#it’s fun how the end of my PhD program will always be marked by the X files as much as the brutal job market haha

[sapphicscholar]

This past weekend my wife and I finished the last episode of the X-files, marking the end of an academic year-long journey to watch the entire series + reboot for the very first time from the start. But now it’s like…what do we do with our post-dinner TV hour??

[imagine-loki]

Gifted

TITLE: Gifted (Sequel to Giftless)

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 5/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: 

Imagine that you are Stark’s niece and you secretly share a strong relationship with Loki since he entered the crew. One day you get hurt so bad during a mission that you are about to die.  Loki knows a spell that will save you and share his immortality with you but you and he will be linked forever sharing thoughts, pain, emotions…

RATING: T NOTES/WARNINGS:  Also on AO3 click here

Loki sighed and hesitated before he spoke. “This is not a fun tale, darling,” he started, pain in his voice. You nodded, expecting as much. Loki wouldn’t have been gone for a year otherwise.  You reached across the table and took his hand in yours, offering him what comfort you could for him to tell you the painful tale.  you held his hand across the table. He gave you a small smile, more of thanking you for your reassurance than an actual smile. He rubbed his thumb over your hand, over the ring he had given you that you had never taken off.  You could tell that he was reassuring himself that you were here as much as reassuring you. 

“I know,” you told him gently when he paused in his words.  “And I know it must’ve been major for you to leave like that, but I need to know. I need to know why you left for a year. Why you took all evidence of the portal spell with you. Why you didn’t call or visit, or send a message that you were ok. I only knew you were even still alive because I was still alive,” you told him with more emotion in your voice than you had intended. You had intended to be calm about this discussion. You knew there had to be a good reason why Loki had left, but it had hurt so much. It had hurt so very, very much.

Loki took a breath, another, as he gathered his words.  He nodded when he was ready to speak.  “Asgard was attacked,” he started simply, though the words themselves were horrifying.  “There were rogues with allies from one of the lesser realms, who wanted to free Balder. They thought he should be the next ruler and they tried to assassinate the rest of our family,” Loki told you.  His voice was heavy and he fought to get the words out. His eyes were dull, vacant, as he spoke. He was staring past you, remembering something he had seen, not really seeing you. “They were put down, but not before…not before Torun…” his eyes filled with tears at the memory.

“Torun?” you asked, horrified. She was just a toddler, the daughter of Thor and Sif, Loki’s older brother and sister-in-law.  Balder was the eldest, but hadn’t been chosen as heir to the throne.  That lead to all of the strife, but to hurt Torun…

Loki nodded, a couple of tears falling as he squeezed your hand. “Torun had found out her uncle Balder was down in the dungeon. She didn’t understand that the dungeon was jail. She was just a baby,” he paused to compose himself.  “She had taken a bunch of toys down to the dungeon so they could play with him. The assassins killed her. They slaughtered that poor baby just because she was before Balder in the line to the throne.” You stood then and went to Loki to wrap your arms around him.

“I’m so sorry, Loki,” you told him softly, not caring that the kitchen staff was watching you. You barely noticed that you were crying too. Torun was such a sweet baby. You couldn’t fathom that she was gone.

“Balder is gone. They broke him out while all of the guards were distracted protecting our family.  Mother called me home after the attack. The people needed to see that the royal family was united and strong, even when we were not. They needed to see that the line of succession was still intact. Thor and Sif also needed to be given the traditional year of grieving away from the spotlight of their duties as heirs to the throne. I had to remain and act as Heir until Thor was able to take up his responsibilities again.” You just held on to Loki while he spoke. What happened was terrible and you didn’t have any words to comfort him with. No words would be good enough. “I could not bring you with me. I would not risk your safety after an assassination attempt and I could not drag you away from your life for a year or longer. I knew if you left any trace of the portal spell, you would come after me and stay, forsaking your own dreams in the process. It took months to settle the country enough that it would have even been safe, and by then… I was afraid that you would have moved on with your life. I would not have blamed you. I’m sorry I could not return before now,” he finally told you, though it pained him. “I know those words are not enough, but someday, I hope I will be able to make it up to you,”

“Can we go visit soon?” you asked him as you finally let him go when he seemed stable again. You still held his hand across the table after you had taken your seat again. “I would like to pay my respects,”

He nodded, looking relieved that that had been your reaction and response.  You hadn’t changed as much as he feared. “We will visit soon,” he promised. “Once you are up to it. If I take you there in this shape, Mother will have both of our hides,” he added with a bit of his usual teasing and friendship. 

“How’s Thor doing? And Sif?”

“They are devastated and they mourn. That will not end soon. Though Sif announced right before you returned that she is with child.” Loki gave a small smile at that.  She and Thor had been trying for a second child.  Apparently, they had succeeded. 

“So you can stay?” you asked him, adding some excitement to your voice, trying to lighten the mood.  You wanted desperately for him to stay on Midgard with you.  You didn’t want to lose him again.

“I can stay. Though Mother did request that we visit more often,” he replied with an all too familiar glint in his eyes. You gave him a smile. You were all hurting right now, but you’d be ok. Thor and Sif would be ok too, though they would always mourn their loss.

“They didn’t ask where I was?”

“I told them I left you here for your safety,” he replied. You rolled your eyes, but that’s exactly what they would have expected him to do. “Had I known how poorly you were looked after…”

“I’m fine, Loki,” you replied sourly. He just gave you a look. You sighed, easily defeated on that particular point.. “Really, I’m fine,”

“Sure you are, darling,” he replied, with disbelief in his voice. It was quite rude of him not to believe you.  Luckily for him, he was saved from your tart reply by your dinners arriving. “So what have you been doing, besides working yourself to death?” he asked as you were eating.

“Let’s see… I graduated from high school, top of the class. I’ve started a really ambitions extremely accelerated PhD program at Metropolis University. Thanks for that by the way, since it’s purely because of the knowledge I stole from you through the soulbond that I can do this program,” you touched the lines of power that ran up his left arm and he smiled. They were identical to the marks on your own left arm. “I should graduate in a year or so. I told Fury that I wouldn’t work for the Avengers full time until I’d earned my PhD and gotten to be a real doctor. That’s what I’d always thought I’d be when I didn’t have powers. I didn’t want to give that up just because I finally got my powers,” you explained. He nodded, of course he remembered your conversation about your future from before you had gotten your powers.

“So you have done nothing but work?” he asked, disapproving.

You shrugged. “Pretty much. I did spend some time with the actors when they came to shoot the next Avengers movie, but most of my life is boring right now, school, work in the infirmary, patrol. I wasn’t going to be Bella Swan and just waste away in depression because my boyfriend left. I needed to do something with my life.” You pulled up a picture on your phone to show him, though. It was of you carrying all of the actors’ weapon props as they chased you around the set. You showed it to him and he started laughing. “I did have some fun,” you told him as you laughed too.

“My apologies, lady. It seems I was mistaken,” he replied still laughing as you pulled up more pictures from that day to show him.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, I don’t live in the compound anymore. I mean, I still have your suite there, but I live in an apartment near campus.” That would be important information when he went to take you home later.

A huge dessert appeared in front of you after you’d finished your meals, catching up the entire time.  Your eyes lit up at the delicious chocolaty creation. You and Loki devoured the entire thing like small children left alone with an entire cake. Which was, in retrospect, a fairly accurate description of the two of you at times. 

Loki escorted you from the restaurant once you had finished eating and stopped right outside. “So, are we returning to the compound or your apartment?” he asked when he stopped.

“My apartment,” you replied. You gave him the address and somehow that was enough information for him to teleport you there. You thought it was impressive since he’d never been there, or really on this end of town very often.

“Darling, when was the last time you slept?” he asked when you were alone. You were so full of food that you were leaning too much on him, halfway to a food coma. It was getting harder to stay awake through stubbornness and caffeine when there wasn’t an emergency every few seconds.

“I slept Wednesday,” you told him sleepily, wrapping your arms around his slim waist.

“And how long did you sleep on Wednesday?” he asked gently as he ran his fingers through your hair.

You shrugged, not moving your head from his chest. “A couple hours?”

“Love, it’s Tuesday now. That is nearly a week. Even I cannot go that long without sleep. Come on, off to bed with you,” he swept you up into his arms. Another flash of his magic and you were in your pajamas. He was soon trying to tuck you into bed. 

You would grudgingly admit to being difficult.

Grudgingly.

“I can’t sleep,” you protested, though exhaustion fogged your brain and you were sure it made your words really easy to understand.  Or completely unintelligible. 

“Yes, you can darling. No one will be calling you for an emergency. There are no responsibilities right now except to rest. You are taking a break,” he reminded you, overly patient as usual when you were being stubborn.

“If I sleep then this really will all be a dream and it’ll be tomorrow and you’ll be gone,” you told him quite logically. Or at least your sleep deprived brain thought it was logical. You didn’t want this to be a dream.  You didn’t want Loki to be gone when you woke.

“What if I lie in the bed beside you? Then will you believe that this is not a dream?” he asked gently, acknowledging your fear. He was trying to fight against your sleep deprived logic. It didn’t resemble normal human logic, though, so he was at a severe disadvantage. You thought about that, but finally nodded. If you could hold on to him then he wouldn’t disappear and be a dream. He magicked himself some pajamas and climbed into the other side of the bed. You curled up against him, laying your head on his cool chest and falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat. A sound you had grown too accustomed to hearing in the year you had been dating, and a sound you had missed too desperately in the year he had been away.

[sidenotelife]

Reflections on seven years of medical school

"Why would you go to medical school if you were not an optimist?”

- Mark Vonnegut

Last month I graduated from med school after seven years. It feels like it should be a momentous moment. I feel like I should have some thoughts. I feel like something profound should come from my head. But I’m not sure what I’m thinking, or what I’m feeling. Sidenote - one thing that’s good about this blog is that I went back to my posts from 2012 and I found a post about the reasons I wanted to go to med school and another post about my top 3 med school goals. Reading these posts was pretty interesting and it was surprisingly easy to get back into that same mindset. In case you don’t want to read my 2012 classics, my reasons for wanting to go to med school were 1) A desire to work in a field with tangible results, 2) Because my favorite TV show was Scrubs, and 3) I wanted to have a life that I found meaningful. More or less I still feel committed to those three factors, and they’re really the same sort of thing that drove me to choose family medicine. My 2012 med school goals were a little more different: 1) Make good friends in Charleston and drink beers and talk shit about life, 2) Move on to a big pond/match at Boston Children’s Hospital, and 3) Be a good husband. Making good friends and drinking beers and talking about life was a definite success and I just want to take a second to give a shoutout to all the amazing friends I made in Charleston. I also want to thank everyone who read something I wrote and wanted to talk to me about it. I’m honored that anybody would want to read my thoughts. I’ll briefly touch on the third goal, to be a good husband. I feel that more or less this was a success, though there were definitely many moments when I was not a good husband, this is still an ongoing goal, I guess. But the goal that I want to talk about is the second one: Move on to a big pond/match at Boston Children’s Hospital. 

I used to be obsessed with big pond small pond. I wanted to go to a fancy school for college, and with all due respect to my undergraduate college, there were no fancy schools that wanted me. At the next branch point I really wanted to go to a fancy school for med school, and with all due respect to my medical school, there were no fancy schools that wanted me. Since then I plotted to figure out how I could finally land in a big pond for residency, but during those seven long years in the MD PhD program I started seeing some things about academic medicine, and the so-called big ponds of science and medicine that made me question exactly why I wanted to go to a big pond. Sidenote - I think the number one most beneficial part of the MD PhD route is that you get an extra few years in your 20s to think about the sort of career and life you want before you make a big commitment like choosing a medical specialty, and my pragmatic thinking kept coming back to the crucial question, what did I want that a big pond would help me attain? Sidenote within a sidenote - I think who you are at age 20 is really important. I wouldn’t exactly say that you’re an adult maturity-wise at age 20, but after 20 years you’ve been alive for long enough that your personality has had ample time to mold your beliefs before adult responsibilities and pragmatism kicks in. I think that person your innate personality had molded you into is a really important part of who you are, and it’s important for me to keep being the person I believed I was at age 20. 

Anyways, I wanted to go to a big pond to have an impact on the world, and I thought that the environment of a big pond would drive me to a higher level of myself that I could not attain on my own. Sidenote -  The best advice I ever received was from a nephrologist. This was back when I was in college, and I was trying to get some advice on how to get into med school and I was asking him about what he thought about big pond small pond, like in terms of med school, and the advice he gave me was:

“The students that really benefit from going to Harvard Medical School are the students that are extrinsically motivated. These students are amazing students, but they aren’t used to having to compete to be the best, let alone hang around average, and so these kids get really motivated to keep up and end up attaining more of their potential. But the self-motivated students don’t necessarily benefit from being at Harvard. If you look at the top students at Harvard and the top students at UMass they’re the same. I mean, they’re reading the same NEJM and Harrison’s at Harvard that they do at UMass. I see residents from both these places and there’s no telling them apart. The students who have their own vision and motivated to be the best versions of themselves, they’re not as affected by who’s around them.” 

I think what I thought about this advice was that it meant I could go to med school anywhere, be successful without concern that I was losing something by not being at fancy med school, and still go on to a fancy residency. But I came to see this advice as something a bit different, it meant that I could go to med school anywhere, and go to residency anywhere, and have a great career regardless of where I was working. Being great didn’t have to do with where I was working, it had to do with what I was working on. Sidenote - the other realization I had about the fancy hospital vs non-fancy hospital was the realization that the fanciest technology was not always the best for the patient. Not to mention the great burden that these fancy technologies can put on healthcare expenditures. I started to doubt the power of these big ponds as I read a lot of Science, Nature, and Cell. These are the most highly reputed journals in basic science research. I spent a lot of my time reading these journals and thinking about what sort of work went into them. And indeed there is great work in these journals. In fact, I think you could say that a great piece of scientific work is likely to end up in one of these journals, but at the same time I also read many hugely impactful pieces of work that were published in so-called lesser journals. Moreover, there were a lot of articles in these journals that weren’t particularly impressive. What I saw was a lot of large, fancy, expensive projects, and not necessarily the work that was the most creative, or the most likely to contribute to a major advance in basic science. I think there are a lot of great people doing great work at big ponds and I don’t mean to take anything away from these people, but I’ve also come to see that some work at a big pond goes towards maintaining its big pond-ness, rather than truly great work. Sidenote - This is the other part of this conversation, what does it mean to be great? Should the hospital and medical school rankings that are hanging on hospital banners have the privilege to decide what we think is great? If we allow these banners to decide what we believe is great, are we simply pawns of the hospital ranking system? Personally, I wanted to decide for myself what a great hospital was, what a great career was, and although I don’t know exactly what that greatness might look like, I wanted to find a place that would give me the freedom to define and pursue that greatness. 

So I think to sum up this first reflection, this is the number one thing that has changed about me since starting medical school: I believe in myself. I think, before med school, I had a suspicion that I was talented, but since starting med school I think I’ve come to really believe in myself. I’ve had several successes since starting med school that were more than what I thought I could attain, and it’s given me the confidence to put myself in the self-motivated group. I don’t think I need the fancy hospital environment to drive me to do something great. We’ll see if this is true. 

The other lingering reflection I have on medical school is regarding the state of medical education. Sidenote - I spent a ton of time thinking about this during my first two years of medical school, then when I came back after the PhD to years 3 and 4 of medical school I didn’t have that same excitement about medical education. I think part of it was losing my community of classmates that I went through the initial years of medical school with, and I felt like it was hard for me to really get into being a med student. The thing that made those first two years fun and actually meaningful despite the hours spent learning meaningless material was the relationships with my classmates. In the third and fourth years, I had a harder time establishing relationships, partly due to my own time limitations with having kids, and also partly because I felt self-conscious breaking into other people’s friend groups when everyone already had their established groups of friends. It’s like I felt like I didn’t want to intrude on their relationships. All that said, I do have some thoughts about what could be done to improve med school. After spending seven years being a medical student, here are my proposals for two easy things and one hard thing that could improve medical education. 

#1 - Focus rotations on engaging rather than exposing. 

Going through rotations, especially elective rotations, I heard a lot of faculty members tell me that this would be the only time I might see XYZ pathology, or ABC procedure, and in some cases it was interesting to see them, but in other cases I don’t remember a single thing about it. I just think a crucially important part of education is to remember stuff you learn, and if you only see something once that odds that you remember it is absolutely miniscule. On the other hand, the rotations where the residents and attendings involved me in the day-to-day work where I spent a lot of time with one team seeing the same pathologies, I feel I’m more likely to take something from these rotations into residency and beyond. I think the major factor that would help this engagement factor is to increase continuity. I get that if I’m meeting a resident for the first time they probably won’t trust me, and that they’ll want to test me first. I also get that I don’t make a good first impression, and that I’ll need a few interactions with a resident in order to make a good impression. What if we had med students spend a solid month on the internal medicine or peds wards team, instead of switching from the wards, to the outpatient clinic, to the subspecialty team, to the emergency department for rapid fire 5 days exposures. I really think this opportunity to engage med student would improve retention of stuff learned in med school. 

#2 - Make USMLE exams pass/fail. 

This idea has been getting a lot of run on #medtwitter lately, largely thanks to @bryancarmody, a pediatric nephrologist that has been putting together great data on Step 1: https://thesheriffofsodium.com/2019/04/28/step-1-mania-the-case-for-usmlepassfail/ . The more I think about the idea of making Step 1 pass/fail, the more I worry about the avalanche of unintended consequences that might come. The biggest one I worry about is that it would place greater emphasis on the MCAT, a greater value of a more arbitrary measure like honoring a rotation, and that students from highly-reputed med schools would have a greater advantage in residency admissions. That said, I think it would overall be a better world than today. I just don’t think the skills needed to be a good multiple choice test are very useful out there in the real world of taking care of patients. Say this move to pass fail Step 1 places greater emphasis on the MS3 and MS4 clinical rotations. Do I think the skills, and random chance, needed to be a good honorer of rotations is useful in the real world of taking care of patients is useful? Not exactly... but, kind of. A lot of arbitrary things go into being a good doctor. Maybe some patients just happen to like your personality. Maybe some patients just happen to have good genetics. Maybe some patients just happen to have good insurance. The earlier in our careers we absorb this arbitrariness, the better equipped we might be to navigate the arbitrariness and figure out what is we can actually control. Multiple choice questions that demand one clear cut answer only create a habit of thought that there should be one clear way to help a patient, or that there is one clear way to be a good doctor, and I don’t think this sort of thinking is good for patients. 

#3 - Create stronger financial incentives for teaching in med school. 

The more I go through med school, and the more I see of academic medicine, the more I appreciate medical school educators. Their job is so hard because there are basically no incentives to teach in med school. They get paid less if they teach more because they see less patients. They have to spend more time at home writing notes if they teach more, and thus sacrifice their precious work-life balance. They get less prestige than their colleagues bringing in research grants, and don’t get the just recognition they deserve. And there are a thousand things that need fixing, but money talks, and the bottom line is that if we want the most talented clinician-educators to stay in education we need to pay them more. I don’t have a clue of how hospital and academic institution financial systems are set up, and I don’t have any idea how to make this happen, but it’s a thought I had. 

Looking back on it, med school was a pretty fun time. I still remember the first lecture we had in med school, it was by an anesthesiologist that I admire very much, and he talked about the hidden curriculum. About this covert teaching that goes on in med school that extends beyond the syllabus. The kind of teaching that happens in-between classes at conversations over coffee. And he talked about how being aware of this could help us subvert this subversion. Med school had lots were frustrating points, including many long days studying for Step 1, many weekend days spent in the lab where one little mistake exploded a week long experiment, countless hours spent trying not to fall asleep while watching someone else interview a patient, and I see how the hidden curriculum works through these frustrations, but if there’s one thing I’m proud of about my tenure in med school, I think that it changed me, and didn’t change me, for the better. I feel I’m still largely the same person I was before medical school. More cynical, but still optimistic, if that makes sense. I actually think my obsession over the hidden curriculum, largely through this blog, helped me change more towards the kind of person I wanted to be, rather than the person med school wanted me to be. So cheers to med school, and stay tuned for maybe one or two more med school-related posts, and then on to writing about residency. 

see you on the other side,

from ken

[doodledialogue]

Interview series - What after B.Arch? #16

Interviewee: Ar. Valentin Gheorghian Post-graduation: Masters in Architecture | Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași, Romania

What prompted you to take up Architecture?  I wanted to become an Architect ever since we had a school assignment in 4th grade at a subject called “technology” when we had to draw our “ideal house” for us and our family. I loved that assignment so much, took a long time to do it properly, and with excellent results – that then and there I decided this is what I would like to do for a living and started to buy architecture magazines/ magazines with houses.

Tell us about studying Master of Architecture at TUIASI. In Romania architecture studies comprise of 6 years and result in gaining both degrees: Bachelor’s and Master’s. One cannot do just the first one – the first one is meaningless. You are not considered a graduate before you finish year 6, pass all your exams and pass the Graduation/ Degree project (final project, 6 month long).

After graduating Year 4, you continue with Year 5 – which is – in theory – already “Master” level – but nothing changes – it’s a continuous 6 year study cycle, no interruptions, same school, same teachers, same colleagues – only different subjects (more advanced), more projects and more complex projects.

Tell us about the application process. There is no “application process” in the way it’s understood in the UK – one has to pass a gruelling admission exam at one of only 6 universities in the country that have Architecture departments. For that 5-6 hour exam, students train – via private tutoring – for at least a year – because the examination requires excellent hand drafting skills, technical drafting skills and advance descriptive geometry – none of which is being taught in high-schools; in that lies the need to take on private tutoring. 

One should start with the application process for 2 years in advance.

What preparation did you do before starting the program? There were 10 days of intensive drawing courses – both technical and hand drafting – organised by the university just before the admission’s exam. These were good and useful for someone who already knew what they were doing – but pointless for someone who didn’t have a clue. Students take a minimum of 1 year of difficult private tutoring (with a lot of homework) to get to the drawing (both technical and freehand) skill level required to pass the admission examination.

In terms of pre-reading for the program– I’ve always enjoyed reading about architecture and buildings – but especially about historical buildings/ cities and the history of architecture.

Did you speak to any alumni/professors of the program? I hadn’t met any architecture students or young architects before joining the program – and it would have been extremely useful to gain some insights and tips & tricks and the subtleties of the university. Had only met old architects/ teachers – the ones with whom I did private tutoring to prepare for my admission exam.

Did you have to give any entrance tests? How did you plan for them? The 6 years integrated study program has a 5/6h entry examination testing freehand drawing, technical drawing and mathematical/ geometry skills. One trains in private for at least 1 year for these.

How long was your program? 6 years – October 1st 2007 – October 2013. There is no flexibility regarding fall/spring semesters.

Did you have post-study plans in mind when you took it up?  Just went with the flow. Now, however, I am planning to do a PhD in a related field and go into teaching at an Architecture University - because I am astonished about the low wages in the Architecture field - as opposed to other skilled careers - and I would do this as a way to supplement my income. I love teaching as well and I think it would be an excellent for for me - but the main reason is the financial one.

Did you have to apply for a visa? Non-applicable – neither in my home country of Romania (where the bulk of the program took place) – nor during the time spent abroad – which was all spent inside the EU – thus not requiring visa.

How was the experience at the school? Very difficult yet very rewarding at the same time. Longer hours, more courses, more seminars, more projects and more time spent on projects – than any other university that I know of. Less time for socializing and leisure activities than any other students. Longer academic year: from the 1st of October – start of the academic year – until mid-July (end of “practical training” week/ weeks)

How was the teaching and learning environment at your school? Every class (year of study) had their own classroom - 6 years of study – 6 classrooms. There were roughly 50 people per year of study/ class – but never would everyone show up (except perhaps some exams) – so everyone could fit in. Apart from these 6 classrooms – there were 2 multi-function rooms/ projection rooms, amphitheatre type (although not sloped) for projections and special presentations, and an IT lab with computers. That’s it – those were all the available spaces (small school, intimate, student-oriented). 

Classical style of teaching – you go in class – just like during high-school – and the teacher teaches for 2h their subject – with either a 10min break between classes, or a small 5min cigarette break mid-way. Most difficult or practical subjects also had “seminars” same duration, same location – during which we would do exercises and problem solving

The frequency of the classes depended on the year of study. The busiest teaching schedule was in year 1 – and decreased progressively towards year 6 – when there are no taught classes at all (only non-supervised individual work on the final project, “degree project” and on the Dissertation – at the same time). Year 1: 6-8hours of classes per day, every day. Year 5: about 3-4hours per day. Year 6: 0. The decrease in number of taught hours was compensated by an increase in number of projects (like “homework”): in year 1 students only had to work on projects in the main school subject, “architectural design” (counting for half of all study credits). This grew up to year 5 – when there were projects to be worked on at home for at least 10 school subjects, such as: urban planning, interior design, special structures, construction materials, and so on.

There was no time for other things – not even a shade of social life. Architecture life occupies ALL your time, at least during uni.

Tell us more about the mentors. One would meet mentors/ teachers/ assistants whenever one could find them around the school or in their office – in years 1-5. There was no formality in the method used to meet with them, no “appointments”, nothing like that. In year 6 – final year – it would be even easier – one would have personal contacts for one’s degree/ final project mentor, as well as a few others with whom one would have a close collaboration for their final project – such as a structural engineer/ structures professor. These meetings would either take place somewhere in the university – or at that teacher’s private practice – most if not all of them also had their private practices and would be project architects on their own. Despite this ease in meeting and approaching – there was and is a much higher degree of formality in addressing/ interacting with teachers – as compared to the

UK or the west. One would NEVER address a teacher/ tutor/ assistant by their first name, for example; that would be a sign of huge disrespect. 

Did your institute have any support system for international students? Any incoming international students would come through the Erasmus program, and would stay for half a year, usually in years 3 or 4. There were very few of these – maybe 2-3 per academic year – due to the fact that Romanian architecture and architecture education is completely unknown internationally.

As a general rule – these internationals would live like princes – would enjoy a much easier life than locals/ regulars. The teachers were way more lenient towards them – on one hand – so they would get high marks regardless of their academic performance, and on the other hand – they always had money. Erasmus scholarships barely cover half of one’s living costs in a country such as France (where I had studied as an Erasmus student) – but are way more than needed in a cheap country such as Romania – so sweet life!

Were you involved in research projects while studying? I was involved in all research projects, volunteering activities, publications, work camps and anything related to the subject, both internally and abroad – as visible from my CV. Those abroad were taking place in either English or French. I’ve never seen/met any students from the UK taking part in any of these – thus gaining the impression that UK students are very inward-looking – as opposed to EU students who are very open-minded and open and international and love foreign exchange programs and so on. 

Tell us about your time abroad? My 6 month Erasmus program was spent in ENSAP [École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture et de Paysage] Lille, France - and I lived on campus through the duration of the exchange.

It was a brutally difficult program - not because of the academic level, which wasn’t any higher than back in Romania - but because of the density of classes, amount of project work outside of hours spent in uni, and the (lack of) dedication of my teammates (all projects were done in teams). I regret not having more fun and a social life during my Eramsus - such as most of my friends had - those who went to different countries and destinations - but there was nothing I could do about it.

Could you tell us in brief what your thesis/dissertation/final project was about? My thesis/ dissertation was about gentrification and urban regeneration – with case studies of several post-industrial global cities: Paris, Brussels, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Detroit; contemporary urban challenges – in very different political/ social/ economical contexts. Differences, similarities, solutions. My final project was an Immigrants Integration Centre in central Paris – combining urban regeneration of a brownfield (urban planning part) with architectural design of 9 individual buildings – a small “city within a city” 

The dialogue with my supervisor went smooth and on friendly terms – one chooses their supervisor based on one’s previous grades – and as I finished years 1-5 3rd in my generation (3rd highest score) I could obviously choose whichever tutor I wanted – and chose the one that I had the best relationship with.

What were the frequency, duration and structure of the meetings with supervisor? 

All of this was flexible and down to our own (me and the tutor’s) preferences, schedules and available times. Usually we would meet either in my tutor’s practice or at university, for a couple of hours, every 2 weeks or so, and go through the work. Sometimes I would send the latest over email the day before – just to give them the chance to take a look and make some notes – but this wasn’t always possible.

What challenges did you encounter?

The scale of my project and complexity and limited time. I practically managed to finish a volume of work 5 times greater than most of my peers. Practically in 6 months’ time, I did my urban planning dissertation project (a 65-page theoretical analysis, on the subject mentioned above), the urban design of my site, and the full architectural design of 9 large buildings, plus the presentations and graphics of all the aforementioned.

How did you manage the finances? There is NO tuition fee – Education is completely free in Romania – for all levels all the way up to PhD. One only needs to cover for living expenses. My parents covered my living expenses – which – in Iasi, Romania – amounted to less than 200GBP/ month. For example: monthly rent in student dorm: about 50 GBP- all expenses included (heating, electricity, broadband, and so on); local transport card – unlimited travel – 1 month – about 5GBP (yes, five, I am not missing a zero or two J). Some people worked part time/ full time to cover for some/ all of their living expenses. Given the fact that school work required at least 70 hours per week (total - both “home” and “in class”) meant that those who worked were not very good students, and usually missed/ skipped class.

Did you volunteer/work part-time job/intern while studying?

I did only a short stint just before year 6 in a small architectural practice in a small city. It is compulsory to work for 3 months in a supervised way in a practice – and submit reports of what exactly you have been doing there – to be accepted to begin your final/ graduation project and dissertation. I got the job through an older friend’s recommendation – she had already been working there.

How did you choose your accommodation? 

I chose a student residence on the university campus. In year 1 nobody is allowed to choose – one is simply allocated a place in a student residence in the campus – if one doesn’t wish to live elsewhere (rent out) – but after graduating year 1 – places are given based on the student’s past performance and grades – and one is allowed to choose. Based on my marks – I always finished among the top 5 people from my class – I always chose what I wanted….though there wasn’t much difference between residences. The ”commute” was a 20min walk – from campus to the Architecture School (all classes and exams took place in the same building – the architecture school building – up to year 5; in years 5 and 6 one might have to do some assignments in a few other buildings – all actually closer than the architecture building)

I considered several factors such as campus student life, proximity and contact with colleagues, proximity to the university, proximity to the shopping mall (there was 1 shopping mall in the city – right there next to campus), social contacts, costs – much lower than renting out while choosing my accommodation. 

Did you travel while studying? I had never visited another country before university. By the end of university, I had travelled to over 20 European countries, mostly for studying their culture, architecture and history. Did a 6 month long Erasmus exchange program in France (at ENSAP Lille), an international volunteer restoration work camp in St. Tropez (France) as well as summer universities and specialization courses every summer during my studies – such as at the Bauhaus Architecture school in Dessau, Germany.

How do you think the Master’s degree helped you? By allowing me to be a registered Architect in the UK, EU and RO. Without it I could have only worked as a “draftsperson”

Did the city you studied in play a major role during your study? Yes it did – Iași is a great city to study in – perfect size for a university city (a third of the city is student-population), cheap, interesting, cultural, laid-back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia%C8%99i

Could you tell us about your current work and future plans? I’m working as an Architect and BIM specialist in central London. Depending on the economic prospects in Britain after Brexit – I might move back to France. It was a gamble moving here – having to choose between Paris and London – between the Euro and the Pound Stirling – and the balance tipped in favour of the UK because the GBP was a more valuable currency at the time. Right after the Brexit vote, the Pound dropped by 20% in value – on international markets. What can I say? Very bad timing…my reasons for being here (and not elsewhere) keep disappearing.

Looking back was there anything you would have done differently? I really wish I had worked less and had more fun. I could have had a similar result by working smarter but less – and having more fun. I’d always been afraid to not be a workaholic and go above and beyond. Too bad.

What message would you like to give those planning their post-graduate studies? Think about actual job prospects and the career you want to pursue – and study the market; plan accordingly. Work smart, don’t work more! Have fun – in a smart way – these years are never coming back! Social interaction will never be as easy and with so many opportunities ever again – take full advantage of this! It’s all downhill after graduation – in terms of social life ☺ Seriously, no kidding…

Presenting our team's project at EBEC [European Best Engineering Competition] Romania & Republic of Moldova - National Stage

Presenting our team's project - and winning first place - at SUC 12 [Summer University Carinthia] - Villach, Austria

Architect's chat at Bauhaus Summer University, Dessau, Germany

Presenting a school project in front of the Dean of Harvard Universty - Graduate School of Architecture and Design

Specialization course in Kosice, Slovakia - international team

Year 1 - working in the studio - hand drafting

Year 1 or 2: working in the university student dorm

With colleagues from uni

Exploring Luxembourg's contemporary architecture - European Quarter

Study trip in Venice for the Architecture Biennale

[ontherun-writing]

[imitation - 1/2] Elijah Kamski/Reader

A/N: a little wordy, not much young!kamski romance but more like sexual tension and you getting manipulated; ah yes fun-- it’s more about the time he developed an android who could pass the turing test. this conference is prob wrong but ehhhh

this is just me ranting about the turing test and androids tbh

Summary: With the rise of androids, you find yourself in midst of making history as you are chosen by Elijah Kamski to work with him and develop an android who can pass the turing test. Despite being younger than you, he’s proven to be a force of power that has you struggling to find out ways (and reasons) to avoid being wrapped around his pinky.

It was near the end of your first year of college when you turned on the news, expecting another scandal about politicians or a news story about the recent climate change but instead learning that androids now existed. You continued to listen. You glanced down at your statistics homework for only a brief moment before scooting it to the side; you haven’t really touched it for the past hour, and you doubted you would especially now.

You weren’t the only one enthralled by the newscast; everyone in the room looked up from what they were doing to learn that the creator of the most advanced technology ever known to man, the man that will propel the world into another technological revolution was a sixteen year old. No, in fact, you quickly searched up on your phone, the kid wasn’t going to be sixteen until July.

There he was now, on the screen. A scruffy-looking fifteen-year old (three years younger than you, if you did the math right) with a hoodie and jeans was currently on his way to the grand opening of his self-made company Cyberlife. You imagine if he actually dressed up, if he wanted to because he was powerful enough to wear whatever he wanted without repercussions, he would actually look like the successful entrepreneur/scientist he was. His face was more mature that you thought. Confident, mature: the face of a man who knew what he created and what that would get him.

You never imagined actually living through history, but as you sat there, wondering how the existence of intelligent robots who looked exactly like humans would shape your future, it seemed evident that history was being made.

Out of all the things the introduction of androids changed in your life, you did not think that one of them would be you changing your major to psychology. It was a hard-earned change, something you had to convince your parents about, something you had to convince yourself about since you were so intent on becoming something else. But you had a feeling that the emergence of something as great as androids was a sign. You were by no means superstitious, but the existence of androids opened so many doors and offered you opportunities no one else but you, a college student, a person at the place where science flourished and education changed constantly, would have. Adding on to that, the question of their intelligence and the possibility of androids being more than just machines infected you with a passion that surpassed anything you ever dreamed of.

It was your fervent dedication to android psyche and learning about the way they ticked that got you into the Cyberlife research position your last year of college. Or so, that was what Elijah Kamski said when you finally met him face-to-face at the introduction of your research. You were twenty-one, he was barely eighteen. But he was the one that was leading you, and other much more qualified and big wig scientists and researchers on a tour of Cyberlife. The ride up the elevator itself took more than three minutes, and that alone told you enough about how important and powerful Cyberlife came to be in just two years.

“Cyberlife is holding about five-thousand androids per unit,” Elijah explained, walking them through the white themed halls that housed newly-made and often currently making androids. “We expect to be able to expand them to more than ten-thousand by the end of 2025, if all goes well.”

The people around you chuckled, even though there wasn’t really anything funny about the success he so obviously exuded, making your eyes dart to the side. The older man to your right, with the dignified lab coat and ID tag that you saw to present his several PhDs, was much more intelligent, and he seemed to agree the way he avoided meeting your gaze and focused solely on talking to anyone else but you. When you had introduced yourself to him out of common courtesy, the best you had gotten was a polite greeting, but the abruptness of the conversation left you stung.

The group eventually had the tour of Cyberlife, and now all of you were being crowded into a large conference room. Great, you thought dryly, feeling the implicit exclusion from the rest of the research team as they split off into groups of specialties. A few electrical engineers, a few PhD holders of technology and robotics, a huge group of biomedical engineers, and then… you, the psychologist major. There were most likely other psych PhD’s in the room, but you had no time to search for them when Elijah began the meeting.

You thought you were clear of dumb arguments when you got up this high on the ladder rung but evidently, that was not the case. Or maybe you were being too rough-- sure, you disagreed with them, but it didn’t really warrant your frustration, did it?

“The androids are intelligent,” one of the engineers argued, tapping the document in front of him. “I don’t see the need for us to develop superfluous components when we could just make improve on their strengths: their ability to do human-work.”

“I agree, the idea of developing their minds, it doesn’t seem reasonable-- what if they become too intelligent?”

The comment threw the conference into a loud murmur, and you felt words threatening to boil over. Did no one in this room care that they were on the verge of creating an intelligent life form? Was all they cared about was control and superiority? There was always a risk with every action, but if you believed, as rare as it was, that machines could… be alive, for a lack of better words, then they could feel intentions and not blame humans. With androids came android laws, and they would need to be protected, but right now the development of androids was more important.

You wanted to say something, speak your opinion, but there didn’t seem to be a time where your opinion could make a stand. You watched as Elijah, who had been quiet thus far, stand up. He switched to another image, the one of his latest android-- a pretty, blond, blue-eyed android-- and turned back toward the conference. “What of the turing test, then?” He said, scanning his eyes across the room. You tensed in your seat as his gaze lingered on you.

“I had thought our research was meant to bring useful data to the table. The test is subjective, is it not?” The older man with the PhD you had noticed before had the gall to have an exasperated tone, and something in you just snapped.

“Yes, the turing test is subjective.” You said firmly, leaving no room for interruptions, “But in this case, where we’re attempting to give androids the ability to be more than just a machine, the turing test is the best assessment in order to improve their abilities and their presence in our society.” You turned to the scientist, maintaining your neutral tone as you spoke calmly, “If the question of the day is ‘what can we do to expand android technology and better the uses of androids,’ then improving their sense of humanity will allow them to blend in and truly assimilate into society.”

“...is what I think,” you ended weakly, noticing the silence that followed.

You felt your heart leap up to your throat when you heard name being called.

“Please,” Elijah said, nodding toward your direction. You discretely wiped the sweat collecting on your palms on your pants. “Your input is intriguing.” Elijah watched you, unfaltering, and you felt big yet small at the same time as you became the center of attention. “What else do you think?”

Avoiding the gazes of anyone else in the room, you took an inaudible breath in before saying, “I do believe we can and should program an android to pass the turing test.” You looked deliberately at Elijah and continued as if all eyes weren’t on you. “If these androids are going to be welcomed into our homes and society and truly integrate, they will need to be able to indistinguishable from a human. Surely, we have to admit that other robots online such as ‘cleverbot’ is anything except unnerving despite the fact that it can appear as human 59% of the time, according to studies. It is only reasonable that our androids should at the very least, pass the turing test, and be way above the 75% mark if we are to ever have androids be a greater part of our lives yet also achieve something that has not been done yet.”

And there it was, the adrenaline in your veins, the rapid heartbeat in your best; when you started, there was little chance of stopping.

“In addition,” you blazed through, words leaving your lips eloquently, “an android who can pass the turing test will most likely further its usage in society by following orders that are not specifically programmed in its database because it can learn human mannerisms and adapt to situations. Androids need to be fluid, lest we want them to stick to menial jobs. Don’t we want them to understand us? Don’t we want them to be intelligent?”

“Don’t we want them alive? I--”

You faltered, stumbling over your wording. Alive? Alive? No, these people didn’t want living beings, they wanted-- “That is to say,” you finished, “machines that can help us in any situation that calls for them?”

“That, ladies and gentlemen,” Elijah said, letting out a quiet breath of laughter before continuing, “is and was one of my suggestions for today’s research topic.”

“However, if the group is not in consensus then we have no choice but to choose a different component to discuss.” Thoroughly embarrassed at being shut down after your outburst, you gripped the arms of the chair and looked at the desk, boring a hole in it. You knew you should have just kept your mouth shut-- “As for you…”

You spun your neck around and Elijah was behind you; your heart rate spiked again as he leaned down and smiled.

You didn’t know his eyes were teal.

“You and I… I feel like we’ll work well together. You’ll be my research partner for the turing test,” Elijah told you, then quickly leaned away and continued the conference and presentation as if he didn’t just extend an exclusive position to work with him to you. To you.

You hardly paid attention to the eyes that flickered toward your direction with how loud your blood was rushing in your ears.

The sun had set an hour ago, and the rest of the conference group had left long ago. As you stood in front of the android creator’s office door, you hesitated to knock. One, the room was dark and he probably wasn’t even in there. But... the situation from earlier kept replaying in your head, and for some reason, you struggled to provide an ample reason to why Elijah chose you, out of all people, that would convince you to go home, shut up, and just be happy. You wanted to deserve your position, and as much as you wanted it to be, you wanted him to hire you because of your mind, and not because… anything else. Convenience? Were you easy picking?

...Sex?

He was the strongest man in the country as of right now-- you rolled your eyes at your thoughts-- if he wanted to have sex, he wouldn’t choose you and he wouldn’t need to go to this elaborate ruse anyways. Deprecating, but hey, you were realistic. You were attractive, sure, but not drop-dead gorgeous.

“Are you going to come in any time soon?”

You retracted your hand from the door the moment you heard Elijah’s voice who was way too close and completely unexpected. You glanced at him and then at the door. “I thought you were--” You flushed red in embarrassment, as you were wan to do the entire day. “Well, I didn’t think it was right of me to enter your office without you in there.”

At your words, Elijah waved his hands to present himself, to which you quirked a smile at. “Here I am,” he said, amusement laced in his words as he opened the door to his office.

A large aquarium sat behind his desk, and the lights from the tank was the only way you could see where you were stepping. Shelves stood against each side of the wall, holding books and trinkets alike that you could not identify. Above, you could see lights installed, but as you watched Elijah lean on his desk, making no movement to turn the lights on, you guessed that your conversation with him would have to stay in the dark.

“Tell me,” Elijah began, “what brings you to my office?”

“I have one question,” you said. “I hope you have enough time.” Elijah motioned his hand for you to continue. “I wanted to ask you why exactly you hired me for this job,” you said uneasily, “why you chose me to be part of the research team, and-- and why you made me your research partner. I think we both know you could have anyone to work for you,” you said dryly, making Elijah chuckle at your bluntness. You crossed your arms and leaned against his desk, eyeing him warily. “You’re a successful man. I could even call you the man of the century. There’s no way you couldn’t just get what you want; you wouldn’t need to do anything besides existing.”

“I suppose there’s a difference between working for me versus working with me,” he replied enigmatically, walking around the room. “If I told you your mind intrigued me,” he said, tracing his finger on the books he kept out of antiquity, “would you believe me then?”

“You could have a multitude of doctors and professors with minds that could do something I would struggle with for hours,” you answered tiredly. You were winded by the intimidation they exuded from just being around them. Try as you might, they had no desire to talk to you, a person whose education amounted to nothing compared to them. There were nice ones, sure, ones that were willing to educate you, but it was still known that you were out of your league. “I-- I don’t mean to undermine your decision,” you said, dropping your eyes demurely, “but even I… have a hard time understanding your decision. What makes me… any different?”

At this, Elijah turned his head toward you and paused. You swallowed, not sure why the look he gave you, a mixture of amusement and something else, made your heart pick up the pace. He breathed deeply through his nose before continuing as cryptically as always. “In this world, do you think androids are well-accepted?” He asked you.

“Do I think they’re liked?” You furrowed your brows and spoke, “Sure. To an extent. You definitely did your job when you manufactured them to be useful and cost-efficient for the most part, so they helped out in families that could afford it. But the increase in unemployment is still hard for people to swallow.” You wet your lips before continuing quietly, “The number jumped to 20% just yesterday.”

Elijah looked at you in a way that set you on edge. He was compliant with your answer, but it wasn’t satisfactory, apparently, not to his standards. “Yes,” he said, “androids are useful, and we made them in our image.” He walked past you, around his desk before settling in his armchair. “But how do you think we treat them?”

“I-- well, we-- we don’t really know how to treat them,” you stammered, confusion swirling as you tried to decipher what he wanted you to say. “A lot of people are confused because they look like us so much, but at the same time--” you froze, and Elijah nodded slightly for your to finish your thought. You spoke slowly, “At the same time… they don’t treat androids well-- they treat them like…”

“Machines.”

Elijah looked pleased, and you barely stopped a strangled noise from rising up from your throat. You had to look away, knowing your face would only show how embarrassingly thrilled you were to have his approval. You were not, in any way, desperate enough to seek compliments, but… after feeling like your opinion didn’t matter and that you were never good enough in face of greater people, having the so-called ‘man of the century’ send such a look your way made you flustered. It was hard enough not to preen like a peacock.

“In your application to be part of our research,” Elijah said, pulling up your papers with a swipe of his hand on the holographic screen, “you wrote a small thesis regarding androids.” His face lit up by the soft light of the hologram, he looked up at you through the document. “You were only one who wrote about the possibility of their humanity.”

You mouth went dry. “What-- how was--” You cleared your throat and started again, impatient with yourself, “How was I the only one who wrote that? Isn’t the existence of androids-- is that not the beginning of the possibility that there may be the creation of another intelligent being?”

“I think you overestimate science,” he said, your name rolling across his tongue like he was eating candy. “These people may be interested in finding a breakthrough, but they’re more invested in their success as a scientist. Their status as an intellectual that has been elevated by being involved with me, and they wouldn’t dare say something that remotely disagreed with my ideas.” He rolled his eyes at the mention of brown-nosing, and for a moment you were reminded that he was only eighteen. Eighteen and powerful as hell, you thought, wondering how you got yourself into this.

“They’re afraid.”

Elijah took a sharp intake and stood up suddenly, making you flinch as you curled your hand around your wrist and pleaded for your heartbeat to stop quickening. “You, on the other hand, you’re actually interested in androids. Androids and their potential for humanity.” He continued, “I’ve said it repeatedly that androids are only machines, so there would be no reason for you to think that I would ever agree with you, but you wrote about it anyway. Defended your thesis and here you are,” he stepped closer to you, “with me, on the verge of another breakthrough.”

You breathed in deeply when he stood in front of you, shadows shrouding his face with the blue glow in the background. He looked much older like this, and if it were possible, even more intimidatingly out of your league. In more ways than one. “I… I look forward to working with you,” you stammered, not really knowing what you were saying except that it was what you should say in these situations.

At this, Elijah smiled and backed off, turning on the lamp at his desk, finally bringing some light in the room. “Your expertise in psychology, or more specifically, the human psyche will be greatly beneficially to our research as we try to have androids imitate human behavior,” he continued without pause, making you feel like you imagined the predatory gaze and suffocating gaze.

“Yes,” you could only reply. “I hope I can contribute as much as I can.” You glanced at your phone and began to excuse yourself, heading toward the door with quick steps.

“I wonder what you’ll think of this later, the making of androids,” Elijah said airily as you reached the door. “I wonder if you know how your words will shape the world.”

You opened your mouth to question him further. What did he mean? Surely, he didn’t believe that you, a fourth-year college student, could possibly have an impact on anything. “I-- The turing test would have still been your main objective with or without me here,” you said, though a prickly feeling crawled up your back anyways. You resisted the need to shiver.

Instead of responding, he merely smiled with a meaning you couldn’t decipher. Perturbed, you told him to have a good night. As you closed the door behind you, you heard him say lastly, “Looking forward to working with you.”

You had a feeling that you were biting more than you could chew, but you couldn’t understand why.

[mrsandok]

Making Sense of Good Things

My heart has been full with nothing but positivity lately.  For myself, my friends, and for what’s to come.  Nevertheless, there’s some serious stress attached to these early days of this new stage in my life.

Ever since taking up Buddhism, it’s been an exercise in learning what makes me happy and what doesn’t.  I’m finally able to begin to articulate what makes me happy and how to maintain it.  There’s definitely some grueling parts of the introspective effort to look at my life when confronting the things I don’t like about myself; nevertheless, it’s healthy to acknowledge and move toward change. 

Stoicism has also helped knowing that I’m not in control of a lot of things in my life and I’ve learned to accept that.  I’ve always sought complete control in different, if not all, parts of my life.  It’s been an active effort to…just…let…things…be.

I’m happy my friends are in a similar place in life with me.  Mayo just got a UX job.  Bryan is settling back in Cali.  Sean is finishing a two year music project.  Taro is settling into his PhD program. And me...

I feel like I’m a new teacher again.  

I went from a 20+ person department to a department of 6.  Not only that, being back in person with a full classroom for the first time since March ‘20 is surreal. 

Students and staff alike are trying to find their footing.  Some are faking the funk saying that they have it handled.  Others, like me, are open with how hard this shit is.

It’s so different.  I dedicated 16 years of my life to English.  

I felt pretty far removed to those 16 years during the first few days.  The class demographics are so different.  I have English learners, different grade levels, a variety of mild to severe students with special needs...with...one...curriculum of art/photography. 

It’s wild.

I want to be selfish and think solely about myself and continue to do my thing like I was doing during summer but I have a job to educate these students and not disappoint their families or the administration that trusted me with this position.

I’m slowly settling in and enjoying the moment for what it is:  Weird and funny while reminding myself that I’m in it for the long haul. 

Summer Sandōk is 290 days away.

Some shit that’s amusing to me:

- I’ve always found it weird to ask another person permission to use the bathroom.  I’m sure it’s weird for them…having been at home for a year and a half back to school and to these rules that a stranger adult imposes on them.

- It took me four days to remember how to do a seating chart!!!  I kept making all these careless errors and confusing students but I wasn’t able to tweak it in a short time so I just ran with it.  I was so used to Google Meet populating an Excel sheet of who was here and who wasn’t.  Now I’m dealing with a bunch of masked students rather than students having their cameras off.  Haha.

No one said this shit was gonna be easy.

I get a bunch of comments saying “at least you won’t be grading essays anymore!”

I smile as a friendly form of agreement hoping it’s a congratulatory expression rather than one coming from envy.

But going back to the story of Buddha…everyone suffers.

Sure—English teachers suffer from the amount of essay grading they have to do.  But we all suffer in our own specific way.  (Poor people suffer because they’re poor / rich people suffer because they’re poor / etc.)

I’m definitely suffering from exiting the pandemic and trying to make sense of my new department and role at the high school.

This time of being nervous, anxious, and exhausted will pass and I’ll be able to work a job that will put me in a better place mentally

As I reflect about my new role, I realize how fucking stressful my job of being an English teacher was.  It took years for me to humble myself and realize school isn’t about me--it’s about reaching the students and getting them to care about themselves, the community, and the world.  That shit is fucking exhausting.

Five years of dealing with Trump’s rhetoric not based in facts in my ELA classroom was mentally taxing.  My job as an educator revolves around creating independent critical thinkers and if what’s dominating the news, social media, and policy was that orange dude--it would have been fucking irresponsible if I ignored it.  Especially in a class focused on rhetoric and logical fallacies.  

I had the blessing of my administration with my approach; nevertheless, I was putting a mark on my back knowing my values are showing on my sleeves and it was prone to parent complains about their child’s commie teacher.

I somehow came out unscathed.  

I attribute it to me making a point that I’m not trying to instill my values on them.  I’m attempting to give them ways to explore who they are rather than blindly listening to their parents and/or tv while telling a story of how I became the person I am today.  

I wrote about that in an earlier post during the pandemic where former students were asking me “how to feel” about the George Floyd protests.

My answer was always a version of “Figure that shit out yourself.  I’m going through it with you.”

That extends to my teaching.  I feel like I have a good understanding of my life  and the story I’m creating for myself and it took years after college.  I hope they’re asking themselves existential questions knowing they’ve watched plenty of people that lived the American Dream get shattered during the pandemic.  

As shitty as it may sound, I feel pretty comfortable keeping up with current events but not necessarily having to tread on thin ice when bringing into the classroom.  

I can definitely incorporate it; however, it’s a much different focus than the head on approach I was doing in English when I compared nonfiction to the fiction we’re reading.

There isn’t any fiction in what we’re doing right now.  I’m more concerned about them getting to the point where they can engage with art criticism as well as create their own art.

This is a comforting feeling knowing that stressful part of my life of trying to make sense of the world in my classroom may be over.  

I don’t necessarily need to bask in my anxiety.  Haha

--

It’s very surreal how I got here.  But, I like to remind myself that I earned it based on my work ethic, pedagogy, and my unwillingness to compromise who i am. 

Some things that are stressing me out is facing one of my favorite mantras head on.

“Don’t assume people share the same values as you.”

Some of these students don’t give a shit about art and may never give a shit about art.  And that’s OK.

My first day spiel revolved around the fact that I’ve been relentlessly chasing my artistic side ever since earning my undergrad.

Art has always made me happy.  It was so silly of me to give it up.

I can’t assume that students will find happiness in art.  That realization somewhat took some of the excitement of my new position away--but at least it’s grounded in reality.

Now I just have to refocus my personal pursuits alongside the “professional” part of my life of being an educator.

---

I had my first lecture concerning the principles of design.  It was such a good feeling knowing that this is pretty much the foundation for the rest of the year.  In fact…it’s the foundation for the rest of my career if I remain a photography teacher.

I’m really excited for what’s to come.  I inherited this program during the perfect time where people have faced changes and challenges head on so they’re receptive to my approach—whatever that approach ends up being.

There are definitely personal goals I’ve applied to myself during this transition that all revolve around the idea of “taking better care of myself.”

--

Aside from my main career, I want to continue to foster the other creative parts in my life.

I want to do a much needed website revamp that gives a nice preview of who I am with links to my mixtapes, photography, art, and writing.

My primary audience is me; however, I do want to model it as my Q4 project to my students which centers around taking control of your online identity and using as a tool to network and be proactive with chasing their goals.

--

I also want to start living a more analog life.

Doom scrolling seems engrained in me at this point—I have to remember how much happier I am when I’m productive and step away from the screen.

Memes, news, and even small talk with instagram friends will always be nice; however, it isn’t everything.

I disabled story replies when I felt my stress and anxiety increasing during my first week at school.  It was so liberating not to deal with distracting small talk.

I still like the idea of adding to my story simply because I enjoy how Instagram archives these moments rather than me flooding my very curated (red) theme. 💅

Engaging with my online audience is fun, too--but only when I’m in a good place to balance it in my personal life.

--

Memes—or any account for that matter—that vie for your attention is frustrating in a meta sense because I don’t want to be part of the giving end of stroking someone’s ego through likes and attention.  

It will always be vacuous.  Some accounts get it, though.  Whitepeoplehumor’s kevin knows the opportunity he was given and is making the best of it without compromising and “selling out” in his own way.

That’s what I want.

I want to sell out in my own way and not have a single person’s opinion about me matter.

Maybe one day.

--

I’m definitely an extrovert that feeds off other people’s energy.  That’s what made me fall in love with DJ’ing and realizing that this is a skill a lot of DJs lack.  A lot of DJs are terrible because they’re not humble and think they have the best taste of music while disregarding the crowd.

But I think I’ve changed during the quarantine.  I don’t necessarily want to please strangers and vibe off their energy.  I’m not sure I care that much.  Haha.

I’ve been reflecting on my life before the pandemic.  I was making $$$ while being able to balance my teaching and DJ life.  However, I’m not sure if that necessarily made me happier.  It allowed me to eat Sugarfish daily and other empty activities like that.  But, during the quarantine, I learned I reallllly liked the opportunity to do nothing on the weekend as a sort spiritual reset.

Weekend obligations definitely serve as a distraction from the stress I face during the week.  I rationalized this as a healthy distraction because it gets me PAID

But…not quite sure if it makes me happy especially since I’m sooo tired of ‘90s hip hop or even being forced to play EDM when I never fucking want to do that.

I wish I could get paid for my twitch sets.  Too bad the (bored) audience with nothing to do and no where to go is back to real life.

I thank the people that enjoyed my twitch sets every chance I get.  It really helped ground me during the pandemic.

In fact, Quarantine Fridays were definitely one of the happiest parts in my life where I was able to connect with friends, new and old, during those trying-ass-times.

It’s surreal to look back at how I spent 1.5 years in this one bedroom apartment with a shitload of plants.  

I’ll do a reflection post on what that meant to me later. <3

[thisnerdsadventures]

a summer to remember

hello friends, i definitely just abandoned this whole blog, now didn't i

well i am happy to report that i am still alive, and am thriving!

Here's a rundown of everything that has been going on:

[inserting a readmore because this is long af]

May

So in May, I was definitely just all over the place because I was 1) trying to finish a paper published in a conference!! it literally drove me insane. anyways, then i had to go and finish a 78 page thesis, which involved a really convoluted timeline because i had to finish it ~ a week before the actual deadline so my PI could read it over, but then i had to finish it a few days before THAT so my PhD supervisors could read it over, which meant that i had like one (1) week to write like. all of it.

Luckily I had most of the first half already written, during whatever shitshow April was (April was a lot of coding for the paper, and then not having time to write my thesis). But THEN i had to organize all the data from my own personal experiments, make figures, and draft the entire results section. AND i had like two final reports to do for my class, so my last weeks of academia looked like....

Of course, the day before my thesis was due, I pulled an all nighter, because, of course. What other way would I ever end my academic career. Submitted it though, and I graduated! [LINK TO MY THESIS]

Also! I got vaccinated and felt like death for a whole day, but then my friend came over and we ate fried chicken and watched this show called Miraculous, which is a kids show from France, but for some reason is actually hilarious and really entertaining. Then I felt better, so I proceeded to work on my thesis.

Also, I guess I should talk a little bit about the class I took this semester, which was an industrial organization economics class. We looked at things like how different markets are organized, why they are that way, what market concentration means, how mergers affect competition, and what kind of effect that may impose on consumers. For the final case study (which, I will say, I wrote like 2000 words in a single day, so . applause for me), I looked at the Nvidia-ARM merger and how that may or may not affect competition in the GPU market, the CPU market, and the mobile chip market. I think my analysis was a little bit more surface level, which was fine for me, since I'm by no means an economics expert or even remotely should have any expectations at all, but I read a lot and learned a lot and that's the goal!

So yes, my brief excursion into the field of economics was overall positive, I feel like I learned a lot and now I can read financial articles about the tech industry and not be completely lost, which, again, was the goal.

But yes, May was a lot of work, and once it wrapped up, I got to spend a lot of time with friends post-vaccination! After the 1 or 2 week mark after my second dose, I started going back to the gym, especially to play basketball with folks, which I had missed a lot. I spent a lot of time at my old dorm just hanging out, and got to have a cute salmon dinner over at my other friend's place. And we made cheesecake too.

June (MA->NY->MA->CA)

I finally went to visit my best friend in New York. I hadn't seen her in > 400 days, so it was really a very anticipated event, except we saw each other across the crosswalk, but then the light took like five minutes to turn green, so it was really anticlimactic. Anyways, we ended up bumming around New York and Long Island for a week, and it was nice to spend some time with her after such a long gap.

We spent a day at a vineyard and I fell asleep so

After getting back to Boston, my mom came back from Taiwan to help me move out of my apartment. It was a lot of finding people to sell things to, sweating because it was very hot that week, and praying everything would work out (it did). I also got to have a few final meals with various friends and my mom and I got to take one last lark down the Infinite, which I was really grateful for because it was the first time visitors got to go inside campus in over a year.

Also got into my school's MBA program! Yes i applied to a deferred program (which is like you get into a program, but you don't have to go for 2-5 years, as a way of getting in right after undergrad/grad school, but then accumulating some work experience first). It was hilarious, I was literally shopping in my campus store for a new sweatshirt and I got a phone call from the admissions office saying I got in. My mom had been pushing me to apply to grad programs, and I didn't tell her about it because I didn't know if I would actually follow through. But I got to surprise her with the news, and she was so happy she did the whole "calling all the relatives" thing again.

After flying home, I told myself I'd read more and exercise more, which I have been doing. I got a membership at Planet Fitness, which has been really good for me (going 3x a week), and I've made my way through at least 5 books this summer so far. My holds list at my local library is literally insane. (For recs, I recently read Normal People, which I absolutely devoured, and In the Dream House, which hit really hard for me.)

This summer was also really about reconnecting with high school friends. All three of us were unemployed, with plans to come in the fall, so we were all free to hang out all the time. We started out at the local library planning out a road trip, and we worked out a few times together, and a few coffee dates too. We took a fun day trip down to LA one day, and we visited Malibu, went to the Getty, hit up some local food places in the city. Driving down the PCH with Taylor Swift blaring and the windows down on a hot June day, just hits so different. There is nothing like it.

My friend's birthday was in June, so we put together a little video for her and bought some jewelry, and had a Zoom call to celebrate. Then I got BBQ with some friends and sat in the parking lot eating ice cream until 11 at night just trading stories from our pasts. It felt like the perfect summer life, just staying out until whenever, grabbing food wherever we wanted, with friends I had had for literally a whole decade.

It was already a really good summer, but then July. July was crazy.

July (CA -> MI -> CA -> NV -> CA -> WA -> OR -> CA)

So one Sunday morning, I woke up to a text

Actually, I'm going to do a separate post on the whole Michigan trip because that sh** was on another level of spontaneous, impulsive, crazy life stuff. But anyways, so July started off with a trip to Michigan to visit my friends, and then I came back for the 4th, had 36 hours of rest before my high school friends and I went on a road trip.

This road trip was a little ambitious. We hit spots all up California, from hiking in Sequoia Nat'l Park to Kings Canyon, driving up to Sacramento and visiting art museums, and then going up to Tahoe but staying in Nevada, going kayaking and hiking and sitting on the beach for hours. It was reallllllly hot, but luckily I don't think it ever broke 90 degrees. The views were beautiful, especially at Kings Canyon. The drive in, you're surrounded by huge rock walls, with a thin river rushing by next to you. The hike itself literally feels like you're in nature, like the trail is somewhat defined but not paved, there are no sounds of traffic, the path isn't heavily trafficked so we were the only ones there for the most part. We even saw a deer and washed our faces in the river. Throughout the whole thing, we climbed into so many waterfalls, trying not to slip on rocks.

I hadn't been to Sacramento in over a decade, but it was a cute day trip. There isn't a ton to do there, but it was a nice reprieve from the constant driving and nature. We visited the Leland Stanford Mansion, the Crocker Art Museum, and Old Town Sacramento. A good chance to get a nice coffee, a sit-down meal, and some air conditioning. At Tahoe, we went kayaking on Pope Beach, with the clearest water I have ever seen, followed up by a hike up to a beautiful view of the Lake.

On our way back, we stopped at a lot of interesting places, like small towns like Lee Vining, where we found an Upside Down House; Manzanar, the site of an old Japanese internment camp during the WWII era (which also hit hard); and Randsburg, a literal living ghost town. Overall, getting to travel with my friends finally was so fun, they were so much fun to be around for five days, and getting to explore so much of California was so fun - even though I'd been here for so long, I never knew these places existed.

So I came back and had around 48 hours to recover before my mom and I took a trip up to the Pacific Northwest!

I've always wanted to visit Seattle, and figured I'd hit Portland on the way too. We originally wanted to go to Hawaii but it got so expensive by the middle of the summer, so we decided to stay a little closer to home (probs the better decision bc I was already so tired by this point).

Seattle! Got to visit Pike Place Market many times, grab some coffee at the original Starbucks, see Mt. Rainier, and grab food with three friends! Also went to Bainbridge Island for a day which was SO cute - got to do an olive oil/balsamic vinegar tasting, which sounds so extra, but is actually really unexpectedly fun. At Starbs, I did a cold brew flight, which resulted in a rough night of tossing and turning for me, but I think it was worth it. Other things included the Pinball Museum, Space Needle, and Chihuly Glass Museum!

So I lowkey really wanted to visit Portland because I wanted to achieve a long-lasting dream of seeing an NWSL game in person. So I went to the Thorns Pride game!!

The Thorns fanbase is actually insane, I cannot express to you, like there's this whole fan section that actually did synchronized cheers and routines and was actually ROARING when they scored the entire game. I swear the audience was actually watching them at points instead of the match. Overall, the stadium was going crazy, like I thought I was at a tied Celtics-Bucks game with how loud it was in there. Also I swear, Ali Krieger made eye contact with me and waved.

In addition to that, Portland also has a huge rose garden, a nice Japanese tea garden, a lot of good donut stores and a huge bookstore, so all very up my alley. We also took a day trip to see Mt. Hood and more waterfalls!!

That's a summary of the SEA - PDX trip. Once I got home, my high school friends and I did not waste any time on reuniting to hang out - we went and played ball, grabbed lunch, and then coffee, and then did the same exact thing like two days later and watched a bunch of TikToks, and then spent a whole day at the beach to send my good friend off to medical school in Arizona. They somehow convinced me to go in the water and I got body checked by a wave.

Saw this sculpture on the beach and teared up a little

So proud of my friends for making it to med school, I am so excited to see them at their white coat ceremonies and beyond, I swear I will cry at every step of the way I'm so happy for them. Now that July is pretty much over, most of my fun summer plans are too, and I finally get a chance to catch my breath from that busy busy month. Spending a lot of time watching the Olympics and trying to muster up the motivation to start a fulltime job in < 1 month!!

Overall, I feel like I've been having a really solid summer given the year that was the covid year. I had a Lot of fun, literally probably two summers worth of fun consolidated into one. I think in the beginning of the year, I really wanted this summer to be good, and I didn't have a lot of set plans for the summer, even by the end of May. But somehow, things came together, like Really together, and I had the best summer of my life in this summer 2021. On top of that, I'm reading more than I have since probably middle school, I feel the most in shape that I ever have, I can DRIVE NOW. Only thing that would've made it better was if I got to go back to Taiwan to visit the fam, but unfortunately I can't go back because of strict travel restrictions there and they had a COVID outbreak too :/ I still got around 3.5 weeks of summer to go, so we'll see how the rest goes :)

[coldtomyflash]

Just finished reading Tumbling Together again. I love that crazy fic so much! I was wondering. What is your head canon for after Barry finished his PhD program? Has Len been pardoned by then? Is he working with the flash with the big enemies? Does Barry not go back to the CCPD? Have they broken up because life got in the way? I'm always curios about what happens after he graduated and the big problems in their relationship pop back up. Sorry for the questions. Thanks for giving us such a fun fic

One of the reasons I give fics that sort of “open” ending is in part so I don’t have to think too hard about these sorts of questions hahaha. Because the answer is that multiple answers are simultaneously true, in my head? Every answer is true, depending on circumstance, on what happens next, on what they want. And that’s the joy of endings - that’s when the reader (or viewer) gets to take over the story for themselves and transform it.

But let’s see…

I like to think the most likely case that after the end of Tumbling Together, Barry would have eventually returned to the CCPD after getting his PhD, now specializing in metahuman chemistry or biochemistry. It makes the most sense to me that’s where he’d end up returning to, and he’d be welcomed back with all that new and specialized knowledge.

I don’t think Len and Barry would ever break up once getting together in that fic. They weather a lot of hijinx together but also some real (and genuinely heavy) stuff, and have the full support of their loved ones by the end of the story. They’re not about to fall out of love, so they’d make everything else work.

But those “big problems” would exist not just when Barry returns to the CCPD but the whole time, y’know? Len’s still leading the Rogues and dating The Flash, who doesn’t have to worry about his day job for the years he’s in school, but still…

There’d be a lot to navigate with the Rogues side of things, I think? Lisa and Mick know Barry is The Flash, but the rest of the Rogues don’t, even though they know and like Barry. There would be some serious need for Len to keep Rogues stuff strongly to the side. 

But The Rogues in the CW and also that fic aren’t really an ‘organized’ group or anything, either? It’s not like Len is in charge of a group of dangerous criminals who all consider him like their fearless leader and boss and feel a strong sense of loyalty to him. It’s more like… he plans jobs/heists and amasses favors and befriends powerful people in his own way, but he chooses who he wants to work with and what he does. People defer to him out of respect and fear and he has a lot of cash to throw around when needed, but there’s no real sense of… him owing them honesty, or vice versa. It’s a more transactional thing.

So he can keep it relatively separate, I think. He’s still stealing, but doing it on his own terms and making sure no one gets hurt. Mick’s trying to go relatively clean anyway because of Aiden, Lisa’s never been a concern in that regard (and less so now that she’s with Cisco) even though she drives getaway for him, and even Shawna’s in school. So the ones who are close and he cares about? Aren’t a concern. And Len’s still working alongside dangerous people like Sam and Rosa and Mark sometimes, when he’s in the mood to be showy, but it’s all business with them and closeness isn’t an issue? 

So…. most of the actively criminal people in Len’s orbit (outside Mick and Lisa) know he’s dating Barry but only in a sort of tangential way that doesn’t seem important to them, like Barry doesn’t come and deliberately inject himself in Len’s criminal world except for the odd date night or when something’s awry, so there’s no real concern about anyone else discovering that Barry is The Flash. 

And if one of those more dangerous metas found out, or someone like Axel or James or any of the other non-meta criminals in Len’s life, Len would… well, protecting Barry’s identity would be pretty pivotal to him, honestly. It would depend on the circumstance, but it wouldn’t be a question of them being like “how could you betray us like this, Len?” because that’s not the relationship he has with these folks, it’d be much more of a “you think this information can be used as blackmail against me and Barry but the truth is that if you even think about threatening us, I will find a way to make it look like an accident well enough that even Barry and his topnotch forensic skills won’t be able to tell I took you out.”

But then… on Barry’s side, when he does go back to work… hmm. He’s been dating a criminal for long enough that even Singh can’t cover for him or hide it, really. Like they’re definitely living together and it’s definitely known to enough detectives in the precinct that Barry is with Captain Cold (which has got to boggle their minds, seriously). So welcoming him back, how that would go down…

First, Len hasn’t been arrested for anything since before they started dating and his records were still erased and all that (since the fic ignores season 2 so Len never got sent to Iron Heights after that erasure), so he sort of doesn’t exist on paper still. The CCPD has to know he’s not innocent - he’s Captain freaking Cold, still - but they have zero evidence or ability to convict him of that?

Or maybe… okay maybe, yeah sure he’s Captain Cold and still a thief and everyone sort of knows that, but maybe, while Barry was busy getting his PhD, something like, idk, an alien attack from The Dominators still happened, and/or one or two other world-ending level crises, and Captain Cold, Heatwave, and Golden Glider all end up getting pardoned for their assistance to the heroes’ side throughout the crisis. 

So Len can just walk right into the CCPD like a smug bastard because until/unless they can catch him at the scene of a crime or until he leaves new evidence behind or gets caught on camera or something - there aren’t even any warrants on him - then there’s no way they can arrest him. He’s a thief and a Rogue and literally everyone knows it, but until they can catch him in something, he’s free as a bird.

In that case, Joe would glower every time he walks in, honestly. He’s long-since given Barry and Len his blessing but that doesn’t mean he likes it when Len’s a dick for the sake of being a dick. Singh would want to bang his head against the wall because of this whole thing but hey, at least it means he got to re-hire Barry, even if HR and Internal Affairs both raised their eyebrows at it. 

And Barry would pretend to be oblivious to the tone of voice his coworkers use when they say “Barry, your boyfriend is here” because the fact that Len can just walk into the precinct pisses off at least 5 separate detectives who’ve worked on various cases relating to him. Eddie might genuinely be oblivious to how much his coworkers hate Len, or his own optimism might just outshine them all, but he always gets up to greet him and say hello when Len drops in, and he’s never shy to remind people about that time Len helped save the world.

(The criminals Len works with find it bemusing that one day he can fight alongside The Flash and the next he’s planning the most elaborate schemes to trap, undermine, or otherwise discombobulate him without any apparent sympathy beyond “we don’t kill him” and Mick always just snorts like “if only they knew”).

[shirlleycoyle]

The Made-Up Language That Accidentally Became Real: The Story of Klingon

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Not too long ago, I drove by a radio station with an apostrophe in its call sign. Reading it aloud, it seemed the apostrophe affected an actual word, but my inner Star Trek fan immediately decided it simply must be a Klingon radio station.

Sadly, it was just a country station, but the experience prompted a silly thought: what if there were an actual Klingon radio station? Surely some dedicated Trekkers around the world may have done the same thing with the Klingon language that some enterprising (get it?) Star Trek fans did with folk music decades before.

The world is a bit bleak at the moment, so we decided to get a little nerdy this week and dive into an entirely new frontier. So grab a bowl of your favorite Klingon cuisine and a barrel of blood wine, because we’re exploring something a bit different: the Klingon language and its interesting impact on modern pop culture.

1985

The year in which The Klingon Dictionary saw its initial publication. The book includes grammar, vocabulary, and a vital pronunciation guide for the language. The book did not, however, provide any exercises or practice guides for actually learning the language. This likely decreased its efficacy for actually learning the language, but it was probably intended more as a guide for actors and a fun collectible for Trek fans than anything else. The book inspired at least one current Internet Archive user to create a HyperCard stack to help them learn the language in convenient electronic form. A second edition saw publication in 1992.

How a professional linguist transformed some gibberish into a constructed language

Like any story worth telling, the history of the Klingon language begins with improvisation. Some reports—including the DVD commentary for Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director’s Cut—maintain the genesis of the language rests with James Doohan (who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original show) and the film’s associate producer Jon Povill. The two had a meeting where they established a few basic words the aliens would utter throughout the movie. Doohan recorded the words for veteran Trek actor Mark Lenard, who portrayed a Klingon captain in the film. Lenard transcribed the words phonetically and practiced them to nail the delivery of his lines in the film. Doohan and Povill didn’t develop the language further. That honorable duty befell another man who wouldn’t enter the picture until Wrath of Khan’s editing phase.

Enter legendary linguist Marc Okrand, the creator of the Klingon language. Okrand began his career teaching linguistics courses in Santa Barbara, CA. Following his stint as a university teacher, he joined the Smithsonian Institute for a while researching California Native American languages that hadn’t been spoken for a long time. Following that, he began to work with The National Captioning Institute on developing closed captioning for educational purposes and the hearing impaired (look for a future issue of Tedium on the subject). In the midst of a fruitful career, Okrand stumbled almost accidentally into working on Star Trek through his captioning work.

Though it didn’t make its debut until the third Trek film, the genesis of the Klingon language in its current form actually lies with The Wrath of Kahn. In that film, there were two Vulcan characters speaking to each other in a corridor. The producers shot the scene with the actors speaking English but later decided to change it to the Vulcan language. The trouble was, a Vulcan language didn’t exist. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Marc Okrand would soon become the hero the film didn’t realize it needed.

Okrand believes luck played a significant role in gaining the opportunity in the first place. He was only in California for one week but had nothing to do for three days. He had two friends making Star Trek who wanted his opinion about expanding the alien languages within the film. It turned out to be a major headache for the film’s producers and they needed to resolve it within the week—the same week in which Okrand was visiting the state.

In 2018, Okrand told The Washington Post how he became involved in bringing alien languages to the franchise:

My real job, the one that really paid the bills, was closed captioning. The first program we did live was the Oscars, 1982. They flew me out to L.A., and I was having lunch with a friend who worked at Paramount. She and I go out to lunch, and the fact that I was a linguist came up—I have a PhD in linguistics. They wanted a linguist to come and make up gobbledygook that matches the lip movements. And I said, “I can do that!”

He only received a few hundred dollars for his work, but he delighted in his experience teaching Mr. Spock how to speak Vulcan. But following the success of the second film, something unexpected happened: Okrand received a call from Harve Bennett—the writer/producer of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock—asking him to create a full language for the Klingons to use in the film. As he told interviewer EC Henry in 2016, “every once in a while in life, you’re presented with a decision that’s really easy to make. That was one of those!”

The Search for Spock and most subsequent Star Trek programs featured Okrand’s language in some form, including the most recent Trek films up to Star Trek Into Darkness. He was still involved in Star Trek Beyond, too, creating several different languages for that film.

petaQ

The most common Klingon curse word. In the spirit of Nicolas Cage’s new Netflix show, we simply had to include this one. Usually written as P’Takh—Klingons sure do love their apostrophes—it’s always used as a noun in the show to insult other characters. It’s pronounced more like “pet-ock” with an extremely harsh guttural sound at the end. According to the Klingon Language Institute, the root of the word is “taQ” meaning “to be weird,” or indicating some kind of strangeness. But it’s more likely that it’s merely a common, interchangeable insult or as Enterprise suggests, it means “enemy.” A good runner up is probably “Qapla/Q’Plah”—the Klingon equivalent of “Have a Nice Day.” Imagine that on a bumper sticker or a T-shirt.

Examples of journals sold by the Klingon Language Institute; the institute also offers translations of well-known books in the language.

The language eventually grew much larger than the property for which it was developed

It may be difficult to believe, but per the Guinness Book of World Records, Klingon is the most widely spoken fictional language in the world. It even has an entire, well-known institute dedicated to learning Klingon.

The language itself is harsh, guttural, and bears some resemblance to a mix of Yiddish, some Native American languages, and German. Anytime Okrand approached sounding similar to any of real language, he adjusted the Klingon words to differentiate them from sounding like real-life language, resulting in some of the very unique words one hears in Klingon.

What differentiates Klingon from other constructed languages—like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish languages or some of the constructed languages in Game of Thrones—is the piecemeal nature of the language’s construction. Okrand designed the language as needed, based on the needs of the episodes and films for which he was consulted. It didn’t see further realization or development until much later.

The Klingon Dictionary took the idea to another level entirely, even if it didn’t fully function as a learner’s guide to the language. The book’s success led to other publications like the audiobooks Conversational Klingon and Power Klingon. 1997 brought the long-anticipated follow-up to the dictionary, Klingon for the Galactic Traveler. There’s even an interactive CD-ROM Star Trek: Klingon, whose third disc features a Klingon language lab.

There haven’t been any additional Klingon language books or multimedia since, but a group of speakers formed The Klingon Language Institute in 1992 to further the learning and development of the language over time. The Pennsylvania-based institute isn’t a loose organization of Trek enthusiasts; it’s a full non-profit organization dedicated to legitimately teaching Klingon through lessons, translators, and other online resources. They even offer a Klingon Language Certification Program.

Before going fully electronic, KLI published a quarterly journal, poetry, and fiction in the language and at one time even offered a $500 scholarship. It’s founder, Lawrence M. Schoen, is an accomplished speaker who currently acts as the institute’s director. KLI’s members still meet up once a year to lecture, teach, learn and discuss the language—all while having a good time, of course. Per KLI, only a few people are fluent enough in Klingon to actually speak it conversationally.

Okrand maintains a positive attitude and relationship with speakers of the language, but as he told Henry back in 2016, he “doesn’t speak it very well” because of the way he made it up in the first place. The language was built to one line at a time to suit the story of the show. He’d coach actors to say the lines, get through the process, and move on. Then he forgot some of it, so writing the book required more effort on his part to not only flesh out the language but almost rebuild it from some of his previous work on Trek.

In several interviews, Okrand is clearly proud of his work, but would definitely do it a bit differently if given the opportunity. He would have thought more about the structure and design of the language rather than simply creating words on the fly and revising them later. Despite the movie-prop nature of its construction, Klingon managed to evolve.

Okrand is still involved in the language as it continues developing, and people still ask him about creating new words to grow the language. At this point, Klingon is a developing constructed language that’s cemented its place in society outside of Star Trek. Okrand realizes it’s much larger than he ever intended, telling a convention in 2016 about the future of the language:

“At some point, it’ll grow without me, and that’s fine.”

“When I wrote the dictionary, I thought people would put it on their coffee table and reference it for fun, but a few years later, I found out they were dissecting and analyzing it. And thanks to the Internet, people were meeting on message boards to talk in Klingon.”

— Marc Okrand, the creator of the Klingon language. In a 2013 interview with Mashable, he marveled at how far the language he built for the Star Trek movies took off in real-life. While Okrand still referenced the dictionary while working the films at that time, he still asserts many other people speak the language much better than he does.

The Klingon Dictionary, because of course. Image: Bookshop

Dedicated speakers and technology helped the Klingon language transcend pop culture

Klingon was still going strong as the internet developed into its present form. Per Okrand, the rise of forums and internet chat actually may have helped breathe further life into the language. It’s obvious that Trek fans love it, but what’s most interesting about the language is how common it is among non-Star Trek fans. For instance, linguists and language enthusiasts love studying it or teaching it to family, like the PhD candidate who taught his young son Klingon to better understand the language. The man, D’Armond Speers, became academically interested in the language after seeing a flyer for the KLI.

That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of fans who enjoy using the language and taking it to the higher levels. Capitalizing on the new age of smartphones, Simon & Schuster released The Klingon dictionary and language suite (containing the dictionary, Conversational Klingon, and other digital tools) for iPhone around 2009. Running from $3.99 to $11.99, iPhone users could learn Klingon in digital style.

Nowadays, DuoLingo and Youtube offer several ways to learn Klingon, from visual lessons to interactive studying.

On the pop culture front, some students of the Klingon language decided to translate Hamlet into the language to astonishing success. There was an insane Pizza Hut commercial spoken (and written!) entirely in Klingon. And you know something is truly popular when Rhett & Link feature it on Good Mythical Morning. And if you’re looking to groove to some Klingon-inspired tunes, you can’t go wrong with Klingon Pop Warrior or Stovokor.

I never found a good example of a Klingon radio station (aside from a long defunct fake station called, appropriately, KPLA radio), but Klingon opera is alive and well in the modern day.

One of the frequently recurring aspects of Worf’s character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is his love of Klingon Opera. Have you ever wondered what if Klingon Opera’s were a thing? As it turns out, a legitimate opera entitled ‘U’ was written and performed in Klingon. The U stands for “Universal.”

It was essentially a song in the key of Kahless, telling the story of the Klingon leader. Composed by Eef van Breen with a libretto by Kees Ligtelijn and Marc Okrand, the opera debuted in the Netherlands in 2010 to an enthusiastic audience reaction. Floris Schönfeld handled the artistic direction. It played a few more dates in 2012, but hasn’t been seen since. Don’t despair, though, as there may be a new Klingon Opera in the works.

Outside such creative endeavors, there seems to be a resurgence of the language in popular shows like the eternally annoying The Big Bang Theory. With the sole exception of the Barenaked Ladies’ theme song, I simply don’t enjoy The Big Bang Theory. While Star Trek references—including several instances of conversationally using the Klingon language—litter the show, it’s just not my cup of tea (I prefer chilled Earl Gray). It is, however, notable for bringing Klingon Boggle and The Klingon Dictionary back into the collective pop culture mind. If there’s one thing I dislike more than watching The Big Bang Theory, it’s probably playing a game of Monopoly. Yes, I am aware the game was joked about in the show before it came out. Per Memory Alpha, this may have been intentional product placement on the part of Hasbro. Either way, the real-estate trading game traces its origins back to the early 1900s and has its own unique history, but this astonishing board game has the distinction of merging Klingon and a popular board game, effectively bringing the language further into public consciousness.

And I thought real-life Klingon operas were weird.

“Speaking Klingon is a great way to make new friends.”

— Michael Dorn, the actor who played Lieutenant Commander Worf in Star Trek: the Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, during an ad for Rosetta Stone: Klingon. Dorn goes on to discuss how fun the language can be, with plenty of enthusiastic participants demonstrating their language skills. Of course, this was simply an April Fool’s joke perpetrated by ThinkGeek in 2014, but it’s a great piece of Klingon language history nonetheless.

As time and technology evolve, it truly seems as if the Klingon language will continue to capture the hearts and minds of both Trek fans and non-Trek fans alike. One doesn’t need to be a fan to learn and enjoy the language. All you need is an interest and the resources to learn.

It overcame a legal battle over copyright of the language in 2016 and may even be useful for treating dyslexia. Not bad for a constructed language designed for aliens in a Star Trek movie.

Marc Okrand’s work in closed captioning is legendary, but he left an indelible mark on both linguistics and pop culture for a long time to come. You don’t have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate Klingon.

So until next time, stay safe, be kind to each other, and don’t forget to always say Q’Plah!

The Made-Up Language That Accidentally Became Real: The Story of Klingon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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Energy Solution

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Energy Solution

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    Get Follow-Along Instructions from the World’s Top Functional Fitness Experts for All Fifty to Seventy-Year-Old Men and Women

Special Report: The Shocking Statistic About Growing Old

From: Cody Sipe, PhD and Dan M. Ritchie, PhD,

You’re about to discover a shocking statistic that will change the way you think about your health and future.

But first, we want you to think ahead twenty years from now and imagine a life where you’ll be able to move carefree and have all the energy in the world to enjoy your favorite activities… all because you’ve stumbled upon the closest thing to the fountain of youth.

Imagine you are climbing the Spanish Steps in Rome…all 135 of them…with your family. You are almost to the top when your grandchildren say “race you to the top” and take off in a burst of giggles. You chase off after them and, in a burst of energy and to their astonishment, not only catch them but pass them. But, of course, as you near the top you slow down and let them win. Everyone laughs and high-fives and together take in the marvelous view of the Piazza di Spagna at the top. You get to mark that one off of the bucket list but more importantly you also get a special moment with your family that you can cherish forever.

Sounds great doesn’t it? What could be better? But what if you weren’t able to race up the stairs with your grandchildren because your body wasn’t fit and healthy enough. Because your joints ached. Because you just didn’t have the energy. Because you were too worried that you would fall and either hurt yourself or embarrass yourself. What if you had to walk so slowly and take so many breaks that the grandkids are no longer having any fun because they are too bored waiting on you? What if you couldn’t even climb the steps at all and had to wait at the bottom while the rest of your family created that special memory…without you?

Let’s face it, the aging process is not kind and it wants to sap our bodies of stamina and vitality so that we aren’t able to enjoy special moments like these. Plus we end up spending so much money taking care of our health needs that we no longer even have the money to travel and visit family like we want to. It gets too expensive and our bodies can’t handle it.

This brings me back to the shocking statistic we wanted to share with you BEFORE it’s too late.

The shocking finding, which appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, looked at data from more than 3,000 people covered by Medicare in 2002-2008 to gauge the impact of health care cost on seniors.

Researchers measured how much Medicare-eligible seniors had spent out of pocket on healthcare in their last five years alive, and looked at how those costs weighed on their total household income.

After crunching the numbers, the report found that during that time period, more than 75 percent of Medicare-eligible households spent at least $10,000 out of pocket on health care.

Spending for all participants during those last five years averaged $38,688, and for the remaining 25 percent, the average expense was even greater; they spent a whopping $101,791 out of pocket.

A quarter of participants also spent “more than their total household assets on healthcare,” according to the report.

In 2011, approximately 58% of people didn’t even seek treatment that they needed because it was too expensive, according to a survey done by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research organization. But why will you end up spending so much money on healthcare costs?…

Every Year You Are Losing Crucial Vitality

Functional ability is your ability to handle every day functions like going up and down stairs and picking up the TV remote off the floor. Things you may find easy now, but have no plans to keep it that way.

Without a strategic exercise plan, each year that you get older your functional ability decreases, making everyday activities like gardening, playing with grandchildren and even picking up a piece of paper off the floor much more difficult than it is now.

And unfortunately, this domino effect has a drastic impact on your energy levels. It’s how your body works. If your functional ability is minimal, your body has to work harder in order to do simple tasks.

This explains why your energy decreases as you age as well. Which brings me to the next question…

Twenty Years From Now, Do You Know for Certain You Will Have Enough Energy to Spend QUALITY Time with Your Family and Friends?

There are memories to be made with family reunions and vacations, as well as playing chasing games with your grandkids. There are people to help through volunteer efforts and charitable organizations you help with. There are loved ones to visit and take care of.

Your spirit says, “Yes”, but unfortunately, without a plan, your body won’t allow it.

Your friends and family will be making memories, but all you will be able to think about are your aches and pains that just seem to not ever go away, no matter what you have tried… including way-too-expensive medications.

You soon realize that your body is holding you back from enjoying life to the fullest. You are mentally there with your friends or family in the moment, but physically, you want to be in bed asleep. You know this isn’t the best way to live.

Of course, you also have the infamous “bucket list”, those amazing experiences that you’ve always dreamed about that are now within your grasp. Ask yourself… how much of my bucket list have I accomplished?

There are places you want to see and even more memories that you would like to make, but if you have to deal with aches and pains and lack energy you won’t be able to pursue them. You don’t want that.

What if there was a solution for people just like you… who aren’t looking for the latest “fat loss” craze or looking to become the greatest athlete on Earth?

What if there was a done-for-you solution that improved your functional ability and energy levels and was tailored to your abilities?

You just want a simple, step-by-step plan that you can incorporate into your life right now to:

Discover renewed energy that recaptures your youthfulness so that you can do the things you’re doing now… even BETTER

Improve your confidence in your physical abilities so you get much more out of life and can say “Yes”, instead of “no thanks”

Dramatically increase your stamina and endurance so you can finally play a full round of golf or work in the yard for hours without your body being stiff and sore later.

Reduce or even eliminate any discomfort so you can actually get on the floor to play with your grandkids (and then easily get up again!)

Have the peace of mind that you will be fit and healthy 10, 20 or even 30 years from now.

Be confident that you will have the physical ability to enjoy all the adventures and wonders you have yet to accomplish.

There is a solution that we’ll share with you. But first, let’s look at why you’re reading this important message.

Why Other Plans Have Failed You (and How Much You’re Really Spending).

The truth behind expensive medication is that it’s simply a quick fix and it doesn’t get to the root of your potential problem. Medication simply “masks” your lack of functionality as well as your aches and pains and you end up depending on it.

In other words, if you stop taking the medication, you’ll continue to lack functionality and will continue to struggle with everyday activities as you age.

As you read in the study above, this becomes very expensive. Spending money on this medication means you don’t have the funds to do what you really want to do in life. But you don’t have a choice because if you don’t spend the money on your medication, your quality of life takes an immediate hit.

Now you’re probably thinking that exercise is a great option to avoid this as well as improve your health and it truly is!

But there is a downside…

The Programs On the Market Today Were Not Made for People Like You.

Everything from infomercials to DVDs were created to make you sweat, but have no impact on what you’re trying to accomplish. You could take a walk on a hot summer day and sweat, but are you improving the quality of your life and will that impact your functional ability ten, fifteen, even twenty years from now?

No, of course not. You’re also not trying to improve your bench press, either right? This is why other programs have failed you. They are focused on simply making you grind out long, grueling sessions that leave you feeling defeated instead of invigorated.

Think about it… when was the last time you were on an exercise program and stuck with it? It’s hard to stick to something that doesn’t do anything for you. The truth is that many programs do produce results but for the wrong people. The programs didn’t have YOU in mind.

Also, think about this… who is always on the cover of these programs and what kind of models are representing the programs?

It’s always a man or woman clearly in their 20’s or 30’s with six-pack abs jumping around or doing some kind of crazy exercise using expensive equipment and gadgets.

You don’t want that and it’s why you were smart enough to not invest in it. You’ve gotten wiser with age and perhaps you would have invested in something like that twenty years ago, but not this time. You’ve been looking for something more in touch with your wants and needs.

This is Exactly What We’re All About… Helping People Just Like YOU Improve Your Quality of Life and Discover Brand New Energy You’ve Had All Along with a Simple Step-by-Step System.

Hi, we are Cody Sipe, PhD and Dan Ritchie, PhD and our expertise is helping people just like you achieve maximum function for the rest of your life. We are experts in functional longevity and we want to share with you the same amazing success we have had with thousands of clients.

Dan Ritchie has a broad background in the fitness industry including training and management in commercial and university/hospital-based fitness, for-profit, not-for-profit and educational facilities. His primary areas of expertise are in personal training for special populations: athletes, pregnancy, blind, stroke recovery, Parkinsons, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, Fibromyalgia, Alzheimers, etc. He has worked with Division I athletes some of whom have been professionally drafted. He has also worked on state funded research on exercise for severe dementia alzheimers type. He regularly presents at national and regional conferences and has been active on committees for the American College of Sports Medicine. He is currently a Top 3 finalist for Personal Fitness Professional Trainer of the Year 2014. He received his PhD in Health and Kinesiology with a minor in Gerontology from Purdue University.

Dan recently was named the PFP magazine, Personal Trainer of the Year 2014 out of over 500 Trainers from 8 countries.

Cody Sipe is a professor, award-winning fitness professional, clinical exercise physiologist, sought-after speaker, author and functional aging exercise expert with 20 years of experience. Cody has a passion for taking the most recent scientific evidence on exercise and aging from the lab and applying it in meaningful and practical ways for mature adults. His innovative, evidence-based exercise philosophies and strategies have helped thousands of fitness professionals and older adults around the world.

Cody has completed numerous certifications including the Clinical Exercise Physiologist and Registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist credentials from the American College of Sports Medicine and the FallProof Balance and Mobility Enhancement Specialist certification. He is co-owner of Miracles Fitness, a training facility specializing in mature clients, and co-founder of the Functional Aging Institute.

We don’t train high-level athletes or even help 31-year old Moms train for a triathlon. Our passion is for people just like you who want to feel and look better and get a blueprint in order to have a better QUALITY of life well into their 60’s, 70’s and beyond.

Our unique and innovative training facility in Indiana is dedicated to baby boomers and we have helped thousands of people like you regain their youthful vitality and physical function.

We have invested thousands of dollars and spent countless hours into discovering what unlocks youthfulness and vitality at any age. What combats the aging process and maximizes your ability to continue doing what you love. What brings you a sense of purpose and a desire to do more. What helps you feel better when you wake up and when you fall asleep.

Through years of academic preparation, research, real-life application and teaching we have truly discovered what works for people just like you. We truly believe there is a fountain of youth in all of us and we are passionate about helping people discover it.

These are just a few of our inspiring stories from people we helped discover their fountain of youth:

Jo Ann Bloodgood has faced her share of physical challenges—by pass surgery, two knee replacements, spinal fusions and Parkinson’s Disease. She knows that she must exercise routinely and she has faithfully done so for over five years at Miracles Fitness one of our facilities.

She had a long-suppressed desire to visit the Galapagos Islands, but when the opportunity arose she had valid doubts. Could she do it at age 80? The trip literature warned that it was a strenuous trip. Participants must be able to climb in and out of small Zodiac boats and must be able to walk over a mile if they wanted to see and enjoy the unique and fearless creatures that inhabit the islands.

Dr. Dan encouraged her to start slowly and gradually build up her strength and endurance, working on balance and stair climbing among other things.

Success! Jo Ann was able to do everything she wished to do on the trip. As proof, she shows off her dashing picture with her husband and of a Blue-footed Booby which was so close, she could have touched it while it was oblivious of the picture taker.

I retired in July of 2011. I am loving retirement , but I also knew that I needed to keep busy. Now it is time to do some things I wanted to, but never took the time.

Probably 75% of people make a resolution to get in shape by eating healthy and exercising more, in January 2012, I decided to do the same.

I joined Miracles Fitness and to my surprise I really loved it. I have dieted and exercised on and off my whole life (more off than on in the last 20 years).

The trainers are absolutely awesome! I look forward to going and working out. These are words that I never thought would come out of my mouth! The workouts have encouraged me to watch my food intake as well.

One of the things I was really determined to do was, as that “65” came closer and closer, to not be on a bunch of pills. It seems like you start on one medication and more just keep getting added. My blood pressure was borderline 148/78. I have been a member for just three short months and it is down to 120/80.

I would be the last person in the world to say I can’t miss my workout and now I am thrilled to say it and totally mean every word.

Now I arrange my schedule, for the most part, around my workout times. I have earned it and I want to be able to continue to be healthy.

As mothers and grandomothers, we have a right to be selfish and take this time for ourselves… everyone benefits! Miracles is a good name for the fitness center because I truly think it is a Miracle that is has become such a big part of my life!

And they aren’t the only ones:

“Adventure travel is our passion. As seniors, personal training at Miracles Fitness has made possible what heretofore only younger bodies dared to try. In fact, we had to get special permission to hike on this glacier here in Los Glaciares National Park in Patagonia since the “rules” don’t allow anyone over 65 out on the ice. In spite of the steep pitches and dangerous footing, our personal training made the glacier hike, while challenging, very doable– as well as a lifetime memory. We think personal training has added at least a decade to our adventure travel careers.”

While crossing Alaska my brother and I would constantly be impressed by the image of Denali, the highest peak in North America, which seemed to challenge us each time we were in its vicinity. Eventually, my brother decided he needed to face that challenge. He had plenty of others – dealing with cancer as a young man and then the after effects of radiation which weakened his heart. He decided to put a climb together composed of cancer survivors. I decided I should go along to push myself physically and mentally and support what I felt was a very worthwhile cause. The climb was quite the adventure and my brother and I shared the exhilaration of standing together on the summit of one of the worlds most impressive mountains. I survived but realized I had been fortunate. I considered some other peaks, but really had been satisfied with my Denali effort and was not looking for another alpine adventure.

My daughter however, thought otherwise. A group of acquaintances of hers had decided to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. Again I felt an obligation to accompany a family member and keep them out of trouble while I shared the experience and supported a worthy cause. This time however, I felt I needed a bit more guidance in preparation for climbing another 20,000 foot peak in equatorial Africa. This is where Miracles Fitness and their staff came to my aid.

I still felt I had the ability and the reserves to attempt this climb, but the last thing I wanted was to be unprepared. I was able to work with several of their training staff, all of whom were knowledgeable and thorough. I tried to work out three times a week at Miracles and then additional days on my own. But I found I would not push myself enough on my own and required the ‘encouragement’ of my trainers to make the progress I needed. Mary Ehresman,in particular, seemed to take a special interest in my effort. Ultimately, I was able to keep up with the kids who made up the climbing party and shared another summit experience with my daughter on the top of Africa.

Finally, we have the opportunity to bring the blueprint we use with our own clients directly to you.

Welcome to your Instant Life Upgrade… a system especially designed with YOU in mind because it’s what we do.

Included in your Never Grow Old Fitness Program:

Inside this book we lay out the entire program including simple strategies you can implement immediately into your lifestyle to feel and look better. You’ll discover you don’t have to live in a gym or even go to one to see results.

You’ll discover the “7 Keys to Functional Training” and how you can use these 7 specific steps to live a healthier, more fulfilling life.

You’ll also get plenty of pictures and descriptions of exercises, workout plans and more, but that’s just scratching the surface…

Follow-Along Exercise Videos Including:

Level 1 Beginners These workouts are designed for anyone new to exercise or returning to exercise.

These foundational workouts are a great starting point for anyone at any level, whether you have not exercised for 20 years or are an avid exerciser there are movements in here for everyone.

Level 2 Advanced Beginners Okay, now it is time to pick up the intensity and complexity a bit. These exercise routines will begin to challenge your balance and center of gravity more, as well as take the level of intensity to a more moderate pace.

Level 3 Intermediate These are the workouts that really will begin to separate your functional ability from that of your peers. With workouts that are challenging and intense, you will use muscles and movements you may not have used in years, and breathe new life into your physical functional ability.

Level 4 Advanced These workouts are not for the faint of heart. Please be sure you have mastered the intermediate level before attempting. These are the workouts that will train you to be prepared for any adventure you may want to tackle in life!

The Science Behind the Never Grow Old Fitness Program Videos During this presentation Cody will quickly explain to you how this program works and the scientific evidence supporting it. This is not just some random program. It has been strategically created to achieve maximum benefit in the shortest amount of time. This presentation will help you better understand why you are doing what you are doing in the exercise program. Plus, you will learn the essential “7 Keys to Functional Training” that are the foundation of the program.

How to Get the Most Out of this Program Video In this quick video you will learn the basic terminology, movements and equipment choices along with great tips and strategies that will fully prepare you for your first workout. Plus, we will help you figure out which level to start with and how to progress properly.

Dynamic Warm-up Videos Inside these follow-along videos, Cody will walk you step-by-step through a proper warmup before an uplifting workout or even as an invigorating way to start your day.

Functional Flexibility Videos Tight muscles? Stiff joints? Let Cody teach you a simple and proven formula on how to eliminate these problems within just a few weeks or less!

Forget about expensive gadgets and equipment. You’ll be able to do these powerful workouts virtually anywhere using very little equipment. In fact, all you will need is resistance tubing or dumbbells.

You won’t be alone, either. Dan and Cody will be there every rep of the way, with workouts specifically designed to make you feel younger, give you vibrant energy and finally help you do the things you’ve always wanted to do BETTER… even if it’s just wanting to spend more QUALITY time with your family and friends.

The best part?…

These specially-designed workouts can be tailored right to your abilities and only last about 20 minutes.

That’s part of the secret of our system. Studies have proven to us that shorter focused workouts actually COMBAT the aging process.

Finally, You Can Live Your Life on YOUR Terms

Imagine telling your grandkids “Yes” instead of “I’m not feeling up to it”. Imagine twenty years from now doing the things you love to do now only doing them even BETTER… all because you took action on a proven system that reverses the aging process.

Instead of investing thousands of dollars in medications that will only “mask” your obstacles, why not use this PROVEN step-by-step system that will last a lifetime so that you NEVER grow “old”?

After all, Dan and Cody have already invested thousands of dollars worth of time and education to figure out what works for people just like you. And from the success stories above, you’ve already seen how powerful this system is.

Within minutes, you can have instant access to unlocking your inner fountain of youth and live a vibrant, healthy life full of energy and passion.

How Much Money Are You Willing to Waste to Improve Your Quality of Life?

Save thousands of dollars and the headaches of trying new programs from infomercials that weren’t designed with you in mind. (Just look at the covers and models).

We’re also not kidding about saving thousands, either. Imagine the medical bills you could avoid as you become a healthier version of yourself.

You won’t have to travel all the way to Indiana to train with us either. You’ll get instant access to us as your coaches and mentors as you go through the simple step-by-step system…

… all for less than ONE session with us at our facility.

Let’s work together, every step of the way to living the vibrant life you deserve for just a one-time investment of $20.00.

Within weeks, you’ll see a difference in everyday activities as you bullet-proof yourself for the future. You’ll quickly discover an energy you haven’t experienced before. We see it every day in our facility. Now you can, too.

We guarantee you’ll discover your inner fountain of youth, have more energy, become stronger and DRASTICALLY improve your quality of life.

If you don’t see a difference AND more importantly, FEEL a difference with our system, we will gladly let you keep the entire system and we’ll refund every penny of your investment.

You read that right. If you’re not thrilled with our system, then we don’t want your money. Give it a test drive for a full 60 days and if it’s not exactly what we said it would be, we will give you your money back… PERIOD.

It’s time to get working on that bucket list, Cody Sipe Dan Ritchie

P.S. This done-for-you step-by-step system is what you’ve been looking for to finally enjoy life again. You didn’t stumble on this page by chance. If you truly want to get more out of life, then invest in yourself and take action immediately with this proven system.

P.P.S. Remember – if you’re not 100% satisfied within a full 60 days with this system and you don’t discover your inner fountain of youth, then we’ll gladly refund your entire investment PLUS let you keep the system. That’s how much confidence we have in our philosophy after seeing thousands of people change their lives.

[topicprinter]

Hi Everyone! Julian here from Founder Stories (founderstories.io) - here's one of our latest interviews with ZenMaid's founder - Amar Ghose on how he and 2 Co-founders started a 40k+ / mo SaaS business.Interview: Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi, my name is Amar Ghose. I’m the CEO/co-founder of ZenMaid. Our software makes it easy for growing maid services to manage their cleaners, clients, and schedules in one easy to use software.While we might have started off slow (both my co-founder and I worked full time for over 2 years after starting ZenMaid) we now make more than half a million dollars a year helping maid service owners to achieve the freedom in their lives and businesses that we have (I’m currently writing this from Canggu in Indonesia!)how-we-validated-and-grew-a-saas-for-maid-services-to-500k-year What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea? I’ve always been quite entrepreneurial. I started as a kid selling candy to my middle school friends actually. Despite that I hadn’t been able to create a real business that really stuck until ZenMaid.In 2012 I came across a post on Reddit. A guy was starting his own maid service and documenting the entire thing. By chance a friend of mine saw the same post and started working on the technical side of the business (building a website and etc). My friend quickly realized that he didn’t want to deal with the people side of the business however. He tagged me in to help with operations and sales/marketing. From there I was quite quickly made an equal partner as he had yet to launch.Don’t fall into the classic trap of spending months building or working on something, only to find out when you launch that no one is interested.At the time I was doing sales for a tech startup so closing business by phone was my jam. From there I quickly learned basic man management skills to work with our cleaners.Fast forward 1 year and I was no longer living locally. I’d moved closer to home (the SF Bay Area) for a much better day job. I was 400 miles away from our maid service and that caused tension with my partner. Ultimately I gave up my portion of the maid service (which shut down shortly thereafter).It was at this point that another friend approached me about what became ZenMaid. He felt he could build a better management platform than the one he’d seen me using. And he was confident that I could sell and market the software given my skill set and industry knowledge.Hence ZenMaid was born (initially named MaidDesk though I doubt that’s ever been mentioned anywhere publicly before now :-) )While working full time (myself at a startup, my co-founder on his PhD at Stanford University) we began simultaneously working on the product and getting in contact with as many maid service owners and offices as we could.Take us through the process of building the product. My co-founder Arun was familiar with the coding language Python but decided after reviewing some of the existing libraries that Ruby on Rails was the right way for us to proceed.… so he taught himself Ruby in ~8 days and got to work. I’m still baffled by this looking back on it.Due to my full time work schedule I made calls between 5 am and 8 am on weekdays before going into work and all day on Saturdays.It took almost 6 months to get a working prototype due to Arun’s PhD program at Stanford (he worked from 11 pm to 3 am most nights on ZenMaid). I spent that entire time calling maid service owners and offices. Due to my work schedule (1.5 hour commute to SF each day) I made calls between 5 am and 8 am on weekdays before going into work and all day on Saturdays.We made the decision to focus our efforts on an easy to use calendar that specifically focused on truly recurring services (something that’s unique to maid services and housekeeping companies) and on automated communications around the appointments.To this day that is still our bread and butter, though we’ve added many features and benefits since.A lot of people have asked about our startup costs but we didn’t really have any due to our combined skill sets. The only expense we took on was once the product was live was ~$100-$200 per month for Google AdWords so we could get consistent traffic to our website and app.Describe the process of launching the business.We didn’t do much of a launch for ZenMaid as we didn’t have an audience to announce to. We paid for a press release service that didn’t do much but I did reach out to everyone I had been talking to when the software was ready. Our first customer came onboard for $1000 for life, paid over 4 months (we have given a few other maid service owners lifetime access for a set price but we quickly moved to a more traditional SaaS model priced monthly which now starts at $49)We already had a landing page at this point as I was treating the business/product as if we were ready at least 3 months prior to the software being launched. I believe we initially used a tool called LaunchRock and then moved to WordPress with a theme quite quickly.Launch numbers (this was fun to look up in Stripe) :We brought on our first customer on September 9, 2013 and ended that year with 5 customers (though 13 had tried and paid us for at least a month) so clearly there wasn’t much of a launch eventSince launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers? ZenMaid has always relied heavily on paid advertising (Google, Capterra, LinkedIn, Facebook) for a constant flow of leads however we quickly branched out from there to do content marketing which helped with SEO and a variety of other things.We actually stumbled on this by accident when I took the keywords I had researched for my maid service and I shared them in a Google Spreadsheet which we hid behind an email gate. This was our very first lead magnet and to this day it still gets us more leads than anything else :-)From there we built an extensive email marketing funnel that’s almost all quality content. Our goal is to never be forgotten by our leads because when they’re ready for our software, they’ll let us know. Essentially any maid service owner that signs up for our email list will receive high quality, implementable content for their businesses for almost two years, each email having a small, unobtrusive link at the bottom to learn more about the software. If they click this link they’ll get a couple more targeted emails. I set this up following Ryan Deiss’ The Machine course a few years ago.Two quick examples of awesome content we’ve done would be The Ultimate Hiring Panel, where we interview 3 industry experts on their hiring best practices, and “Steal This Cancellation Policy for Your Maid Service”, which is exactly what it sounds like: 3 example cancellation policies that can be copy pasta’d into a maid service whether they use ZenMaid or not.More recently we’ve added in extensive Facebook retargeting campaigns, also focused on quality content, that we use to nurture the leads we get from other channels.And finally, what we’re best known for in the industry, is our Facebook group, the ZenMaid Mastermind. We built the first widely joined community (some existed before us but were quite dead, and many have appeared since we did it) and at the 2015 industry event we were the talk of the town.More people knew us from that community than for our software though that’s changed since. It’s still where we get lots of leads, content ideas, and feedback on our software!Building the Facebook groupThe Facebook group actually happened by accident - I had a crazy idea that we could start a membership site and do it on Facebook so I launched a $19 per month subscription to our email list.Two months later and after signing up a whole 3 (THREE) members, I realized it wasn’t the time or place (in hindsight this failure was 100% on me and had nothing to do with timing or anything other than my lack of experience)We refunded the money of the members who had joined but left the group up on Facebook. Over time I started inviting people to join if they added me as a friend and were part of the industry.Fast forward a year and we had 50 members who were starting to chat regularly when an awesomely epic thread appeared. I sent an email to our list letting them know they might be interested and 50 members turned into 200 overnight. We haven’t looked back since.What was the thread? You know how they say Sex sells…One of the cleaning clients caught the team lead and a cleaner having sex in her bathroom while they were supposed to be cleaning. To make matters worse the 3rd cleaner on the team in question was the WIFE of the team lead (yes, you’re reading that right)Epic, hilarious, and very beneficial to our business.Since that time we’ve built up the group with great content and discussion as well as making it a safe place for owners to let loose and rant (my approach was to make this a place online that maid service owners could get the help they need but also relax with a glass of wine at the end of a long day and chat with their friends)These days we do regular Facebook Lives and feature many of the industry’s leading experts :-)And all of this has led to speaking engagements for myself and partnerships with almost every big name consultant in the industry. It helps a lot when we have a bigger audience than they do so at some point there was a snowball effect where most influencers chase us rather than the other way around.For example, we have a virtual summit coming up this year and, where most organizers have to chase speakers, we had 25 confirmed presenters within 24 hours of making contact with the first one.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We recently passed the half million dollar yearly mark and will be breaking the million dollar a year barrier in late-2020.That will actually happen much sooner if we can accomplish the 3 primary goals I have in mind for ZenMaid going forward - two of which I consider to be “holy grails”1 - To extend our lead as industry leaders.It sounds weird to me to answer that but after 6 years of hard work and focus the truth is ZenMaid is now the gold standard in the house cleaning industry for software.We have some very good competition but none are focused on our industry specifically which gives us a lot of advantages that we’ve piled up over the years (for example, we now employ 4 current or former maid service owners which puts our support heads and shoulders above other software who serve our audience)2 - Negative net churn.We recently changed our pricing to grow every month with our customers as they are more successful. That change has lowered our churn significantly but we do still lose money each month from our current customers. By the end of 2019 I’d like us to actually make more from our existing customers even if we continue to lose ~5% of them each month.Software folk will recognize this as the SaaS holy grail, and we think it’s possible for ZenMaid :-)3 - Paid marketing that pays for itself (I’m not sure what the right term is for this - any readers want to let me know in the comments?)Inspired by Russel Brunson who actually makes money advertising ClickFunnels before people convert to paying software users … With our current lead costs my goal is to get a $97 or $197 info product that’s part of our email automations so that we can advertise the software and immediately recoup our advertising spend.If we can achieve #1 and #2 simultaneously the sky's the limit for ZenMaid, particularly as a bootstrapped company. It’s the holy grail of marketing in my opinion.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous? Test test test would be lesson #1 as we essentially lit our business on fire overnight about 2 years back. We had the best intentions and it absolutely turned out for the best but we burnt a lot of bridges and lost almost 30% of our revenue because we didn’t do enough testing prior to releasing a massive update on our software.Lesson #2 would be something I learned from Tim Ferriss which is “treat everyone like they can put you on the front page of the New York Times”.A lot of our best partnerships and relationships have come because I simply cared more about the actual people than our competition a few months or even years before either we could help them or they could help us. We’ve had multiple customers sign up who currently pay us thousands of dollars a month who knew me 6 years ago when the company was starting but we weren’t sophisticated enough for their businesses.On a similar note I’ve gone out of my way to help up and coming consultants, some of which became quite big years after and now refer us business left and right. And most consultants in the industry know they can approach me for tech or marketing advice if they want it. I’ll even fix problems for them (usually paying money out of my own pocket to do so) if I know it’s considerably easier for me or my team to do than for them.Lesson #3 would be to simply Not Quit. Everything in our business these days sounds like flowers and sunshine (and profits) but I can point to at least 20 situations where other entrepreneurs would have thrown in the towel. The reason we’re in business and successful today was that we never gave up when things got challenging. It’s easy to run a business when things go well, it’s what happens when the sh*t hits the fan that actually defines you and your success.What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use a lot of software as a software company so here are our daily ones:Slack - for chatting when an email is unnecessary. Group discussions and etc. I’ve seen people mention this can be a big distraction but with a remote team it’s absolutely vital to everything we doActiveCampaign - Email marketing and automation, we’re known in the industry for our email marketing and current email leads will receive messages for approximately 2 years after registering so this one’s important fo’ shoIntercom - I hate their pricing with a passion as it changes every month but they’ve done a great job of infiltrating every part of our customer process. We use them for support but also as a sort of customer dashboard (easier for us to find users with over X employees using intercom than anywhere else, for example)What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources? I listen to a ton of books these days (Audible on 3x speed) so there’s a lot to pick from but here are a couple that I think helped me a lot as I got started:The Four Hour Work Week - the lifestyle dream was always my why after reading this bookJobs by Walter Isaacson - this book completely shifted how I approached building the ZenMaid product and taking pride in many of the little details in our business I previously thought were unimportantThe Fish That Ate The Whale - Best entrepreneur [true] story I’ve ever read - everything about this man’s life is epicThe Foundation - a online course to help folks like me start software businesses. We went through this after picking up our first 5 customers and came out the other side with over 30Straight Line Persuasion - a sales course by Jordan Belfort, who everyone knows from the Wolf of Wall Street. I was already in sales and this course took my sales game to a new level. Shortly after listening to it we had our first +$200 MRR day which at the time was absolutely massive for usAdvice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?The main advice I would give to both starting entrepreneurs and even experienced one is to focus on FEEDBACK LOOPS, and increase the speed at which you go through them.A feedback loop is essentially asking yourself “How can I figure out if I’m on the right track as quickly as possible?” For ZenMaid we’ll run article headlines and outlines by our audience before we create content. We’ll do quick mockups of new features and share them first with our team, then with our champion user group on Facebook to find whether we’re on the right track to solve the problems we intend to. This has been absolutely invaluable.For a new entrepreneur, don’t fall into the classic trap of spending months building or working on something, only to find out when you launch that no one is interested. This is why I spent so much time calling maid service owners while we were developing the software and getting as much input from them as I possibly could. And this was despite the fact we “knew” what we were building.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We try to keep our dev team lean and fast moving but on the non-tech side I’m always on the lookout for two types of people - entrepreneurial marketers and maid service owners.Most of the ZenMaid team members work part time for us and have their own businesses I’m happy to help them build. Anyone who can help me to get more leads, or convert more maid service owners into active users, is going to have my attention.For quite a few of our entrepreneurial team members their other business is an actual maid service in which they use ZenMaid. I can’t dogfood my own software anymore since exiting my maid service. But the next best thing is hiring our customers or potential customers to help with customer service, marketing, account management, and more.Where can we go to learn more?Your website: theamaricandream.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/godblessamarica Instagram: https://instagram.com/TheAmaricanDream/ If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Amar Ghose, Founder of ZenMaid‍

[theconservativebrief]

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I’d seen the latest installment of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Showtime series, Who Is America. After I said I hadn’t, he asked if I was enjoying the series, and I told him I wasn’t, at least to that point. He didn’t believe me — and his doubt only increased when I admitted I’d liked Cohen’s earlier work, especially Da Ali G Show and Borat.

I struggled to explain myself, as I always do when discussing why I don’t like Who Is America. The show feels oddly formless to me, due to some combination of Cohen’s new roster of characters seeming surprisingly toothless, too many of the show’s segments largely running out of gas, and the fact that the various politicos Cohen and his producers managed to book always feel a little like mini bosses, the monsters you fight right before you’re told the princess is in another castle.

My friend even granted me these points. But, he said, he’d really been enjoying it, before mentioning his latest favorite segment, in which Cohen tricked some yahoos into staging a fake quinceañera meant to “trap” undocumented immigrants. (They ended up being questioned by the cops, for reasons far too complicated to get into here.) He laughed and shook his head. “Sometimes it’s just nice to see these guys take one on the chin, you know?”

In that sense, my friend wasn’t wrong. If you lean left in 2018, the world can feel a little like falling endlessly into a pit, with every bottom you hit proving false. What once felt like inviolable rules of political gravity no longer seem to apply; even using the power of shame to force politicians you disagree with into doing the right thing is often unreliable.

This, I suppose, is Cohen’s secret power. He identifies the few things his targets still might feel theoretical shame over, then zeroes in on them relentlessly.

That shame might stem, largely, from the fear of appearing as anything other than a red-blooded American white guy, but Cohen is really good at puncturing his targets’ self-image; in all the best Who Is America segments, you can watch their eyes slowly fill with regret as the segments go on. Yes, Cohen has a few targets on the left, but he tends to save his biggest guns for those on the right. And after years of the right-leaning folks he targets behaving with absolute impunity, here’s a comedian who’s at least made them look ridiculous. That’s powerful, absolutely.

And yet Who Is America so rarely lives up to its best self, to the degree that the last couple of episodes have felt composed of odds and ends, rather than particularly incisive or even funny comedic bits. The show, just seven episodes long, ran out of gas somewhere in episode four. Why?

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Comedy, when it’s funny, can get away with a lot. It can get away with having an incoherent or confused message, with having little in the way of story or character, and sometimes even with being blatantly offensive. If you laugh at the jokes, a comedy has you, even if you leave the experience a bit embarrassed or even angry that you laughed. It’s not rational. It’s physiological.

But I do think all successful comedy has one thing in common: a point of view. By this, I simply mean that successful comedy is filtered through some specific perspective. This is usually the perspective of the comic, or the writer, or the director, but one needs only to think about the oeuvre of Adam Sandler to realize the idea of “point of view” is flexible; the key is that it’s being consistently applied across an individual work. Having that filter in place not only helps the audience look at things in some new way, it also helps them understand why something is funny. Remove the filter and a joke just becomes an observation.

This is where Who Is America falls apart, week after week. Where Da Ali G Show focused on television’s unique ability to enable our worst impulses and Borat was about the underlying horrors of American hospitality, Who Is America sometimes feels like a scattershot riff on reality television that Cohen half-sketched out in 2005 and then forgot about until a few months ago.

I think this is why some of the series’ most successful gags come from the segments’ packaging, rather than the segments themselves. When Cohen’s Alex Jones analog, a character named Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD, is introduced by a graphic that changes “LIEBRARY” to “TRUTHBRARY,” you instantly get a sense of who this guy is and how Cohen feels about him (if only because he misspells “library”). But the segments featuring Billy Wayne rarely move beyond that basic gag. Billy Wayne is an idiot who doesn’t know anything, and who tries to engage with left-leaning political luminaries and members of the media on his own ridiculous terms.

The result is that it becomes hard to tell whether the joke is meant to be on Billy Wayne — who really does endorse these ridiculous ideas — or on the various suckers Cohen managed to get on the show, who have to listen to him blather. I suspect the answer is the former, given the way Billy Wayne is introduced, but all we have to go on are a bunch of one-joke segments that go on too long, as when Billy Wayne tries to tell Jill Stein that the temperature always fluctuates by pointing out the existence of seasons.

This one-joke limitation exists for most of Cohen’s Who Is America characters. There are six of them in all, and I don’t think I laughed extensively at any of them except one — the NPR shirt-wearing Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, whom I’ll talk about in a second. Meanwhile, another character, Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad, convinced enough of Cohen’s targets to do something ridiculous to mark him as another relatively successful character. But the pickings were slim.

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The weakness of Cohen’s characters might have been negated by a steady stream of high-profile guests, a sort of “Can you believe that happened?!” who’s who. But the show’s general aesthetic of seeming to have stepped out of 2005 and making only a few minor changes extends even to its treatment of its most familiar targets. It seemed like the show wasn’t even sure why it had Howard Dean talk to Billy Wayne, other than that viewers would recognize the name Howard Dean.

Once again, the packaging steps in to sell many of the gags. The various fake “shows” that Cohen has dreamed up for his characters to “star” in really are a lot of fun in conception. Perhaps a stronger version of the series would have had each episode focus on a single character, following them on their journeys through the racist, gun-loving heart of America. Yet even when Cohen really does seem like he’s zeroing in on racism or gun obsession in an intriguing way, Who Is America too often lets him down by simple virtue of its structure. It can never say anything real because Cohen is always trying to fool his marks.

That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for a program with a sharper point of view or stronger comedic characters. But I spent far too long in any given episode of Who Is America watching segments that simply went on forever, looking for something to say, then just sort of stopped, before moving on to the next bit.

Which brings me to the one character I felt Cohen used to make some sort of point about America today. As the hippie-out-of-time Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, Cohen finds a way to make fun of neoliberal anxiety about the state of 2018 America in ways that manage to place the joke both on Cohen’s character and the (mostly) Republicans he interviews.

The joke here has a point of view — about Cain-N’Degeocello’s wish to be as open and tolerant as possible and his anxieties about how to possibly do that. It also offers some incisive commentary about performative misery in lefty white guys. It’s satire of the modern left, sure, but a satire that knows both its target and what it wants to say about that target.

Ultimately, this type of humor accounts for far too little of a show that never quite knows what it is or what it wants to be. When I first reviewed Who Is America, the show made me angry, but after watching almost all of the series (with only the finale unseen), I’m much more dispirited by it. It doesn’t really work, but maybe its goal isn’t to work. I’m not sure it wants to do anything beyond make sure the other guy takes one on the chin.

Who Is America airs Sundays at 10 pm Eastern on Showtime.

Original Source -> Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America has nothing to say in the end

via The Conservative Brief

[sbgridconsortium]

Data Whisperer

Karolin Luger University of Colorado Boulder

Like others in her sporty college town, Karolin Luger heeds the call of the mountains she can see from her laboratory at University of Colorado Boulder. Trail running and a daily 20-mile round-trip bike commute at altitude have kept her fit, but she would like to put to rest the rumors that she runs her research collaborators ragged on strenuous hikes. “All these crazy stories,” Luger says. “I only did that once.” And lately, she says, she’s the one who has a hard time keeping up on group outings.

Her collaborators can relax, but Luger wants to see more dynamic motion in the chromosome structures she studies. After all, they have to move to do what they do. Luger’s research addresses a fundamental question: How does the human genome store information and then access that information at the appropriate time? Part of the answer, she and her collaborators have learned, goes back billions of years.

In animals, a full genome must be squeezed into the nucleus of each cell. In humans, that means six feet of DNA must fit into something less than one-fifth the size of what the human eye can see. This can happen thanks to the compact packaging of DNA into an assembly called chromatin. Chromatin consists of a long strand of tightly twisted DNA wrapped twice around repeating flat spools of histone proteins, like a string of beads. The protein-DNA spools, or nucleosomes, are the basic repeating unit of chromatin. They are further folded and arranged into a higher order structure that Luger’s lab also studies.

“Imagine a super-long sewing thread and wrap it around a million tiny hockey pucks,” Luger says. “It’s actually really a miracle that there are not knots and tangles.”

Chromatin controls access to genes in ways Luger and her colleagues are still learning. The tightly packed hockey pucks, or nucleosomes, must unspool to activate certain working genes, to duplicate DNA during cell division, or to repair damaged DNA, and then rewrap. “We’re still far away from figuring out how that works,” she says.

Complicating matters, genes can be independently activated or silenced by small chemicals that tag the histone spools or the DNA itself. Luger’s lab is trying to figure out how those small epigenetic tags affect the packaging of the hockey pucks, especially during development, as the same genetic blueprint produces such different cells—brain, heart, muscle, liver and skin, blood, bone.

Luger grew up Austria in a landscape dominated by mountains and science. Her father was an engineer, and her brothers were interested in electronics and physics. Luger was first drawn to botany and zoology. She studied microbiology at University of Innsbruck. Bleak job prospects and a rewarding undergraduate experience in a biochemistry lab inspired her to pursue a PhD in protein engineering at University of Basel, Switzerland.

Given a free hand by her mentor, she wanted to learn if a protein could fold normally if it came out of the protein-translating ribosome backwards, somewhat like a breech birth. (The answer is yes, it can.) She developed a new technique to test the idea, joining two ends of a gene together and cutting it open in a different place. The results were published in Science in 1989. Her studies with such proteins ended with her doctorate, but others have used the information in evolutionary studies to detect genes that make proteins of similar structure and function, but whose gene sequence might be permuted in this manner.

Her PhD program had required her to take classes in structural biology. To satisfy a new craving to learn crystallography, she joined the lab of Timothy Richmond at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow. Her project resulted in the long-sought high-resolution structure of a nucleosome at 2.8 angstrom, published in Nature in 1997.

“I had no idea what a super-gnarly problem it was,” she says. “I learned the hard way, but it was a good learning experience.” She also learned that she had a visual brain highly suited to structural biology and developed the methodology (now used in many labs world wide) to make nucleosomes for crystallization and for biochemical and biophysical studies.

She joined the Colorado State University (CSU) faculty in 1999 and became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator six years later. In 2015, she moved her lab to the University of Colorado, Boulder. Luger continues to collaborate with CSU faculty at the Institute for Genome Architecture and Function, a research consortium she and two fellow CSU women faculty members founded in 2015.

Her lab’s work has broadened from solving crystal structures to using cryo-EM, and also to asking scientific questions using structural biology as one of many tools, including live cell experiments. Luger likes to find new ways to see something that wasn’t previously observable. “I almost like the process of doing science more than the actual results,” she says. “I love the process of discovery, to figure out mechanisms and trick the system to tell me its secrets.”

She has also become more action-oriented. “We can stare endlessly at structures,” says Luger, who admits she still is blown away by the transformative power of hydrogen bonds and amino acid packing. “But we need to think about function even more. Most of the structures we study are machines and have to move. We are more and more interested in catching these machines in the act of going about their business. It’s immeasurably harder than looking at the static structure, which is already hard enough.”

Luger describes the narrative arc of her lab’s research path as a “directed random walk.” She adds, “My feelers are open all the time to see what I can learn from others. I just love collaborating with people and integrating ideas out of left field into my research program. It drives people in my lab crazy sometimes, because they are the ones that have to do the hard work.”

In one collaboration reported in Science in 2006, Luger and her colleagues examined a crucial binding point between a protein on the virus that causes Kaposi’s sarcoma and a pair of histone proteins in the nucleosome. “This was the first time it was shown how nucleosomes can serve as docking stations for other proteins,” Luger says. “As far as the virus goes, this gives its genome a nifty way to hitchhike on the host’s chromosomes to escape its defense mechanisms.”

Two years later, Luger and her collaborators used new techniques to mimic the chemical marks on tightly wound DNA-protein complexes that silence gene expression. They reported that repressive epigenetic marks on histone proteins cause nucleosome arrays to become more compacted, while activating methylation did little to the chromatin. The findings were published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

Scientists have wondered about the origins of nucleosomes. Luger and her collaborators looked for answers in archaea, an extended family of ubiquitous single cell organisms thought to be the ancient precursors of eukarya. In this study, they determined the structure of nucleosomes of a species thought to be endemic to Icelandic hot springs.

“One surprising thing we have learned from our studies of archaeal chromatin is that the way DNA is bent into shape by histones is older than eukaryotes,” Luger says. “This principle is being used by an ancient domain of life, the archaea. But unlike in eukaryotes, were we have defined particles, archaea have kind of 'continuous nucleosomes' that look like a slinky. What really surprised me was how similar the organizing principle is between these two domains of life that are separated by billions of years.” The findings were reported in Science in 2017.

Above: In archaea, the histone-DNA complex can vary in the length of wrapped DNA, as shown here, while eukaryotic nucleosomes have about 2 DNA wraps each. (Images courtesy of K.Luger and CU Boulder)

Other projects include looking at how a dividing cell makes and assembles new nucleosomes for the newly replicated genome. The Luger lab is also interested in DNA repair proteins targeted by promising new anticancer drugs, seeking to learn how proteins know the DNA is damaged and then how the proteins help repair the damage. One project aims to develop an “outlandish tool” to target nucleosomes for gene editing. “It’s always fun to have at least one ‘crazy’ project,” she says. When taking on new lab members, Luger looks for new perspectives, such as enzymologists, “hard core physicists,” or cell biologists, who look at things differently. It’s one way of fighting what she considers the most dangerous threat to science in any lab: Confirmation bias, or the innate human tendency to interpret results in a way that confirms one's hypotheses, especially when results contradict each other are unexpectedly confusing. “I find myself all the time saying let’s assume the whole premise is wrong and let’s rearrange our assumptions,” Luger says. “I don’t believe results lie. It’s literally like a puzzle. A couple of pieces kind of look like they should fit but they don’t, and we have to start over again.” “That’s my mantra,” Luger says. “Problems are three-dimensional. You have to walk around and look at them from another viewpoint. You have to constantly check your premise. Even if nothing fits, people (including me) are reluctant to let it go. I keep telling my coworkers: Your results are telling you something. You have to listen. If they are confusing, it’s not the results’ fault. I really do believe the systems we’re studying are trying to communicate with us: ‘I’m right here. This is what I’m doing.’ I feel their desperation, which is mutual. Most people in lab are quite sick of hearing me say this, I am quite certain.” -Carol Cruzan Morton

[fandomdaysoftheweek]

GRE preparation complete guide!

THIS IS NOT a Great Deal of STUDY. Only a somewhat descriptive article. A couple of weeks of comparatively less manic groundwork will readily complete all I have mentioned.

This isn't likely to let you know exactly what the GRE questions seem like - all novels do this, have a peek prior to reading this. These are just.

Schedule:

I would not suggest following the program I did. It had been five days of intense. Too much stress and no fun in any way.

Three to four months will be perfect to prepare without panicking. Simply take a evaluation - to evaluate exactly what you want to examine. It is basic math and english, therefore studying is a waste of time. Identify flaws and examine people. Whatever you're good at could be revised in the future.

Quantitative Reasoning:

This is tier school mathematics that is Indian. Therefore a quick revision may help. No trigonometry or calculus - but exceptionally basic trigonometry occasionally helps with the triangle queries, though it is not prescribed to examine.

The very best method to do this is to perform several practice segments and revise anything you don't understand.

Data interpretation queries are occasionally confusing and need training, if just to find out what they look like. There are lots of kinds of charts which could be given and distributing them might call for unique procedures. These questions occasionally take more than others, therefore that I always left them to address last.

Comparison questions have corner cases in case you have not practised them you might not consider. There are two amounts given and they should be compared. So do a lot of those questions so as to comprehend what type of values may be utilized to check the amounts. Generally significant are using values such as 1, -1, 0, positive and negative fractions besides other actual numbers/integers.

Don't assume anything! Something which resembles a ideal angle isn't a ideal angle unless it's specified or marked.

The remainder of quant is fundamental mathematics, make sure each subject is refreshed. It should not take a long time, if you're great at high school mathematics. If a lot was abandoned, clinic! Quant is unquestionably the simpler GRE section for a big percentage of test takers.

What the majority of men and women realise is the quant segments are really simple, but it's also quite simple to create (incredibly) absurd mistakes. Most questions don't require over a minute to address. I attempted to fix all of the queries over 20 minutes and then use the rest to resolve ALL the queries. I changed a few incorrect answers in my true GRE on doing so, so it is quite important to look at each answer at least one time. Don't check. Assess an issue by solving like it is the first time you are seeing it in clinic evaluations too.

Verbal Reasoning:

I will not describe what these queries seem like, however what I researched and practised.

In my view, the only means to overcome this is by simply performing a few *hard* RCs and studying response explanations, knowing why one alternative is more likely to be right. I did not do ANY clinic comprehensions which were as hard as the true evaluation, but ETS Powerprep comes fairly near.

One more matter with RCs is that a number of them are extended - more than 6 paragraphs. It's crucial that you learn how to take care of these passages without losing an eye on the content whilst studying - thus practice doing these queries.

All you need is at the paragraph. They aren't asking for your view or assumptions. If something is maintained in an answer option, but it isn't suggested in the paragraph - it's incorrect, regardless of how logical/correct/appropriate it might appear to you. The planet is merely the individual reading thing rather than the world around you. It needs to be indicated or cited by the passing.

Coming to text conclusion and word equivalence, blanks have to be filled in using proper words. This is only one of the most difficult areas of the GRE since the response choices are phrases which may not be within a mean vocabulary.

Improving ones language is best achieved by studying plenty. However, GRE prep period might not be enough for studying a whole lot, so other resources may be utilized.

Aside from really *knowing* a note, circumstance and removal of different alternatives is very helpful. In sentence equivalence, you must choose two equal choices. When an alternative isn't similar/equivalent in significance to some other alternative (IN THE CONTEXT), remove it. Read the sentence/text to be finished and understand the circumstance before choosing choices.

1. My pre-GRE language 2. 3. 4. Magoosh Primary Wordlists and Frequent Wordlists 5.

As soon as I took the diagnostic evaluation, I recognized language as my weakness and focused many attempts on this section (therefore my first vocabulary was not spectacular). I covered the additional resources in their entirety. It doesn't take long in the event that you can perform 300 words daily, but this is quite painful. In case you've fourteen days, do 20-50 words per day and keep bargaining. WRITE DOWN phrases you do not understand with their own meanings. It's so much easier to update from your handwriting than out of print. I can not stress that enough. Revise all previously completed words daily.

Rote learning of phrases won't HELP. The ETS is analyzing your English ability and NOT your own learning-of-definitions ability. So it is extremely important to understand phrases in context. The 1100 of Barron does this and I suggest it. Words are awarded in a (humorous) story and that I remembered a few words due to the tales I learnt them.

Word Power Made Easy can also be brilliant. It educates word origins so deciphering unknown words becomes simple. Aside from roots, many frequent GRE phrases are educated also - in a structure that's structured. Again, no more word-definition pairs. It is interesting with lots of humourous illustrations.

IOS and android possess an program. Can utilize any third party program that extracts flashcards out of Quizlet. Theyare word-definition pairs and aren't enough to learn context correctly. However, I used them just because I constantly had my phone about. Any free fifteen minutes have been spent revising a couple of words. I didn't touch the words that are complex . Quizlet

Barron's 333 frequency words are a revision of GRE words that are common.

The language is not exceptionally challenging. These are phrases used in regular dialog that is high-level. I didn't see more than just two or three innovative words on the true test. Again, all words except you were in the resources studied. Know the fundamental words before you proceed to complex in almost any wordlist!

Alphabetical wordlists are perplexing and quite painful, in my view. However, in the event that you're able to bear together, do it.

I wish I'd had the time to generate synonym trees.

Barron's 800 key words is helpful also, I've heard. I didn't have the time to undergo it.

See where time has been wasted and attempt to reduce. With perplexing response options, a few minutes are missing in debating with yourself - don't to do this. Mark the query (the program allows marking) and return to it afterwards.

30 minutes, 20 queries - one minute per query could be great. I constantly did text/sentence questions initially (since they had been rapid) after that I did RCs in raising length of studying thing, just because I did not wish to devote first time reading extended passages. Determine a pattern on your clinic segments that works nicely for you and follow along.

AWA:

AWA is allegedly not too crucial for technology applications (I do not understand how much this is accurate). But, 1 practice essay of every kind (Topic, Argumentative) is essential. Regrettably, there are approximately 200 for every essay kind, therefore practising these is near impossible. Writing in 30 minutes isn't simple, so exercise at least one time.

Issue informative article - read sample essays (out of ETS and the net) and determine what routine of paragraphs that you need to use.

The article is basically asking you to analyse a problem, have a stand and help with illustrations. The rack doesn't need to be for or against the situation. It may be likely towards one side or perhaps ambivalent, if it is possible to substantiate it.

Contradiction is a paragraph in which you approach the contrary stand and justify your stance with that perspective - such as contending with an entirely opposite view.

Argument post - read samples (out of ETS and the net).

Additionally, definitely look the sorts of logical fallacies common to GRE debate essay subjects. There are not many (possibly five or even six) and may be identifiable. If you're able to detect four or three logical fallacies, you are place to write the article.

Long essays are favored for the two subjects - examine ETS samples. 5-6 paragraphs is adequate.

The very first thing about the essays - They aren't analyzing how good of a creative writer you're. Do not try and use these to express your own creativity.

They're analyzing articulation, perfect punctuation and logical arrangement - so use straightforward language so far as possible and easy to comprehend sentences.

Have a comparatively stiff paragraph structure for your article - then you can dedicate additional time to coming up with things to compose and less time considering how to initiate the essay and resolve.

Spend the first few minutes considering what it is you will write before you begin studying- end with time to spare time and spend a couple of minutes proofreading what you write. Practice writing using a 20 minute time limitation, it is OK if you overshoot a little.

BTW, they are not vital for MS apps, but PhD apps look at AWA scores really badly.

Additional:

MUST DO. The program is just what the pc GRE test utilizes. The standard of queries is quite similar also.

Make certain all queries in the ETS textbook are performed too - easy, moderate and hard. Standard resembles the GRE.

TIMED PRACTICE SECTIONS are rather important. The GRE is just as about speed and precision.

They may be used if you're familiar with everything. I didn't use them.

I just did timed section clinics as I did not have a lot of time. However, for familiarity with queries, many enormous question banks (Manhattan 5 pounds, by way of instance) are readily available.

[maimagazineblog]

This Easter Monday get to know our very special second ‘MAI Wonders of the World’ artist Thoams D. MacGregor - current Bolivian resident who says, working for 6 years across Scottish prisons teaching art to inmates taught him a lot more than his days spent in art school... 

We had a chat with him to find out a little more about.... well, everything.

So to all the layman out there could you explain a little bit about your particular painting process &  style? It's pretty straightforward really, everywhere I go and everything I do I am thinking in terms of painting. I don’t sketch as much as I used to because I have less time and always have a phone to take pictures with. These serve as a reference for the painting. I write a lot of notes too whenever ideas come and I have piles of these to go back to whenever I need them. I then get models (usually myself, friends, or family) to pose for me at a later stage and I set them up with good lighting and photograph at multiple angles. From there I start to build sketches and ideas for the composition, even though the composition has usually already formed in my head and I’m just filling in the blanks. In the last few years, I’ve relied on photoshop as a way of sorting all the different elements from the photo shoot and it’s a really fast way of arranging the composition. Once that part of the process is complete, the next phase, if I’m working on canvas is that I start by building it up with an acrylic sketch which also serves as a primer for the canvas. I work with really thick paint that I build up in layers and I’m quite obsessed with how working in this way creates a lot of texture and marks throughout the piece, which means that there is an added dimension when you view the work at different angles.

I like to think my style has changed over the years but I’m ultimately pinned down to a form of Scottish Realism…. Or Abstract Realism? With a bit of surrealism, situationism and existentialism thrown in. Did you study painting or are you self-taught? It’s a combination of both, really. I studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the 90s but I partied too much and didn’t make the most of it. We had a lot of life drawing in 1st and 2nd year and I had a really good tutor in my third year who switched me onto some great Artists but I left feeling bitter and angry about the whole process. I worked in a comedy club afterwards where I exhibited my work and did a lot of portraiture. Plus, I took a job teaching art in Scottish prisons and I learnt a lot through doing that...I would have people turn up for class who had no experience of drawing or painting and had just arrived in prison for armed robbery or murder, and they’d be asking if they could make a reproduction of Salvador Dali’s ‘Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening’ and I had to be able to show them how to do it! I worked there for about 6 years and I learnt way more there than I had at Art school and it was a massive injection of reality into my work. I am currently enrolled in a correspondence course with Turps Banana (A London magazine and art school for painters) which means I’m sending off work every few months to a Mentor who is discussing my work with me and giving me critical feedback. I’m halfway through it at the moment but have found it a really positive experience. I’ve worked in isolation for so long so it’s great to have a constructive conversation about my work at a time when I’m actually mature enough to focus on it. I’m going to be doing their studio program when I get back to London too. Who or what were you most recently inspired by? I’m just going to give you a list for this… I have an ‘old school list’ from ‘pre-internet’, which I regularly go back to for inspiration: Philip Guston, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Stanley Spencer, Paula Rego, Christian Schad, Wayne Thieabaud, Peter Howson, Ken Currie and the brilliant John Byrne (the Scottish painter not the American comic book artist...although he’s great too) But now that I’m on Instagram I’m hooked onto so many artists. These are who I’ve been looking at over the last few weeks: Eduardo Chilida, Pierre Soulages, Kerry James Marshall, Peter Doig, Molina Campos, Alice Neel, Nyoman Masidradi, Jansson Stegner, Yue and the list goes on..

It can be distracting but looking through a feed of these artists is very inspiring. Plus, I’m currently working on some exhibitions in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and I’m inspired by everything around me! What is the story behind your Bolivia connection? In a nutshell, my wife is an anthropologist. We came here ten years ago when she was doing her PhD. She was conducting research into land ownership in some Andean Mountain villages and I came and based myself in Cochabamba. I was lucky to meet some great artists here and had some shows here at ‘Martadero’ and ‘Caja verde’ then at ‘Kiosko’ in Santa Cruz. My wife was recently awarded some funding to come back and start some new research on taxation. So we’ve come with the whole family (we have two daughters) and are going to be here until the end of August. I’m doing a group show with Alejandra Dorado and Orlando Alandia here in Cochabamba. I’ve also just been granted access to Bolivia’s army bases to carry out some research for painting and do a solo show which I’m really excited about. It's amazing being back here again although a very different experience with children. Name something that only where you live has? Anticucho! (there might be some in Peru though?) It’s very thinly sliced cow heart barbequed on a skewer with a potato on the end then covered in a spicy peanut sauce. It's amazing. And now one question just for fun... Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm? I’m with Larry!

For more of Thomas’s work check out his:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tdmacgregor/?hl=en

Website: http://www.tdmacgregor.com/

For more MAI check out www.mai-magazine.com

[alshamey]

I Want My Great Memory Back! http://yourgradgear.com/2017/09/27/i-want-my-great-memory-back/

New Post has been published on http://yourgradgear.com/2017/09/27/i-want-my-great-memory-back/

I Want My Great Memory Back!

Blanking on names? Left your iPhone in a cab? Our writer tests whether the latest science-backed recall tricks will really turn your mind into a steel trap.

Jancee Dunn

July 22, 2015

I used to have a memory that amazed people, but in the last few years I’ve had trouble remembering names and movie titles. (“You know, the one about the guy who goes somewhere? It won that award…”) I hope to have many years of sharp thinking ahead of me—I’m in my mid-40s, nowhere near senior-moments territory—so I got to wondering: Is there something I should be doing now to counteract the lapses that already seem to be taking place?

There’s no way around the fact that memory erodes as we get older. The hippocampus, the area of your brain responsible for building memory, loses 5 percent of its nerve cells with each passing decade. Plus, aging slows production of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter vital to learning and memory. Based on these facts, scientists once believed that a person’s mental ability peaked early in adulthood, then went downhill from there. But over the last few decades, research has found that adults’ brains are still able to form new, memory-building neural networks in a process known as neuroplasticity. The reassuring latest thinking: With a little effort, anyone can boost their power of recollection.

To test this theory in the real world, I tried an array of research-backed brain-sharpening techniques over one six-week period. Am I now able to list all 44 U.S. presidents? No. But can I more easily summon up where I put my keys? Yes. And I think being able to leave my apartment and lock the door is a more valuable life skill than remembering James K. Polk. Here’s what worked for me—and what fell flat.

Technique #1: Play brain games

Puzzles like Sudoku and crosswords may improve memory and delay brain decline, though experts are not yet sure why. “My guess is that playing them activates synapses in the whole brain, including the memory areas,” says Marcel Danesi, PhD, author of Extreme Brain Workout. Research so far is decidedly mixed: Some studies have found that, while doing crossword puzzles may make you better at remembering the capital of Burkina Faso, there’s little evidence they’ll boost your performance at more general tasks, like remembering where your car is parked. But a 2011 study showed that participants who played a computer game called Double Decision for six years improved their concentration so much that they had a 50 percent lower rate of car accidents.

So I decided to try an online brain-training program called Lumosity, which neuroscientists from Harvard, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley have used in their own studies; its creators claim that 97 percent of users improve their memory in just 10 hours of playing time. First I answered a series of questions at lumosity.com to identify which of my cognitive processes, including memory, could use a little help. Then I received a personalized training regimen. A 10-minute daily series of games is free, and a more advanced program is available for $12.95 a month. (Being cheap, I stuck with the former.) The games are pure fun—remembering a pattern of blocks, spotting a bird in a field—and are based on what research has found to improve concentration and other cognitive skills.

My grade: B- By the end of a month, my “brain performance index” score rose 6 percent—not amazing in the Lumosity world, but respectable. The main problem: You have to play the games every day, forever, to keep up the benefits. I’ve mostly kept up. (Except on weekends. Or if I’ve had a busy week. OK, I haven’t kept up.)

Technique #2: Eat the right foods

According to Gary Small, MD, director of the UCLA Memory Clinic, memory superfoods include antioxidant-rich, colorful fruits and vegetables, which protect your brain from harmful free radicals. He’s also enthusiastic about low-glycemic carbs, like oatmeal, and anything with omega-3 fatty acids. In fact, a recent study published in Neurology found that people with low levels of omega-3s had brains that appeared to be a full two years older in MRI scans. That was incentive enough for me to follow the memory-enhancing diet from Dr. Small’s book The Memory Prescription, which claims it works in just two weeks. Much like the Mediterranean diet, it’s heavy on produce, legumes, nuts and fish. It’s low on meat, since meat’s omega-6 fatty acids may contribute to brain inflammation, a possible underlying mechanism for Alzheimer’s. Refined sugars produce a similar effect, so they were also out. (That was the toughest for me.) I ate a farmers market’s worth of blueberries, spinach, avocado and beets, and consumed enough fish to sprout gills. I also went beyond Dr. Small’s advice and took 2.4 micrograms of vitamin B12, the standard recommended daily amount—since studies show people with low levels perform poorly on memory tests—and 1,000 international units of vitamin D, discovered by Tufts University researchers to boost cognitive function. (My doctor signed off on the supplements.)

My grade: A It was difficult to eat meat only once a week, until I noticed how much less physically and mentally sluggish I felt. And my memory became markedly sharper over 14 days. (For instance, I quit using a bookmark because I could remember the page number I’d stopped on the night before.) Planning those meals took a lot of prep, but it paid off tremendously. I still try to use the diet as a guideline: I eat meat once a week, aim for five fruits and vegetables a day and pop omega-3 supplements (since I don’t get as much fish as I did on the diet).

            Next Page: Technique #3: Quit multitasking

[ pagebreak ]Technique #3: Quit multitasking

“One reason people can’t remember where their keys are is they’re not paying attention when they put them down,” says Mark McDaniel, PhD, a psychology professor and memory researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. (His suggestion for always finding them: “When you put them down, stop and say out loud, ‘I’m leaving my keys on my dresser,'” or wherever you’re placing them.) Studies show that it takes eight seconds to fully commit a piece of information to memory, so concentrating on the task at hand is crucial. I willed myself to stop giving everything “continuous partial attention,” a term coined by tech honcho Linda Stone. I put away my gadgets when they weren’t absolutely needed. I didn’t have 10 websites up all at once. I called a friend, sat on my bed, closed my eyes and actually listened to what she was saying.

My grade: B+ It’s amazing how difficult it is to do one thing at a time. Concentration takes work, but I found I could remember appointments better because I paid attention when I made them and repeated the day and time, rather than agreeing to commitments while doing the laundry and returning e-mail messages. My husband, usually my living iCal, was very impressed.

Technique #4: Master a new skill

A recent Swedish study found that adults who learned a new language showed improved memory for people’s names, among other things. Any activity that is practiced diligently, such as knitting or skiing, will likely have this effect, researchers say. I vowed to learn to play the keyboard. On YouTube I found PlayPianoKing, an affable guy who teaches everything from Pachelbel’s Canon to “Gangnam Style.”

My grade: C- While I did learn a mean “Gangnam” and felt my concentration improve, I soon gave up: With brain games and a diet overhaul crowding my schedule, the hour-long, every-other-day lesson was making me cranky, even before I saw any noticeable memory gains.

Technique #5: Get more sleep

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that losing half a night’s rest—three or four hours—on just one evening can erode memory. And the journal Nature Neuroscience recently reported that one way to slow decline in aging adults is to improve the length and quality of sleep. During a deep sleep of eight hours or more, it’s believed that the brain shifts memories from temporary to longer-term storage. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one third of us get less than seven hours a night—including me.

So, for more than a month, I implemented a stringent schedule: I would put my preschooler to bed and take a bath. Then I’d hit my own bed with a book, rather than watch TV or movies, which several studies reveal will make you feel too keyed up to wind down. Normally I fall asleep at 11:30 p.m. and wake at 5:45 a.m., but the new routine put me out by 10.

My grade: A+ Nothing had a better effect on my memory than that long stretch of sleep. I was able to semi-credibly measure the difference because I started my other interventions a few weeks before this one. I bounded out of bed fully recharged. My mind became as focused as a laser beam; I even remembered every mom’s name during the school run (no more “Hey, you!” or just “Hi!”).

Technique #6: Use mnemonic devices

These are basically memory tools that give meaning and organization to a random group of words or concepts. They could be an acronym (BOG for “Buy oranges and grapes”), an exaggerated visualization (imagining a massive stethoscope to remember a doctor’s appointment) or a rhyme (to recall a co-worker’s name, I’d remember, “Ted has a giant forehead”). Memory champions also love chunking, or breaking a large amount of information into more manageable nuggets. Say you have to memorize these numbers: 2214457819. It’s much easier to do as a phone number: 221-445-7819.

My grade: A+ I found these tactics enormously helpful. I usually forget my poor nephew’s birthday, but this year I actually sent a gift, thanks to the unpleasant but memorable NITS (“Nephew is 10 Sunday”).

Technique #7: Hit the gym

Researchers from the University of California at Irvine recently discovered that a little exercise might yield big mental benefits. They had one group of subjects ride stationary bikes for six minutes, while another group cooled their heels. Afterward, the active group performed significantly better on a memory test. Instant results! The researchers believe the boost may be tied to an exercise-induced brain chemical called norepinephrine, which has a strong influence on memory. And Dr. Small contends that exercise is the best memory aid of all. “It can increase your brain size,” he says—and the bigger your brain, the greater your capacity to remember. His recommendation: 20 minutes of brisk walking a day. I began doing an hour daily—more than Dr. Small recommends, but also more consistent than the gym workouts a few times a week I used to favor, and, according to many experts, more effective in juicing up memory.

My grade: A- This moderate, regular activity worked wonders on my stress levels, and it became much easier to concentrate afterward, so I could fix things (like a grocery list) into my memory. I grew addicted to my walks and still take them. In fact, I found that the memory-boosting healthy lifestyle habits—exercising more, stressing less, eating a better diet—were the most sustainable over time. And that’s a win-win.

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