Agent Plus Environment

The problem with most advice is that it’s too general. So I thought I’d share a few of the specific and fascinating words of wisdom I’ve picked up during my LARSS summer:

1. Don’t fall in 2Gs. One of my labmates got to ride the vomit comet because of a science project he worked on, and not falling was one of the recommendations while aboard the plane. The rationale was this: If you fall, you’ll fall too fast. You’ll try to bring your arms up to catch yourself–it usually works, but here, your reflexes will be too slow. Your face will hit the ground and your nose will smash as your arms are still moving up to catch you.
2. Astronauts have to be a certain kind of person. My mentor, Garry D. Qualls, told me about a colleague of his who became an astronaut. Evidently, they take a certain type of person. Gregarious, outgoing. Dedicated. The kind of person who, upon receiving a task, will be content doing that task day in and day out to the very best of his/her ability–astronauts have to practice the tasks they’ll be doing in space for a long time beforehand. The kind of person who can speak reasonably well to large groups and who enjoys meeting all kinds of people, since a huge part of the job is public relations.
3. Always double-check baud rates, port numbers, and IP addresses. Save before recompiling, have a common ground, make sure to use charged batteries, and give your program the right input arguments if it requires them. Installing the referenced libraries usually helps, too.
4. Stick with your federal/government job for at least three years. At the grad seminar, held in June with the goal of providing student interns with information about post-baccalaureate options, one of the speakers commented offhand that if you do become a fed, if you stick with it long enough, you’ll get reinstatement rights. I did a little googling to see what kind of rights those are: Evidently, it means you can reenter the fed workforce without competing for the job with the general public. It doesn’t mean you automatically get a job offer. There are obviously some restrictions, but regardless, good to know! That page also mentions that if you don’t work a government job for three years, you get reinstatement rights for only three years after you leave.
5. Ask about details when investigating grad schools. The grad seminar included a panel of three students (graduate or just finished) who each spoke a bit about how they had gotten to their current place in life. One of the students offered advice on good questions to ask the professors at schools you’re considering: If you’d get to do research, what would the specifics be? Not just the topic, but how much time would be spent sitting in front of a computer? reading papers? attending conferences?

I’ll continue sharing stories about what I’ve learned this summer, so be sure to check back soon!

You may have noticed the new tagline on this site’s header. If you were exceptionally observant, you may have noticed that the tagline, for about a day, said “… one girl’s interactions …” rather than “… one woman’s interactions ….” It only struck me later, after seeing the word “girl” at the top the webpage, that I had chosen the wrong word.

As I’m sure you’re aware, “girl” tends to be used to discuss younger female people. When does one switch to referring to those females as “women” instead? Certain criteria appear to be in place for the new title: an age requirement, a threshold level of maturity, specific biological changes. One might hold different standards for oneself than for other people, requiring a particular amount of self-assurance that one is, in fact, mature.

So, out of curiosity, when did you start referring to yourself, in your mental dialogue, as a woman rather than a girl, or as a man rather than a boy?

For me, “girl” would have still been the wrong word a year or two ago. Why did I initially select it anyway? Perhaps I’m still getting used to the idea that I’m growing up. Isn’t the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood a fascinating place to be?

Not your everyday summer job

This summer, I’ve been working for NASA as an intern in the Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars Program. In a one-sentence summary, I’m working with a systems engineering team to develop and integrate the software and hardware needed for both indoor and outdoor tests of autonomous, unmanned multi-vehicle flight control.

But what does that mean, in terms of what I actually do?

It means the past seven weeks have been spent laboring over keyboards, switching between C, C++, Java, and Processing. I’ve carried my lab’s miniature Parking Lot Exploration Rover outside in 105ºF weather to test a navigation algorithm. I’ve learned about PID controls, GPS sensors, and radio communication. I’ve evaluated ground control station software, delved into the depths of an open source flight simulator, and discovered how tricky network protocols can be. I’ve written software for 3D data display programs, data parsers, and communication links. I’ve learned that when you’re one of a team of ten interns, all tackling pieces of the same large project, communication is crucial.

I’m enjoying this internship immensely. Vassar News just released an ego-boosting article about me and my summer, which I suggest you check out.

You’ll be hearing more from me on this subject. Stay tuned.

Your expectations define your perceptions

It’s raining.

Fat, corpulent water globules cascade from the sky. Plop, plop. A drop, and a few of its compatriots, dribble down the inside of your collar. They’re cold. Wet, and unpleasant. The drops slither down your neck.

“Take my cloak,” he [Lord Golden] suggested.

“It would only get as wet as the rest of me. I’ll change into dry things when I get back.” [Fitz]

He didn’t tell me to be careful, but it was in his look. I nodded to it, steeled myself, and walked out into the pouring rain. It was every bit as cold and unpleasant as I expected it to be. I stood, eyes squinted and shoulders hunched to it, peering out through the gray downpour. Then I took a breath and resolutely changed my expectations. As Black Rolf had once shown me, much discomfort was based on human expectations. As a man, I expected to be warm and dry when I chose to be. Animals did not harbor any such beliefs. So it was raining. That part of me that was wolf could accept that. Rain meant being cold and wet. Once I acknowledged that and stopped comparing it to what I wished it to be, the conditions were far more tolerable. I set out.

— Fool’s Errand, Robin Hobb

Keep it in perspective

Keep what in perspective? Well, everything, but particularly the bad things, the frustrating things, and the irritating things. So it’s raining. So you cut your finger slicing potatoes. So it’s ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit and humid. You are in some set of circumstances and you wish to be in some other set of circumstances. You wish to be dry. You wish your finger didn’t hurt. You wish to be cool and comfortable without drops of sweat sliding down your neck.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where wishes change the world’s physical properties. We have limited control over our environments. We have slightly more control over our reactions to our environments.

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes that see reality.” —Nikos Kazantzakis

What you expect significantly influences how you will perceive your circumstances. The thing is, a lot of times, we don’t explicitly set out our expectations. You leave the air-conditioned building with the continued implicit expectation that you’ll be cool and comfortable, and when that blast of muggy, sticky air hits you, it hits you twice as hard because you’re expecting something else.

What can you do about this? Try explicitly setting up your expectations. It may help prevent the disappointment of being wrong (and feeling unpleasant). Instead of thinking “Aaugh, I’m getting wet and the rain is cold, why can’t I be warm and dry?” try thinking “Okay, I’m going out in the rain so I’ll be wet and cold. That’s just how rain is.” Keep in mind that this works both ways–sure, you can set yourself up to expect to feel better about your circumstances, but you can also easily set yourself up to expect to feel worse.

As a final note, I’m sharing to a quote I occasionally turn to as a reminder to keep things in perspective, from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (on the subject of pop music):

“Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?”

Are you miserable because of your circumstances, or are your circumstances miserable because of your misery?

Habits are hard to break

Right now, I have no blue bin in which to pile my cardboard, glass bottles, and tin cans. Checkout clerks look puzzled when I say, “I brought my own bags.” My apartment complex advertises its own convenient trash compactor.

It wasn’t until I was faced with a lack of “Be Green!” signs and a deficiency of bins for recyclables inseparably paired with every trash can in sight that I realized just how ingrained in me this behavior is. Yes, that’s right, I am trained to recycle.

I’m okay with that. I like recycling. It leads me to wonder, though, what other behaviors I’ve picked up without consciously deciding to do so–I’m sure there are plenty of them. Which won’t I notice until some outside event disrupts my pattern of behavior? Which habits are good habits; which exist as conventions simply because nobody has bothered to change them?

Regardless, I’ll take my five-cent discount for each reusable shopping bag, thanks.

Faded squares of fabric, strung together in repeating blue-white-red-green-yellow chains, crisscross the branches of bare-limbed trees. The gentle wind makes them flutter. Orange-gold light filters into the grassy meadow, touching a row of canvas tents and the temple house beyond. Tsechen Kunchab Ling: Temple of All-Encompassing Great Compassion. This is the seat of His Holiness the Sakya Trizin in the United States, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery established nine years ago.

I spent the past weekend there. The field work office at my college arranges this retreat every semester. Everyone I’ve talked to who has previously attended says wonderful things about it; this semester, one of my friends told me she was going: I should join her! I like learning new things, so I signed up. A good decision: I didn’t return all chill and zen, as one friend told me his roommate had, but I certainly gained a few new ideas and approaches to mull over, and dipped my hand into a previously unfamiliar piece of the world.

Medicine for one’s mind

The first evening, the twenty-something students–most from my college, four from another–gathered in the shrine room, sitting cross-legged on cushions as we listened to Khenpo Kalsang introduce Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. He began by telling us, “Do not take any of what I say on faith. Take it through analysis, if there is some benefit in it for you.” Religion, he said, is like a drugstore full of medicine. You do not go to the drugstore and buy everything in it–you just buy what would be beneficial to you now. You believe the other medicine may have just as much value, but in other situations, not this one.

We discussed the foundations: the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma; the four noble truths; karma; defilements; the six perfections. When we talked about the giving, and how one should try to give what one could to other sentient beings (in the form of material items, kind words, protection, and so on), Khenpo Kalsang shared a story of the Buddha, and how the Buddha had given his flesh so that a family of hungry tigers could eat. “So,” a fellow student asked, “Giving one’s life for another being is the ultimate gift?”

Khenpo Kalsang, he smiled, and shook his head. “Only if you feel no regret,” he said. “If you feel regret, it destroys the merit.” Until then, preserve your own life, and do not give away anything that would cause you regret. This struck a chord. Self-preservation above all else, unless the right situation arises.

Knowing and understanding

Later, I talked to the resident nun, Ani Kunga, about psychology and cognitive science. She had studied psychology for a while in grad school, but now holds the view that psychologists are going about understanding the mind and understanding the knower and what knowing is the wrong way. “Psychologists,” she said, “study the brain and the self externally. Ever since the 1920s, their science has been about observation of behavior, questionnaires, recordings of electrical brain activity. But the mind can only be known by you, the person whose mind it is.” She said philosophy and epistemology were doing it right: looking at experiences from the inside.

A big overlap exists between Tibetan Buddhism, psychology and cognitive science. All three examine the distinction between the self and others, between the observer and the observed, between knowing and the knower. I agree with Ani Kunga to some extent–only so much can be known about the mind from external observation. But this doesn’t mean that there isn’t merit to such studies, nor that nothing of use can be learned in that way.

Tibetan Buddhist philosophy also approaches the mind and the self from the inside. During a second philsophy session, Khenpo Kalsang translated a sutra about a king who received advice from the Buddha. This sutra delved into some questions about the nature of the self, whether the self is a delusion, and how the clinging of self is a defilement. I intend to discuss it in more depth later, so stay tuned.

Compassion training and prayer flags

In the afternoon, a group of us gathered outside for a meditation session with Ani Kunga. Sunshine melted lazily through the tree branches above, a breeze animating the branches’ shadows so they danced between our cushions. Compassion and anger were the session’s topics. The key message:

“If there’s something you can do, why are you unhappy? Just do it. If there’s nothing you can do, why are you unhappy?”

Ani Kunga explained several off-session and one on-session technique for dealing with negative emotions (anger, hate, irritation, stress, jealousy, and so on). All the methods built off the idea that you are in control: anger is an emotion, and you can change your emotions. Stay tuned for a more in-depth post on the topic.

Another of the day’s activities was making prayer flags. As Ani Kunga explained, “Prayers, wishes, hopes, aspirations–someone, many people, may share those with you. Hanging the prayer flag shares your prayer with everyone else in the world. This may do no good at all, but it may–if everyone hopes and wishes and dreams and aspires, perhaps it will do good. It may not. But if no one shares their prayers, it will certainly do no good. So on the offchance that it will help, why not?”

Never done

This weekend reminded me that I’m not done learning. If I stay still long enough, if I’ve achieved a relatively constant level of happiness and satisfaction, I forget that I can and should continue to seek out new ideas and approaches, and incorporate beneficial ones into my life. A person is never “done,” and so, I’ll continue to observe and discuss and study, trying to pick the directions in which I’ll change, and trying to make tomorrow better than today.

Ever onward and ever upward.

You deserve a big hug

One of my fencing coaches told me today, “You’re one of the people on the fencing team who deserves a big hug at the end of the season for your hard work.”

I appreciated this comment. I appreciated it far more than I expected. What I appreciated was not the implicit compliment (nice as that is), but that someone had noticed the time, effort, and thought I put into the team and into improving my own fencing.

Back to ambition

If you take a look at my recent rambling on ambition, you’ll find I think it’s up to you to achieve what you want to achieve. You’re the only person you’ll have to blame if you’re not satisfied with how you’ve lived your life, be it a sport that you’d like to excel at, a dream job you want to have, a novel you plan to write. The only person who can get you the places you want to go is you.

I call this drive and determination to do the work needed to do the things I want to do ambition. A friend of mine, though, noted that “ambition” often has negative connotations. It’s associated with evil overlords and corporate weasels. And “work,” that’s associated with external imposition. It’s something to be avoided. This comment made me think: Why do I approach work (and ambition) differently?

Fencing coaches give good advice

The most prominent influencing factor that came to mind was my first fencing coach, George Platt. He was a cheerful, positive man, and he explained the difference between achieving success and achieving excellence to all his fencers.

Success, he said, is how good you are in relation to the rest of the world. Success is job promotions and high salaries and winning medals in competitions. Excellence is how good you are in relation to how good you individually can be. Achieving excellence is being the best you can be, regardless of how good anyone else is. And that should be your goal: being the best you can be. Doing what you enjoy and putting effort into the things that are important to you.

Most of us, we’ll never be The Best at anything. The hard part is not letting failure to achieve success dissuade us from continuing to pursue excellence. It’s easy to be discouraged. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “I work, but no one else does and no one appreciates it, so I’m going to stop.” It’s easy to lose motivation. So in a world increasingly full of lazy slackers, we need to acknowledge the people who do work hard, no matter what results they garner. That acknowledgment may be exactly what they need to keep going.