which I mainly bought for its amazing reproduction).
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 20 – 26 NOVEMBER 2023
How to live?
I had a rich life so far. I have a wonderful family and I have done a lot of exciting things in my life. There are many things that I look back on with joy and satisfaction. In fact, most of the things I have done in my life are still very precious memories. And looking back, I also did some meaningful things.
Despite having achieved all these things, I somehow still cling onto life and feel that this cannot be all. Why? Is it because I still want to do many meaningful things? To some extent yes. There are a few things that I would like to complete. In addition, I also have many future goals. However, these goals serve more as a motivation for me to keep trying and stay excited. They are not a “must” that I need to achieve. They are more like dreams that I want for myself. If I am unable to achieve them for whatever reasons, it is okay for me.
One main reason why I cling onto life is more about wanting to keep doing things I enjoy, like listen to music, going for walks and runs and travel, not so much to see new things, but to experience feeling alive. The logical consequence of realizing this is that I should do the things I enjoy more. And the only way to achieve this is to do less of other things.
For instance, yesterday I wanted to go for a short afternoon walk and a run. But the other tasks I set for myself, doing lots of work and updating my music library (so that I can enjoy my walks and runs more) took much longer than planned, and I ended up only going for a run late at night.
The only way to do more meaningful things is to eliminate less meaningful things. This is an obvious lesson, but one that is hard to follow when we are in the moment. This has prompted me to review of my daily routine and try to take action to free up time.
My philosophy has for a long time been to do the important things first in a day. These things include reading about research, preparing or thinking about my teaching, writing as well as learning Spanish. Why do I not apply the same rule to walks and runs? I realized that the reason is that there are too many important things. If I examine these things carefully, there is hardly anything that I want or can eliminate.
Hence, I do not seem to have an answer on how to find more time for things that I truly enjoy. I suspect that the same is true for many other people. Being busy seems to be a reality in today’s world, even when we diminish our tasks to those that are really essential and important for us. What we can do at least is to try to enjoy being busy.
It reminds me of a song from when I was young (see the lyrics in German and the English translation at the end of the post). I think the song hits the nail on his head. While we are busy, we should not focus on all the tasks that are ahead. We should be busy in the moment and try to derive joy from doing our tasks.
What helps is to find ways to make our tasks more enjoyable. In addition, it is good to find things that we look forward to later in the day. But no matter how busy we are, we should always try to make time for the things that truly bring us joy, because our lives are not infinite.
There is a second reason that I cling onto life – feeling attached to my precious possessions, which I want to continue to enjoy. The most important among them is my record collection.
At the beginning of this year, I got rid of most of my unnecessary belongings and things that I do not enjoy. This has simplified my life and made me enjoy my living spaces and the belongings that I did keep more. However, it did not eliminate my desire for material things (although I no longer buy new things without getting rid of equivalent things at the same time).
What is more, adopting a more minimalistic lifestyle did not help me to reduce my attachment to those material possessions that mean a lot to me. I feel that this attachment is unhealthy and limits me in achieving happiness and freedom to pursue the things that truly make me happy. It also makes me cling onto life.
How to free myself from the power of my possessions?
One useful approach that I came across (on the internet) is to adopt a stoic mindset instead of an attached mindset.
An example given on the website is this:
Considering a House
ATTACHED MIND: I love my home. The theme in each room is unique, and the decoration is jaw-dropping.
STOIC MIND: I am fond of a concrete building, filled with different materials, but mostly consisting of empty space.
This approach could be applied to anything that we are getting too attached to. Jeans are fabric sewn together to cover our legs. Records are round pieces of plastic in printed cardboard sleeves that can be played to produce music and that seem worth more than they actually are.
A concept that I find more helpful is that possessions are an extension of ourselves. When we value possessions, they actually become part of our identity. As such feel, we feel that by losing our possessions we also lose our identity.
Hence, it would be important to detach our possessions from ourselves. For instance, I like Doc Martens, partly for the design and partly by what they stand for (a cool image?). But that does not mean I need to prove that I like the shoe brand by constantly wearing it. In fact, even if all my Doc Martens shoes or boots were gone, it would not change the fact that I like the brand.
I could apply the same to records. I like beautiful record designs and I find collecting records a great hobby because it truly gives me joy. But the records are not part of me. They are there for the moment to enjoy. The focus is on enjoying them now, not at some point in the future. If I lose them, it does not change the person I am. I am still someone who has always enjoyed beautiful records and who has enjoyed them while they were in my possession. If I no longer have them, I will find other things that bring me joy.
Ganz Einfach (bei Gerhard Schöne)
Ein Mann fahrt zu ‘nem Blitzbesuch
Zu seinem Vater aus das Dorf
Der Alte futtert grade Katzen
Der Mann sagt “Tag! Ich bleib’ nicht lang
Hab eigentlich gar keine Zeit
Ich weiss nicht mehr, wo mir der Kopf steht!
Ich hetz mich ab und schaffe nichts
Ich bin nur noch ein Nervenwrack
Woher nimmst du nur deine Ruhe?”
Der Alte kratzt sein linkes Ohr
Und sagt: “Mein Lieber, hor gut hin
Ich mach es so, es ist ganz einfach:
Wenn ich schlafe, schlafe ich
Wenn ich aufsteh’, steh’ ich auf
Wenn ich gehe, gehe ich
Wenn ich esse, ess’ ich
Wenn ich schaffe, schaffe ich
Wenn ich plane, plane ich
Wenn ich spreche, spreche ich
Wenn ich höre, hör’ ich.”
Der Mann sagt: “Was soll dieser Quatsch?
Das alles mache ich auch
Und trotzdem find’ ich keine Ruhe.”
Der Alte kratzt sein linkes Ohr
Und sagt: “Mein Lieber, hör’ gut hin
Du machst es alles etwas anders:
Wenn du schläfst, stehst du schon auf
Wenn du aufstehst, gehst du schon
Wenn du gehst, isst du schon
Wenn du isst, dann schaffst du
Wenn du schaffst, dann planst du schon
Wenn du planst, dann sprichst du schon
Wenn du sprichst, dann hörst du schon
Wenn du hörst, dann schläfst du”
Quite Simple (by Gerhard Schöne)
A man goes on a quick visit
To his father from the village
The old man is feeding his cats
The son says “Hello, I won’t stay long
I don’t actually have any time
I don’t know where my head is anymore!
I rush around and don’t get anything done
I’m just a nervous wreck
Where do you get your peace from?”
The old man scratches his left ear
And says: “My dear, listen carefully
I do it like this, it is very simple:
When I sleep, I sleep
When I get up, I get up
When I go, I go
When I eat, I eat
When I work, I work
When I plan, I plan
When I speak, I speak
When I hear, I hear.”
The man says: “What is this nonsense?
I do all of that too
And yet I can’t find peace.”
The old man scratches his left ear And says:
“My dear, listen carefully
You do everything a little differently
When you sleep, you get up
When you get up, you’re already leaving
When you leave, you already eat
When you eat, you work
When you work, you are already planning
When you plan, you already speak
When you speak, you already hear
When you hear, then you are sleeping”
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 13 – 19 NOVEMBER 2023
Walking in Kent Ridge Park
This week I took my usual walk through Kent Ridge Park, and I was truck by how beautiful the landscape is. I think it was partly due to the weather, because it was not sunny and not too hot, so I could focus more on my surroundings. It goes to show that even when going for the same walk, the experience can be very different each time and there are always new things to discover.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 6 – 12 NOVEMBER 2023
Running
This Saturday I participated in Parkrun at West Coast Park. I did pretty well (for my standards), finishing the 5km in 20:49 min. And it was a great start to the day to complete the run and afterwards sit by the ocean to relax.
I met a couple of fellow runners and this made me realize something that I have not noted consciously in the past. Running is a hobby that connects. In some ways many hobbies connect because they are something that we have in common with others. But running is a bit different.
What is so special about running? I feel that running is not just a hobby that one has. It is an experience that requires discipline and willingness to endure tiredness and pain, for the purpose of completing a goal. People who submit to this challenge voluntarily are a certain type of people.
Hence, I find that other runners do not only have a common hobby, they also tend to have a character that I can identify with. In fact, I cannot remember ever having met a runner with whom I could not get along well. In fact, it is often even possible to guess whether someone is a runner based on their character!
Parkrun also lets one list the race performance adjusted by age, which is great, especially for older runners like myself.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 30 OCTOBER – 5 NOVEMBER 2023
Staff Running Training
Last week we almost had to cancel our training because of heavy rain. Yet, I took my chances and did not cancel the session. Luckily, the rain stopped 15 minutes after we were supposed to start. Despite the rain, there were still eleven runners who turned up for the training, and I felt amazed about about the sheer enthusiasm that our runners exhibit!
It also made me reflect about the beginnings some five years ago, when we started out with frequently only a couple of runners, about how we gradually grew and then had to start anew after Covid. Despite apparently little interest in the beginning, I kept showing up for the training sessions, and gradually the crowd grew. It goes to show how perseverance, patience and consistency can produce results.
When I started out I knew very little about running and had zero experience in leading training sessions. Trying to come up with workouts that are fun and effective on a weekly basis and continuously trying to educate myself about running has gradually made me more experienced and knowledgeable. It has even led to runners asking me for advice now, which sometimes feels a bit surreal.
This week it rained again before the training session and I decided to cancel the training. My analysis of the weather forecast suggested that the rain would continue. Since we were going to run around campus, I was also concerned that the ground on the slopes would be too slippery. However, just after I canceled the training, the rain stopped.
As a result of my decision, I felt really bad, even though I could not have known. However, I could have taken some precautions. For instance, I could have had a back-up plan. I also did not have to cancel the training, but could have gone to the stadium and then decide based on the actual weather situation.
After the canceled session, I spent some time thinking about what I could do going forward. I decided that from now on I will no longer cancel training sessions if it is raining or it looks like it might rain. I will show up regardless and leave it to each runner to decide if they want to take the risk and turn up for the session.
To add on to this, I realized subsequently that this was a good decision. On the day of our training session during the following week I felt very relaxed. I did not worry about the weather because I knew I would not have to make a decision about whether to cancel the training!
Our super enthusiastic NUS staff runners!
This week I also participated in the 10 km POSB Passion Run at Marina Bay. It turned out to be a great race and I felt really happy to realize that I can still achieve my pre-Covid timings. It was a good encouragement to train for more races next year!
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 23 – 29 OCTOBER 2023
Watching “Blue Jean” and “The Monster”
Last week I wrote about the difference between the individualistic versus the collective approach towards obstacles we face in life (or in Starbucks). Western individualists tend to try to change their environment, while Eastern collectivists tend to accept their environment and adjust to it. Adopting a collectivist mindset has the potential to bring greater happiness. But it is not easy to achieve, at least for me.
This week I watched “Blue Jean”, a movie that reminded me of the progress that can be made by not adapting to external circumstances, but challenging expected norms. “Blue Jean” was the opening movie of the Singapore Golden Village Love & Pride Film Festival 2023. It was set in late 1980s England, when Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government was about to sign legislation called section 28 to marginalize and suppress the gay and lesbian community.
Section 28 was a series of laws that intended to prohibit the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities, including schools. The law came into effect in 1988 and stated that local authorities should not “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. It took until 2000 to repeal the law in Scotland and until 2003 to do so in England and Wales.
The consequences of the law were plain to see in the movie. Jean, a lesbian school teacher, had to pretend being straight to maintain her job. She had to face office chat and gossip making derogatory comments about homosexuality without being able to object. When a lesbian student had a fight with a fellow student and nobody believed or even listened to her side of the story, Jean felt there was nothing she could do to help the student. The girl was eventually expelled from the school.
It took Jean until the end of the movie to become courageous enough to stop hiding her identity. In the most memorable scene (for me), Jean attended an extended family party and was asked about her plans to re-marry after having divorced her ex-husband. She responded by declaring that she is actually lesbian, making everyone around her become embarrassed and speechless. She quickly left after this and sat down on a bench where she burst out in laughter, which turned into tears.
One could of course argue that, thanks to many activists not accepting the inequality and injustice they had to experience on a daily basis, we have come a long way from how things used to be. However, the movie I watched this week was a reminder that the greatest difficulty is not to change legislation, but to change people’s mindsets.
The second movie was called “The Monster” and was directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu, who also directed “Shoplifters”, a movie I hugely enjoyed. Both movies feature the same amazing main actress Sakura Ando.
It was the story of two Japanese boys who spent most of their time after school playing together in an old abandoned bus in a forest. One of the boys felt that there was something wrong with this close friendship. Hence, in front of others he pretended to be indifferent to his friend and even participated in bullying him. Due to all the judgement and prejudice that he experienced, he considered himself a monster for having feelings towards another boy.
Although it was a touching topic, much of the storyline was confusing (at least to me). Nonetheless, in the end I felt happy because there was an optimistic ending that showed that happiness is possible for everyone. It was a reminder that everyone has a right to be happy, and that we all can play our part by accepting that not everyone is like us.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 16 – 22 OCTOBER 2023
Moving chairs in Starbucks
I am often amazed that many Singapore locals can ignore when people near them do annoying things. My threshold for wanting to take action and voicing out my frustration seems to be much lower (although more recently I have learned to suppress my inherent drive to express my dissatisfaction). Related to this, I read a very interesting study about moving chairs in Starbucks this week.
The study provides evidence that there are important cultural differences in terms of adjusting ourselves to the environment versus changing the environment to fit ourselves. As such, the study helped me to understand why locals may behave in the way they do.
The study, published in the Journal Science Advances, compared people between Northern and Southern China in terms of their behavior in public spaces (Starbucks and other coffee shops) in relation to their traditional work cultures.
People in Southern China have traditionally been growing rice, which is a very communal activity. According to the authors, growing rice involves “irrigation systems that multiple families have to coordinate … [and also requires] about twice as many man hours as crops, such as wheat, which led many rice cultures to form customs of exchanging labor”.
In contrast, people in Northern China have commonly been growing wheat, where collaboration and sharing of labor is less common. The researchers thus hypothesized that these cultural differences between the people from the North and South of China would affect their behavior.
Specifically, the authors asked the question if the differences in their work relationships would make people in the North more similar to individualistic Western cultures, with characteristics such as analytical thinking, strong importance of the self and a smaller distinction between friends and strangers, and make people in the South display more characteristics of interdependent cultures. The prototype example for an interdependent culture is Japan. Prominent features of an interdependent culture include holistic thought, low importance of the self and a strong distinction between friends and strangers.
The researchers examined this question in two studies. In their first study, they simply counted how many people were sitting either alone or with other people at Starbucks or other coffee shops.
The second study was based on the argument that “when people run into a problem, individualists are more likely to try to change the situation, and collectivists are more likely to change the self to fit the situation”. Hence, the authors “created a real life problem” by moving chairs to block aisles in coffee shops and observing how many people either squeezed through the blocking chairs or moved them out of the way.
The authors highlighted a number of important points about their study. Firstly, the study examined the behavior of subjects in a real life situation outside the laboratory. Secondly, the study did not depend on self-reporting by study participants. Finally, the subjects were people from the North versus South of China, who were ethnically identical or related. This is different from the more common approach to compare people from Western versus Eastern cultures.
What were the results?
As hypothesized by the authors, people from the North, who come from a wheat growing population, were more likely to sit alone on both weekdays (left) and weekends (right).
The yellow lines represent the average of the wheat region and the green lines the average of the rice region.
Even more amazingly, people from wheat areas were about three times more likely to move the chair than people in rice areas.
Researchers also made an international comparison using a smaller size sample by comparing the percentage of people moving chairs in China with that in Japan and the United States. The percentage in China (8.0%) and Japan (8.5%) were similar. In contrast, the percentage in the US was more than twofold higher (20.4%).
It is interesting to note that the study focussed on middle-class customers of Starbucks and other coffee shops in major cities. These patrons were unlikely to have experienced the different agricultural practices themselves. This hence illustrates that the observed effects are cultural and have persisted despite a changing environment.
In this regard, it is also interesting that people in Hong Kong, which due to its recent history is much more affluent and “westernized” than the cities in mainland China, followed the same trend as the other Southern Chinese cities. In other words, people from Hong Kong were equally likely to adapt to the environment as people from other cities with a rice growing history. Thus, cultural behavior pattern do not seem to change very easily and often persist even when the environment is changing.
Which approach is better? The approach of individualists to gain control over their environment, or the approach of collectivists such as the Japanese people, who as the authors put it “see maturity as the ability to gain control over the inner world of the self”?
I suppose it depends. If we value our piece of mind and happiness, adapting to our environment is definitely the more effective approach. But it can also be a difficult approach, especially for someone like me who is certainly not coming from a rice growing, collectivist background.
On the other hand, establishing social norms is dependent on some people enforcing them. Or to put it more bluntly, if nobody complains then nobody will change their behavior. More importantly, progress is dependent on changing our environment, on people who are dissatisfied with certain conditions and are trying to bring about change.
Does this then mean that people who are agents of change or even revolutionaries are less happy than people who just accept the way things are. Perhaps not, as there are multiple elements to being happy and change agents may just acquire their happiness via different ways, for instance from the results they achieve. As such, it is important to focus our energy to bring about change for causes more important than moving chairs in Starbucks.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 9 – 15 OCTOBER 2023
Air Mata Di Ujung Sajadah
To motivate myself to be productive during the day, I sometimes try to book a movie for the evening. This approach is usually very effective in preventing procrastination and even making me enjoy my work more.
One problem with this approach is that it is often difficult to find a movie that I actually WANT to watch. Even the local “alternative” Projector cinema nowadays shows a lot of Blockbuster movies or films that I have already watched.
For lack of other choices and due to some good past experience, I went to see the Indonesian movie “Air Mata Di Ujung Sajadah” (“Tears on the edge of the prayer mat”) this week.
It is the story of a young woman from a rich family who fell in love with and got married to a man from a poor family. Before their first son was born, the man had a fatal motorcycle accident. When the young woman finally gave birth, her mother deceived her daughter by pretending that the baby had died and giving the baby away, so that her daughter could have the future that she had envisioned for her. When years later the daughter eventually found out that her boy was actually alive, she fought to get her son back. And the fight between her and the adoptive parents for the son was what the movie was mainly about.
The movie seemed similar to what I imagine many dramas to be like – a predictable, yet highly unlikely plot that makes us impatient for the inevitable happy. It reminded me of the only Korean drama series I ever watched (The Vineyard Man), which put an end to my interest in this genre.
What makes many people watch these movies? I suppose that being transformed into an unreal world and seeing the good prevail makes us feel good. However, it does not make ourselves a better person, or make us think about the person we are.
The type of movies that do achieve this are those where we can relate to the character, where the problems the character faces resonate with us. This was for instance true for The Breaking Ice, my favorite movie this year so far.
Another type of movie that can touch us are those that feature characters that inspire us. Some of my favorite movies fall into the category. And every time I re-watch them I feel inspired anew.
This raises the question of why there are so few of such movies shown in cinemas. Most shows seem to be blockbuster action or horror movies or comedies. Perhaps movies that resonate with people are more difficult to make (?).
More likely there is not such a great demand for realistic movies. Most people probably want to escape reality when they go to the movies. But as Lauryn Hill said in her amazing unplugged MTV live show, “Fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need.”
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 2 – 8 OCTOBER 2023
Dopamine
As discussed in my post from two weeks ago, as of late there has been a decline in my daily happiness scores.
I have not felt unhappy, and there have been things that I have enjoyed, such as listening to music or writing. However, I have not felt the “high’s”in the same way that I used to when I go for walks, when I sit outside to relax or when I go out for movies, to eat or to exercise. It seems surprising that doing the same activity can cause such different results.
This prompted me to do some reading up on what determines our baseline happiness and our happiness peaks. And I learned that the two are actually closely connected. And it all has to do with our baseline and peak dopamine levels.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, or a messenger molecule that helps brain cells to communicate with each other. Dopamine plays an important role in promoting reward-related behavior. Dopamine release signals to the brain that we perceive an activity as pleasurable.
There are two main brain areas that produce dopamine. The first is the substantia nigra, and dopamine released from this brain region helps us to initiate movements and speech. Death of the dopamine producing nerve cells in the substantia nigra is what causes Parkinson’s disease.
The second area in the brain that produces and releases dopamine is the ventral tegmental area, which like the substantia nigra is located in the midbrain or mesencephalon (located below the cortex and the thalamus and hypothalamus that make up the diencephalon.
Dopamine released from the ventral tegmental area sends dopamine into the brain when we find an activity pleasurable or expect or receive a reward. This signal incentives us to repeat or continue the pleasurable or rewarding activity. On the contrary, low release of dopamine from the ventral tegmental area make us less motivated and excited about things.
Dopamine release can be stimulated by a wide range of experiences, such as eating, winning video games, listening to music, reading funny cartoons or even getting revenge. The dopamine system is also strongly activated when taking addictive drugs such as opiates, cocaine and alcohol. These drugs can induce even stronger activation than natural rewards.
What is important to realize is that an overstimulation of the dopaminergic neurons to release dopamine leads to a depletion of our baseline dopamine. Such a drop in the baseline dopamine level results in a lack of enjoyment and motivation and will feel like burnout.
The best example for this phenomenon is drug addiction, where drug use leads to a massive dopamine release response, depleting the remaining dopamine levels in the dopaminergic neurons. Hence, under baseline conditions when not taking drugs, drug addicts are unable to derive pleasure and reward from other activities and thus lose interest in anything unrelated to drugs. The only way to feel better is to take more drugs, to release the remaining dopamine and get a new “high”. However, due to lower baseline dopamine levels and drug tolerance, the pleasure and reward effect of taking drugs gets less with repeated use and the addict needs more and more drugs to even maintain a normal dopamine state.
Addictive drugs affect dopamine release in different ways. For example, cocaine binds to and inhibits the dopamine transporter, which normally functions to recycle released dopamine by transporting it back into the nerve endings or the dopaminergic neurons.
Opiates such as morphine and heroin normally bind to opiate receptors to inhibit the function of pain-receptive neurons (hence their use in treating severe chronic pain). But opiates also bind to opiate receptors on dopamine-containing neurons of the ventral tegmental area, activating these neurons and causing massive dopamine release.
Chronic morphine or heroin use leads to drug tolerance. Opiate receptors are G protein coupled receptors, which means they bind to heterotrimeric guanosine triphosphate (=G) proteins on the cytoplasmic side of the plasma membrane. Upon morphine of heroin ligand binding, the opiate receptor activates the heterotrimeric G protein by promoting binding of GTP. As a consequence,the heterotrimeric G protein dissociates and intracellular signaling pathways are initiated that mediate the effects of the opiates.
Repeated use of morphine of heroin results in intracellular signaling events such as phosphorylation of opiate receptors and binding of inhibitory (arrestin) proteins to opiate receptors. This leads to de-coupling between morphine binding to the receptor and the intracellular response. As a result, the effects of morphine and heroin are reduced. Therefore, to trigger an effective response to the drugs higher doses of opioids are required.
Repeated cocaine usage also induces tolerance. Although the exact molecular mechanisms are still unknown, it has been reported that cocaine drug tolerance is associated with formation of dopamine transporter oligomer complexes.
Apart from opioids and cocaine, the more widely used amphetamines also stimulate dopamine release in the ventral segmental area of the brain and can cause drug tolerance after several weeks of regular drug use. Amphetamines are transported into dopaminergic neurons via the dopamine receptor and as such competitively inhibit dopamine reuptake, thus elevating extracellular dopamine concentrations. In addition, Amphetamines also cause dopamine release through dopamine transporter-mediated reverse transport of dopamine.
Interestingly, dopamine levels have also been suggested to play an important role in bipolar, or manic-depressive disorder, in which patients alternate between emotional highs (manic episodes) and emotional lows (depressive states).
According to the dopamine hypothesis of bipolar disorder, mania is characterized by a state of hyperdopaminergia due to elevated dopamine receptor availability, leading to an exaggerated reward sensation. In contrast, during the depressive phase the extracellular dopamine levels are decreased as a result of increased dopamine transporter levels. As such, bipolar disease can be characterized as alternating states of dopamine overstimulation and severe dopamine depletion.
Similar to dopamine spikes elicited by drugs and manic episodes in bipolar disorder, things that we engage in daily to obtain rewards (eating delicious food, playing phone games, watching dramas, shopping) can result in excessive dopamine release and subsequent dopamine depletion and tolerance (where after a while the activity no longer elicits great pleasure but we are compelled to do it to achieve some level of satisfaction).
After reading various comments about the topic online, I can see that in order to maintain a good dopamine base level I should limit phone time, video games, tv and movies, fast food, sugar, texting, checking social media, and watching YouTube videos, and replace those activities with walking, reading, meditating, and working out.
However, I do not actually do the things that I am not supposed to do, and I do walk, read and work out on an almost daily basis (although I don’t meditate …). Yet, my baseline dopamine levels seem to be low sometimes.
One important clue to explain this comes from the observation that the dopaminergic ventral tegmental area does not only mediate the processing of natural and artificial rewards. It also acts as a learning signal for direct our behavior in response to aversive stimuli.
It has indeed been reported that stress can negatively affect the dopaminergic system (first ref) and that single stress exposures can cause long-lasting changes in dopamine function, including reduced response to future stimulation, similar to the effects of drugs of abuse (Holly and Miczek, 2016). What is more, chronic and unpredictable stress has been found to exert inhibitory effects on dopamine release.
A pertinent example is minority stress, where a person that is perceived as different, or perceives herself or himself as different, is constantly feeling anxious and apprehensive. As such, it seems not surprising that chronic stress leads to a more depressed mood.
The important question then becomes how do we eliminate or reduce our daily stress levels. One obvious approach is to commit to doing less (if possible – it is almost always possible, although we initially think it is not). The other approach is to change one’s mindset. In particular, I have found that one great way to diffuse perceived stress is to visualize the tasks that lie ahead of us in a day. This can often make us realize that there is nothing to be stressed about and even change our anxiety into a positive anticipation.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 25 SEPTEMBER – 1 OCTOBER 2023
My KL running experience
We, me and two friends from our staff running group, went to Kuala Lumpur this weekend to participate in the Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon (we only did the half marathon distance). It was my first time in KL, and I realized that I should have gone much earlier.
Apart from so many high rise buildings and different traffic “rules”, what I was most surprised by was by how friendly all people were. Whether in the taxi, in restaurants and food courts or on the street, people are friendly, helpful and not rushed. It went to show that there are better ways of going through the day than rushing, minimizing contact with others and always having a serious attitude.
The race itself was amazing, too. It was one of the best organized races I have ever participated in, from the race pack collection to the frictionless assembly in the start pen areas to the posting of race result details. The race itself was amazing, too – a good course where we actually got to see KL (only the last part was on a highway), perfectly situated water points, no cars in sight anywhere near, zero risk to get lost and correct measurement and indication of the distances.
What was very unexpected was the number of slopes. Especially during the second half of the race the route consisted of constant up- and down-slopes. Hence, I was very happy when I reached the finish line. With 1:46:29 I did not get very near my target. But I did not mind because the race was a great experience, both in terms of experiencing it and gaining experience through it.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 18 – 24 SEPTEMBER 2023
Why do I still get angry easily?
One of the things I have been struggling with for most of my adult life is getting angry and resentful. However, things have certainly improved. For example, I no longer get angry if my students make mistakes. The main reason for this is probably a change in my mindset.
For instance, I have adopted the attitude that the main purpose of the students’ research is to learn and that the projects they are doing are theirs and not mine. Thus, I try not to have expectations that what they do will work out. Even if it does not, they still learn. I of course do hope that they succeed and I do my best to help them. But importantly, I do it for them, not for my own success.
There are also many other practical measures I have taken to avoid being angry. For instance, when dealing with disturbances to my ability to concentrate I try to move to a different place where I can work peacefully. Alternatively, I wear my soundproof headphones.
I still do get angry, and this usually happens when I have to do tasks that I view as meaningless. I also get angry with strangers who are inconsiderate. However, I rarely express my anger.
Another reason that often prompts feeling of resentment is seeing others waste their time doing meaningless things. I am not really sure why this bothers me. I think it may be frustration that there are few people who voluntarily do meaningful things. Most people tend to spend a large part of their time doing things they are being asked to and that are ultimately a waste of time. Or worse, they spend their time consuming content that has no actual value.
I guess at my age I am longing for the good old times, where people did not have that many options to waste time, where they walked actually noticing their surroundings and read newspapers and books instead of watching movies or playing games on their phones. In the good old times people still read easy entertainment magazines and books. But nonetheless, this is different from consuming dramas on mobile phones in easily digestible episodes or playing meaningless games. Reading still requires some mental engagement, the act of actually reading and imagining a world based on abstract words and sentences.
Based on my recollections, in those times people not only engaged in more person-to-person conversations, they also talked more about real issues. I remember how when I was small our family dinner conversations usually evolved around problems my parents experienced at their workplace or me and my sister encountered at school. Our conversations with my grand-parents were often political, often involving heated arguments…
But even if things nowadays are different from how I want them to be, that should not be a reason for feeling angry. Nonetheless, I have noticed that recently I have been feeling angry more frequently, often for very small reasons (like when at Starbucks someone in the queue just in front of me ordered the last two vegetarian dishes). These feelings of anger have often affected how I enjoy my day and do my work. A look at my happiness scores confirms that there has been a drop over the past weeks and months. And this has happened despite having exciting plans for the future, doing meaningful things on a daily basis and not experiencing major failures.
Upon some reflection I feel that it is unlikely that the anger causes my drop in overall happiness, but more likely the reverse. It is my overall happiness that determines how I process unpleasant situations, whether I tolerate them or become angry.
To highlight the importance of context, we can consider a simple example. If we imagine that we are in love with someone and have just discovered that the other person is also in love with us, we would probably feel very happy. If in this situation something unpleasant or upsetting happens it will probably affects us very little. If on the other hand we are already dreading to go to work and have nothing to look forward to after work, anything that goes wrong is much more likely to trigger anger and resentment.
Hence, rather than trying to eliminate outbursts of anger, it may be more effective to work on being happier overall. But how?
Based on my own experience, the first prerequisite is sleep. On days when I feel constantly sleepy, it is very difficult to enjoy my day and feel happy.
However, my sleep duration has actually improved over the past months.
Hence, there must be other factors. One such factor could be stress. While there may be a lot of stress coping approaches, the best way to reduce stress is probably to eliminate tasks that do cause stress, especially those that lack purpose and meaning for ourselevs and/or others. Sometimes it could even mean putting off things that are meaningful, but that could wait until later. I have recently started to do precisely this and set priorities for things that I really want to do now.
It is also a good idea to observe when we do feel happy. For instance, two Sundays ago I felt happy because I completed a good long run, ending with a swim and followed by a fun long bus ride and dinner. This shows that i have to try to create my happy moments, despite often feeling too lazy to do so.
When I feel happy, I tend to look forward to doing other fun things: listening to music, going out for dinner, going to watch movies. The process of feeling good is self-perpetuating. Feeling good makes us want to do more things that make us feel good.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 11 – 17 SEPTEMBER 2023
The Breaking Ice
This week I watched Anthony Chen’s amazing new movie “The Breaking Ice”, for the second time. It took watching two times to fully discover the depth of this film (and to learn that despite the normal length of the movie, I do need to bring a jumper if I want to truly enjoy a movie and not think about feeling cold constantly).
This movie deals with an important question, what is the meaning of life? In the movie, three characters meet that lead totally different lives. Yet, none of them seems to live a truly happy life.
There is the successful University graduate Haofeng, who works in finance in Shanghai. He left home to escape a life with his parents that was focussed on studying and achieving. But he found out after leaving for the big city that things were the same, study, work, earn money, work more. This led him to retreat into a state of resignation. In the movie he repeatedly contemplates suicide.
Then there is Nana, a young woman who had quit a promising iceskating career (I was not quite sure whether it was due to an injury she had inflicted on her ankle or due to “willfulness”, as she stated when being asked by Haofeng). She works as a travel tour guide away from her family in the north of China. When asked by Haofeng whether she likes her work she replied ‘Does it matter if I like it or not, I still have to do it.’ But it is very clear that she does not like it and that she lives a life of not being fulfilled by her work and trying to make up for it through indulging in her off time in partying and drinking.
Finally there is Xiao, an easy-going cook who takes it “easy” most of his time. He does not seem to get affected by the constant noisy phone gaming by his younger brother, by Nana getting angry with him or even by seeing Haofeng intrude into his relationship with Nana. He thus appears to have the amazing ability to focus on positive things in his life.
Of the three young people, it appears that Xiao is the happiest. But when eventually he decides to leave home on his motorcycle to see the world, it becomes clear that there is more to happiness than looking at our lives in a positive light. There are probably at least two additional important ingredients, feeling a meaning to one’s life and having something to look forward to on a daily basis. The latter could take many forms, such as a vision we want to achieve, or exciting things that we anticipate.
When Haofeng expressed his disillusionment with seeing different places that are all the same, Xiao responds by saying that perhaps Haofeng just went to the wrong places. When hope and believe dies, happiness does, too. If we do not know which places to go to, we have to search for them.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 4 – 10 SEPTEMBER 2023
Student feedback Part 6
Here is my final reflection on my student feedback from the past semester Cell Biology course. In my last reflection, I discussed that when deciding on contentious matters and measures, I often survey the students for their preference and make decisions based on the majority vote.
One decision that I have previously left to the students is whether to grade the midterm test or give merely participation marks for completing it. The latter option was based on my reasoning that my main objective for holding a midterm test is for students to become familiar with the test format I use. To my surprise, the majority of students preferred that the midterm test is graded.
There may be various reasons for this preference. Students may feel that preparing for a test where only participation marks are awarded is a wasted effort, or they may disfavor the consequence of having a final exam with a higher weighting. What the example illustrates is that it is often a good idea to consult the students about their preferences and priorities, provided we are able to accommodate the options between which we let students choose.
Nonetheless, to reduce the stress associated with the mid-term test, it has been my practice over the past few years to give the students a chance to improve their midterm test result. Thus, if students score higher in the final exam compared to the midterm test, I will count their final exam percentage for the midterm test. If they do not improve, I will count the original midterm test result. The main intention behind this approach is to encourage students and keep them motivated even if they do badly during the midterm test. Knowing that they can make up for their poor performance is likely going to make students more enthusiastic to overcome their deficits.
Of note, only one student expressed in the feedback that he or she did not favor the arrangement. This is encouraging and suggests that even students who did well in the midterm test did not overly worry that others might catch up to them.
One criticism that has been brought up by students is that the approach might discourage students from putting in effort into the midterm test. Although this might be true for some students, there is still a clear incentive to do well, as students cannot predict how they will fare in the final. Hence, considering the lack of negative feedback, the approach to give students a second chance appears to be a good way to keep students motivated. I am surprised that not more faculty use this approach. (In fact, I have never heard of any lecturer who implements a similar grading policy in our University.)
Among the other comments, I was especially interested in comments related to sporadic discussions of “life lessons” (for instance avoiding procrastinations, how to solicit reference letters, how to make the most out of University time, how to live a happy life).
Five students did not enjoy them. Some students referred to my sharings as discussing personal beliefs and making complaints. Students also mentioned that I sacrificed valuable lecture time, and as a result could not complete the syllabus.
In regard to the last comment, it is worth mentioning that we can never “finish” any syllabus, because there is always much more to discuss if there is more time. What is included in the syllabus of a module is more or less arbitrary based on the preference of the lecturer(s). The main consequence of spending more time to teach is that students will have to master more materials in the assessment, which may not be in the interest of all students.
I do believe that life lessons are important if we want to provide a holistic eduction for students that prepares them for life. Encouragingly, 17 students agreed with this in the student feedback comments, and many more expressed similar sentiments in their reflection videos.
In the future, it may be good to emphasise that I am expressing my personal opinions and that my main purpose is not to give advice, but to prompt students to spend time thinking about aspects of their studies and life not related to mastering course contents.
There were also two comments in which students suggested that I should try to be more consistent in my quiz questions. What the students were concerned about was that I sometimes want students to come up with an obvious answer (i.e think at the “surface level”, as one student put it), whereas at other times I expect them to think deeper and consider alternative explanations. As a result, students are unsure what level of analysis and thinking is required to get the right answer. This is a good point that I have not previously considered.
What the students are referring to is that there are some questions where I want to know the obvious answer whereas in other questions the apparently obvious answer is actually wrong. It is indeed difficult for students to know which kind of question they are dealing with. To address this in my next course, I plan to indicate to the students whether the correct answer is straight forward or requires more in depth reasoning.
Finally, a couple of students pointed out that little help was offered to weaker students, an assessment that I do agree with. While the main onus is on the student to catch up on missing background and lack of understanding of the discussed concepts, some assistance on my side would be desirable.
One plan I have for the next round of the course is to give a brief diagnostic pretest before the beginning of the semester. The test will cover knowledge and concepts that I expect students to know going into the module. This would help students to decide whether they are “ready” for the course or whether they may want to take it at a later point. If the students do decide to continue with the course, it will give them an idea about what they need to focus on in order to fill any gaps and catch up with the rest if the class. Knowing where one’s deficits are is vital in order to improve.
Beyond this pre-test, there may not be much I can do. In theory, I could offer zoom tutorial sessions for students who lack background knowledge. One downside of this approach is that it requires more time on my part. More importantly, when I conducted Questions & Answer sessions in the past, student attendance was zero or close to zero at the beginning of the semester and only went up slightly nearer the midterm test or final exam. This suggests that students have more important priorities than these optional sessions.
Another reason why students may be unlikely to attend “catch-up” sessions is because they do not want to “admit” (to me or to themselves) that they are not well-prepared. One potential options would be to employ student teaching assistants (i.e. undergraduate students who have previously taken the course). Our University in fact offers funds for such activities. I will consider this approach during the next round of the module.
What the last two points about the consistency of my quiz questions and the lack of help for weaker students illustrate is how valuable student feedback can be, provided we as lecturers (or human beings) consider the student comments carefully and take the time to reflect on how we can make use of these comments to improve our teaching.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 28 AUGUST – 3 SEPTEMBER 2023
This week my post for the NUS Teaching Connections blog was published. It can be found here.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 20 – 27 AUGUST 2023
My first class
The past weekend has been stressful, mainly because I worried a lot about the first class in my postgraduate course. I tried to tell myself that irrespective of the outcome, it will be a learning opportunity for me and the students. However, this did not help to dissipate my anxiety.
Part of the reason for being overly worried is likely my obsession to validate myself with achievements. Although I try to adopt a different mindset, this is sometimes difficult, especially if the stakes are high. And the fact is that the first class in a course does matter, both objectively and subjectively.
It matters objectively because the students’ opinion, expectation, commitment, participation and even continuous enrollment is to a large extent determined by their impression during the first class. The first class also matters subjectively because it greatly affects my confidence and enthusiasm to teach the course.
In the end the class went well. After the class all the stress evaporated magically and I started to look forward to the rest of the course as well as the other things happening in my life.
This goes to show that achievements that I am working towards can really be a reward and a source of happiness. Nonetheless, this came at the price of feeling stressed and not really enjoying the time leading up to the class.
Hence, an important question is how can I feel less stressed and anxious about difficult tasks such as teaching my first class?
Part of the stress I experienced resulted from planning to try out new things. I realized that it is probably better to only do established things that I know work well in the first class and leave trying new things for later in the course. In fact, next time around I may change the timetable to start with a “safer” topic.
Some goals we want to pursue are difficult. We could either give them up or find ways that make pursuing them easier. A case in point is my running training, in which I have been trying to run longer distances. The prospect of having to go out and run for a long time led me to procrastinate a lot. One approach that worked for a while was to schedule things for after my running. For instance, a couple of times I bought tickets for movies I was interested in watching. However, I eventually could not find any movies I wanted to see. I then decided to move my running training to earlier in the afternoon when it is still light outside and I actually enjoy being outdoors, which has worked well so far (except on days when I am too busy…).
It goes to show that for any problem there is a solution. We only must try to find it.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 14 – 20 AUGUST 2023
This week marked the beginning of a new semester, which is exciting for a number of reasons, including that teaching finally resumes and that we have three new and amazing undergraduate students in the lab!
Our three new UROPS students Hong Xi, Wayne and Amos
What is especially amazing about all three students is that they are truly excited about doing research. In fact, despite my assurances that it is up to them how much lab work they want to do, they are in the lab every day. They remind me of when I used to be a student and spend most of my time working in labs (including on weekends staying overnight in one of the labs, which amazingly had a guest room). Nowadays, seeing such eager students seems less common, given that students have a lot of choices and opportunities to do meaningful things during their studies. That said, all three of them still do exciting things outside studying and lab work (such as playing in an orchestra, running and volunteering!).
All three students are all also very unique in their own ways. Wayne is an inspiring and energetic student with infectious enthusiasm. He also plays a most unusual instrument, the tuba. Before the start of the semester, I attended a concert where he played with his Junior College wind orchestra. I must admit that I was surprised by the high standard of the orchestra and by how amazing a wind orchestra can sound. I am looking forward to one day attend a performance by the NUS wind orchestra, in which he also plays.
Then there is Hong Xi, who is the only student who ever voluntarily took my module twice. He was one of the top 5 students both times. What is more, he helped three other students, David, Elizabeth and Leon, to master the research data interpretation skills required in this course. Undoubtedly, all three of them put in a tremendous amount of effort, clarifying their doubts consistently and taking huge stacks of notes. As a result, the students showed some miraculous improvements in the final exam compared to the midterm test.
My third student Amos also took my Cell Biology module last semester and stood out because he provided highly constructive and thoughtful feedback! After getting to know him better, I realized what enabled him to do so. Amos reads and thinks a lot and has very interesting thoughts and opinions, which makes it a pleasure to talk to him.
What is also really interesting about Amos is that he has the habit of traveling while studying (for instance during the study weeks before the mid tests or final exam). His reasoning is that we can study anywhere and if we already have to study, we might as well combine it with getting to know new places.
I remember doing this once during my own studies, when I traveled to Boston during our study period before the final exams and studies in restaurants and outdoor places. It was a great trip that I still remember well, and in hindsight, I should have done more of these “study travels”.
The beginning of a new semester is also a good opportunity to look back at the past two and a half months of my semester break. I had high hopes of pursuing various goals, but what did I actually achieve?
I made progress in writing my book and have established a daily writing routine. Even though I cannot spend a huge amount of time every day, I have been very consistent. Most importantly, the project has taken shape and I have a concrete idea where I am heading. Nonetheless, there is still a lot of work.
I have also established a daily routine to learn Spanish. I initially planned to concomitantly learn more than one language that I feel passionate about. However, it became clear to me that it is more effective to focus on one language for now and keep the others for later.
I made some progress with my running coaching, through learning and trying new workouts, but no real progress on my other coaching goals. This is partly due to administrative hurdles (not getting my coach license) and partly due to not having enough time. I need to make a more dedicated effort, which ultimately means eliminating some other time-consuming activity.
Finally, during the semester break I have transformed my living spaces, which gives me joy on a daily basis. Ideally I would also like to transform my lab, but it seems a bit too overwhelming at the moment.
My office desk versus my lab bench
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 7 – 13 AUGUST 2023
Memories
As discussed in my previous post, I have been feeling somewhat depressed lately. Having experienced how memories can often make me feel happier, I decided last weekend to look at my photo collection.
One picture that touched me showed myself skiing with my granddad. The photo reminded me of how much I loved spending time with my grandparents. I believe that one reason is that my grandparents never had any expectations of me, of how well I did in school and how I spent my time. Whatever I wanted to do, they were happy. As a result, I felt really comfortable.
What I liked to do most of the time is play on my own. In fact, I could play on my own for hours. It seems that how we play as a child is somehow predictive of how we like to lead our lives as adults …
The picture also reminds me of the wonderful cross country skiing holidays we had with our family, how we always stopped at the downhill slopes and skied down one by one, first my dad, my sister, myself and then my mom, and see who would crash into the snow. It was such a thrill.
I loved cross country skiing. The beauty and excitement to glide through beautiful nature transformed by a white blanket was indescribable. Years later as a student I did my own skitours where I skied for several days in a beautiful area in Germany called Thüringen. It always felt a bit like an adventure to make the journey from one end of the mountain range to the other. What I remember most dearly is stopping in warm and cozy restaurants to eat and rest. I am glad I still have a photo from this time.
The other activity I really liked as a student was cycling, not just as a form of exercise but as a means of transportation. I especially liked to cycle through the streets of the city, at any temperature or weather, for instance through the streets of Boston in the snow (as in the picture), or through the streets of Berlin in the early morning hours, returning home from a late night in the lab. I remember that during these rides I often felt a sense of freedom, of being really present with the wind or sun in my face. It feels very different from being “enboxed” in a car, bus or train, where one is closed up from the outside world through windows.
Cycling is also a wonderful way to discover the beauty and life of the city. I don’t cycle much in Singapore, except sometimes for exercise. I guess one reason is that although Singapore has some amazing bike routes, the experience is quite different compared to riding through busy streets in Boston or Berlin, where life actually happens on side walks and not mainly in shopping malls.
I was very lucky to have had a wonderful childhood, especially because on weekends I could spend time in our beautiful weekend house and garden outside Berlin. I will always remember those sunny Saturday mornings in school when I knew that my parents would be waiting outside the school building in our car to take us to our weekend home. I was fortunate to be able to spend much time outdoors, going swimming or playing in the garden (although I remember often wanting to play indoors).
My granddad taking a photo of my sister, cousin and me in front of our weekend house, which my dad built all on his own
My dad, sister and me at the lake near our garden
My favorite games were playing or inventing some kind of races or competitions: car races, bicycle races, pen jumping competitions. I am not sure if this reflects my competitive nature, as I have always been motivated by achievements, not in terms of being better than others, but to achieve goals that I set for my self.
On some weekends my uncles from West Berlin came to visit us at our weekend house. These were special days, because they would always bring amazing presents, and it was very special to have so genuinely dear and friendly relatives around. My mom (and dad!) would prepare great meals and cake and it felt magical.
I also like this picture, which shows me with my dad and my girlfriend. The reason I like it is because we all look genuinely happy, especially my dad, who tends to only rarely smile on photos.
The final picture shows my mom when she was young. It struck me as the perfect picture. A perfectly beautiful background that captures the atmosphere of the place where we spent our weekends as children, a beautiful sky, and my mom, smiling and holding a sunflower while posing for the camera, yet not looking into the camera, as though anticipating all the beautiful things that would happen in her lifetime. It makes me want to thank her and my dad for the wonderful childhood and life they have given me.
Writing about these memories has brought a lot of joy and made me realize what a happy life I have had so far.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 31 JULY – 6 AUGUST 2023
Who is responsible for our health?
Over the past two weeks my marathon dreams were shattered because I became ill with a gastrointestinal infection, accompanied by fever and constant cramps, which are still plaguing me. The evaporation of my marathon goal and the illness itself sent me into a state of a minor depression that I am still trying to recover from.
Getting sick during this period was in fact something that I had worried about. The irony is that the reason I did get unwell in the end is due to my own fault of trying to “cure” things that caused me no problems.
It all started with finally undergoing a health screening, based on the recommendation of my parents, despite feeling perfectly healthy. The reason why people go for health screenings is of course not because they do not feel healthy, but because there could be something wrong that they have no idea about.
Indeed, my health screening promptly flagged up two “problems”, a marginally elevated level of a colon cancer marker and a too low red blood cell count. What is more, the slightly red blood count could possibly be linked to colon cancer (which often causes occult bleeding).
However, a much more likely explanation for my mild anemia are cardiovascular adaptations as a result of running regularly (and possibly my vegetarian diet). Nonetheless, I complied with the doctor’s recommendation to take iron supplements, which caused some digestion problems, but my red blood cell count did go up.
What turned out to be much more fateful was that I also complied with the doctor’s suggestion to follow up my health screening results with a colonoscopy. I also agreed to have a gastric endoscopy in the same sitting. I did not experience any issues with my stomach, but the doctor suggested it “just in case”.
The colonoscopy was a major inconvenience, especially the preparation phase. Drinking the four liters of prep solution may have been the single most horrible thing I ever had to get down my throat, and the experience still fills me with agony.
While the colonoscopy turned out to be normal, the endoscopy revealed that I have a mild gastritis and a Helicopter pylori (or in short H. pylori) infection. Up to 80% of the population in some Asian countries are H. pylori positive, although the number is only around 30% in Singapore.
Despite being very common, H. pylori is not harmless. After years or decades of infection, H pylori can cause chronic inflammation, which in turn plays a major role in promoting gastric cancer. In fact, the majority of gastric cancers is at least partially due to H. pylori infection (which of course does not mean that the majority of people who have H. pylori will get gastric cancer).
Given the potential implications of having H. pylori bacteria in my stomach, I was prescribed the standard triple antibiotics regimen As a result, I developed a severe and painful gastrointestinal infection, likely as a consequence of the disruption of my normal gut microbiome through the colonoscopy preparation and antibiotics treatment. After over two weeks, I am still not completely well, and I certainly won’t be any any position to run a marathon in four weeks time.
In the end, I did not heed the advice that I always give to others: Do what you think is right, because no matter the outcome, you will likely not regret your own decision. When we decide on our own, we are aware that we are taking our own responsibility, even if we fail or suffer because of it. On the other hand, based on my experience, we will often regret following the recommendations of others if something goes wrong. In following everyone else’s recommendations, I disregarded my own lesson that I first learned as a 16 year old, to do what is right for me.
It is true that without the endoscopy screening I would not be aware of my H. pylori infection and my increased gastric cancer risk. It is also true that H. pylori screening and eradication has had a major effect on decreasing the gastric cancer incidence in Asia. On the other hand, there are likely many other risk factors for cancer or other diseases that I have acquired or that are in my genes that I have not checked. H. pylori is also only one major risk factor for gastric cancer. I don’t have any others, in terms of my ethnicity, of not being obese, not eating salted food or grilled meat, not smoking, not drinking alcohol and eating plenty of fruits. It is also true that most screenings or treatment have trade-offs, in my case the disruption of the normal gut bacteria environment, which appears to be difficult for me to re-establish. Screenings and treatments also often cause inconveniences to our normal lives and the need to forego personal goals. And for some people, screenings could result in excessive worrying over test results, which in the end turn out to be a false alarm.
Taking all this into account, I believe that the threshold of what we are concerned about and what risk we are willing to take in order to lead the life we want to live will be different for everyone. It is a choice that we should make for ourselves.
It is also a choice that we can make for ourselves, because it only affects ourselves. This decision is very different from decisions that affect the overall health of our community and society, such as in the case of Covid-19 screenings and vaccinations. Here it is clearly necessary to comply with science-based recommendation to promote public health, as we are not only endangering ourselves, but our friends and family and our society as a whole.
I will most likely follow up on my H. pylori infection eventually (there are over the counter H. pylori stool antigen tests available) and if necessary, look into possible non-antibiotics based treatments (see for instance this report of an observational study demonstrating successful eradication of H. pylori with over-the-counter products in the Natural Medicine Journal, the official journal of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians). Following up on my H. pylori infection is currently not my number one priority, though. What is much more important to me right now is the new semester, my students in my lab and in my course.
What is more, going forward my main strategy to achieve a long, healthy and happy life will be to actively make choices to live healthily and happily, to listen to my body and my mind, whether it is related to general health, physical activity or work. In the end, what really matters in life is that we have followed our dreams and convictions.
I also have a new goal, which is to run the Standard Chartered half marathon in Kuala Lumpur on 1 October, to which we will travel with some friends from our staff running group. I hope to run below 1:40, although this currently seems like a very distant goal …
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 24 – 30 JULY 2023
Student feedback Part 5
In this reflection on my student feedback for my Cell Biology module for the past semester I want to focus on some miscellaneous comments. In some cases, it was actually the lack of (m)any comments that was notable.
For instance, there was only one student who did not like that I personally assigned the group members for the team-based learning activities and who would have preferred to choose his or her friends.
There are many reasons why having groups assigned by the lecturer is widely recommended in the literature. For instance, it is fairer, especially if, as I do, the lecturer makes an effort to mix the student groups somewhat evenly. It also gives students, especially those who do not know anyone in the class, a chance to make new contacts. And it mimics the real life situation where we commonly have to collaborate with people who are not our friends. It thus helps to build skills in performing team work.
Indeed, a number of students highlighted that being assigned to groups helped them to make new friends, learn how to communicate better and become aware that others often have different perspectives. As a lecturer, it always feels very gratifying when students express that they have experienced what I had intended!
It was also encouraging that none of the students expressed concerns that the team-based learning activities were unfair due to unequal group allocation. I like to think that most students understood that it is a reality of life that nothing is completely fair, and I also emphasized this point in one of the lectures. The benefits of conducting the team activities, such as improving student learning and making classes more fun and engaging, outweigh the drawback of somewhat unequal group allocations, and it seems that students generally agree on this.
On the other hand, three students highlighted that cheating during the team quizzes was possible and that various groups or students indeed cheated. This involved the exchange of correct answers via chat groups or via shared documents.
The reason why this was possible is the format of these quizzes. After first completing the individual round and answering the questions on their own, students discuss the questions with their group members during team round and agree on a joint answer. They have three attempts to answer the question until they arrive at the correct answer or until the correct answer and explanation is shown (if a group chooses a wrong answer three times). This immediate feedback is important to promote student learning. However, it also lends itself to the possibility that some students “help” others to choose the correct answers.
I must admit that this practice was somewhat unexpected for me, given that it means some students would help others to get it right after they potentially needed multiple attempts to find out the correct answer. As a result, the students who provided the correct answers would have obtained lower marks than the students who received the answers. Hence, some students must have reasoned that if they were to mutually help each other, there would be some overall benefit.
The question then is what to do about this? One approach that I tried towards the end of the course was to give a motivational talk to highlight the consequences of this behavior; students deprive each other from practice opportunities. These practice opportunities are important to do well in the final exam.
There are also practical measures I could take. For instance, I can walk around through the lecture theatre to spot any obvious cheating. I could also disallow the usage of mobile phones and web based chats during the quizzes.
The best way to address controversial issues such as taking any restrictive measures is to survey the students for their preference and make decisions based on the majority vote. This won’t satisfy everyone, but it least it is a democratic approach and shows that we as lecturers care about our students’ concerns.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 17 – 23 JULY 2023
I am training for a Marathon in September, which involves a lot of difficult workouts. What makes this even more difficult is that I am doing my workouts by myself, leading me to revert to something that I normally not often do – procrastinate. My procrastination usually takes the form of watching youtube videos until I finally feel guilty enough to head out and run. In one instance this week it took me until 11:30 pm to feel so bad that I finally took off for my training.
The most common approaches that I normally use to avoid procrastination are breaking up a task, making an activity more fun and changing my environment. All of these approaches are difficult to implement in Marathon training.
Splitting up the task (my training runs) defeats the purpose of Marathon training. Long runs eventually become tedious and tiring no matter how much fun I try to make them, be it through listening to music or changing my environment, such as running through beautiful parks, as it is usually dark anyway.
When a task is very difficult, my usual approaches to avoid procrastination do not seem to work very well. So what to do?
One good outcome of my procrastinating has been that I managed to watch a few very interesting videos, such as the one by David Goggins, discussing the source of motivation to do difficult things.
In the video, David Goggins discusses an important factor that determines our ability to accomplish difficult things: Do I have pride in myself? Am I someone who just gives up a goal when it gets difficult? Or am I someone who wants to be proud of the person I am as I go through my day.
Another very interesting idea that David Goggins talks about is coming up with our own mission statement. Mission statements are normally used by companies or groups of people wanting to achieve a certain goal. David Goggins suggests that we could also formulate our own mission statement. I felt very inspired by his mission statement to every day “Win for myself”!
A third factor from which we can draw motivation is other people, not the good examples, but the fact that the vast majority of people seems to not accomplish very much or not many things that are meaningful. At face value this makes sense. When I am outside and rarely see anyone reading or learning and instead observe the majority of people being on their phones, watching movies, texting or playing games, or engaging in small talk, I feel that I want to do better.
However, I also realize that drawing strength from the perceived weakness (or possibly different values) of others is not a healthy source of motivation. People act and behave based on how they were brought up, what culture, values and environment they were exposed to. Most people are probably doing the best they can. Maybe I am just fortunate that I enjoy reading and learning because I get to apply what I read and learn in my daily work and life. Perhaps a better source of motivation would be to serve as a kind of example for others.
I also got inspiration from an email Newsletter from Master Coach University, which raised the question of what are my dreams in life. What is there that I still really want to come true and that is not more of the same. There are many goals that are merely an extension of what I have already been doing in my life, such as sports goals, coaching and research goals.
There are two goals that stand out, one is publishing a book and the other is to live and work in a country where the primary language is not English (or German). While I have lived in various countries throughout my life, I have never lived and worked in a country where I cannot use English or German in my work and daily communications. What makes this dream so exciting is that it seems really challenging and hard to imagine right now.
Despite this, what I find myself doing for most of my days is working on things that are more of the same, improving my teaching, supervising research students, doing experiments and improving my coaching. The main reason is that I want to do what I do well, which is important to feel satisfied and content on a day to day basis. This is what makes new and big goals so difficult to achieve. The best we can probably do is maintaining consistency in spending some daily time on our big goals. With that, success will ultimately come, even though it may take a time.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 10 – 16 JULY 2023
My teaching Feedback Part 4
In this post, I take yet another look at my teaching feedback from the past semester. As I have previously discussed, the most common comment that students made was that the Cell Biology year 2 module was very difficult and fast-paced.
If I was to be sarcastic, I could summarize the majority of the other comments as students wanting more spoon-feeding. For instance, 18 students commented that my lecture slides mainly contain diagrams, figures and questions, but very little actual information. Hence, students need to add all the missing information themselves. It would be much easier for the students if I just include all the information.
This sounds logical. However, there are good reasons why my lecture slides are so rudimentary.
One major reason why I don’t include more information in my lecture slides is because when we discuss questions or problems in class, I want students to think and not start flipping their notes, or more likely scrolling through the slides.
In the past I have considered uploading a more complete set of slides after each lecture (based on suggestions from some students). However, I never ended up doing it because of the extra work required. What is more, on second thought I realized that by providing all the explanations, I would be doing the job of the students.
Effective learning does not happen when students read provided information. Effective learning happens when students actively engage in recalling, processing and synthesizing information by themselves. Thus, I shall continue the practice of keeping my lecture notes sparse, even if it means that students will likely continue to lament this practice, especially because the practice is different from most of the other courses the students are taking.
There were 16 students who commented that the class content was confusing, that there was no obvious connection between topics, that they could not see the bigger picture or that they would have preferred a summary at the end of a lecture. Only three students commented that the content was well linked.
I can understand why some students prefer the easy option of delivering a systematic lecture where everything is explained step by step and where at the end a nice summary is given. However, there are two problems with this approach. Firstly, these kind of lectures tend to be rather boring and fail to engage the students. Secondly, again, the real learning happens when students process information and find links themselves and when they come up with their own summaries. When we spoon-feed all knowledge in an easily digestible manner, students think they are learning a lot, when in fact they often only hear and forget.
Several students also mentioned that they felt that there were too many quizzes and too little explanations of the quiz answers. I actually did provide all correct answers and explanations for most quiz questions. The desire for more explanations highlights the common misconception that the more explanations students are given, the more they learn. Even if an explanation may seem logical to the students and they feel they got it, this passive way of learning has been shown time and time again to be inferior compared to when students figure out something on their own.
Taking an active role in understanding concepts and solving problems has several advantages. Students will remember problems better if they figure them out on their own. They develop skills to deal with similar problems in the future. Solving problems on their own also empowers students. They feel less helpless when facing new problems and more confident that they can understand unknown concept by themselves.
The request for more explanations may also highlight another important point. Even if we as lecturers try to provide clear explanations, it is difficult for us to predict the barriers that make it difficult for students to understand problems and concepts. This is because a problem or concept may be so familiar to us lecturers that it becomes difficult to imagine how a student would experience this problem or concept. This further highlights the need for students to find their own explanations or seek help from their peers.
Apart from these comments related to active participation of students in their learning, there were other feedback comments, which I will discuss in yet another reflection.
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 3 – 9 JULY 2023
My teaching Feedback Part 3
As I discussed a few weeks ago, the most frequent negative (or more kindly worded “constructive”) comment in my teaching feedback for the past semester was that the module was too difficult and fast-paced. There were, however, also two students who commented that the workload was relatively low or reasonable and who acknowledged that the module had no major assignments, apart from the introduction and reflection videos.
Indeed, it has been my explicit intention to reduce the workload for the students (as well as for myself), being aware that students take other challenging courses (and many students are taking up even more than the recommended five modules) and that it is critical that students engage in other extracurricular activities during their time in University.
This emphasizes the importance of ensuring that any assignments given are indeed worth the invested time. For instance, although some of my past assignments, such as individual and group videos and “research problem” assignments, were aimed at developing important skills, the value for students was limited because the class size made it impossible for me to provide timely feedback.
In this regard, my assignments from the past semester, an introductory video at the beginning of the semester and a reflection video half way through the semester, were different. These assignments not only required much less time on the part of the students, they also provided insights for students without my feedback. The main benefit of these assignments were to force students to take time to reflect on their goals (in the introduction video) and their way of studying and living (in the reflection video).
I did not receive a single negative comment about these assignments. In contrast, many students expressed in the formal semester feedback or at the beginning of their videos their gratefulness for being prompted to slow down the film of their studies and lives and to evaluate what has been going well and what has not.
Naturally, I also provided short feedback messages to the students (and I still have a few reflection videos left to watch!). However, while watching the videos it became very clear to me that even without my feedback, students arrived at important insights about themselves through their self-reflections.
The videos were also valuable for me. The introductory videos helped me greatly in getting to know the students and remembering their names.
Learning student names, even if the class size is 250 students as over the last semester, is something I have been doing routinely for the past few years. It would not be an understatement to say that this habit has been a game-changer in my teaching. Not only does it help to build connections with students, knowing the students whom I teach and whose assignments and assessments I have to mark also has made teaching a lot more fun and interesting. Learning about the students’ hobbies and aspiration in the introduction videos has also helped me to put a human side to students’ faces.
Learning student names is rather easy. The challenging part is to recognize individual students in class. This requires continuous practice, in my case walking through the lecture hall before classes and trying to identify students as well as constantly asking students for their names during any interactions. During these interactions it often greatly surprises students when I am able to recall any of their hobbies or aspirations from their introduction videos.
Watching the reflection videos proves also very beneficial for me. Firstly, the student reflections enabled me to gain a grasp of what students’ concerns are and what they are struggling with. While it did not surprise me that many students struggle with procrastination and a lack of motivation to study, I was shocked about the workload that many students take upon themselves (taking up to three courses in addition to the recommended five, some even including challenging experimental modules).
I was also taken aback by the time and stress involved in finding internships. I learned that finding and applying for internships takes considerable time and effort, which coincides with the challenging study demands of the ongoing semester. What is more, given that nowadays most students do internships, they are no longer viewed as something that sets students apart and increases their chances to find a job, but as a “must have”. This in turn creates a lot of pressure for students.
I was impressed that despite these demands, students are still enthusiastic and excited to take up many extracurricular activities. Finally, I was truly amazed by how well students are able to reflect on themselves and come up with their own insights and potential solutions to the problems they face.
There were also a few students who made constructive comments. Here, the term “constructive” was very appropriate compared to classifying these comments as negative. The reason is that I could see and feel that the student had at their heart genuine concerns and the desire to make suggestions for improvement. This illustrates that when it comes to constructive feedback, the context in which it is delivered and received is really important. In my experience, a sentence or two in a student feedback survey is not effective because the student is unable to express his or her good intention and the lecturer is unable to understand the context in which the student made these comments. This in turn often leads to resentful emotions. On the other hand, watching students talk about their worries and concerns is much more effective because I feel gratitude and empathy towards the students for expressing their worries and concerns.
All this explains why introducing the student introduction and reflection videos was indeed the most transformative change in my Cell Biology module over the past semester!
HIGHLIGHTS FOR WEEK OF 26 JUNE – 2 JULY 2023
This week I spent a wonderful holiday at home in Germany with my parents and family. I made plenty of precious memories of time spent with my family visiting a beautiful town, going bowling, playing golf (or trying to in my case), going for for long car rides or a movie. Upon returning, it was also a chance to realize how much I like and cherish my daily work and routine.
Waren at lake Müritz, the town I visited with my family during my holiday.
