An Aspiring Scientist

Musings

Buying freedom

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Monday is my new FAVORITE day because I’ve blocked it off on my calendar to focus on learning about animals. It certainly helps that I have a course to keep me on track (I have to stay on top of things), but the mere fact that I’ve been able to reduce my workload in order to do so, has been incredibly helpful.

Was it easy to go contract and stay with the same company, especially when I was needed? No. It wasn’t. It took over six months to get to the point where I could—to come to an agreement and sign a contract I was happy with that still allowed me to work in the industry with others if need be. I had to give my manager an in-depth understanding of what I did, of what each team member did, of the gaps that would need to be filled with me stepping back, and of what I wanted to/intended to keep doing with them. I also had to do this multiple times. I think it was very hard for my both my manager and HR to wrap their heads around my request given I had a good position in an industry that was also my passion.

Still, in the end we got there and though I may no longer have healthcare, a 401k with contributions, a higher paycheck, and the title that made me seem like “someone,” I have what currently feels more valuable than anything: freedom. The time to create, learn, experiment.

In spite of being a remote employee (and perhaps even because of it), my life had become nuts. I worked all hours of the day, counter to what many people think remote employees do, and I felt like I was expected to do this, in spite of what people said. Everything was always urgent and important to the higher-ups that had all the control. I burned out, hard. I’ve only had that happen once before, a decade ago when I was working for a software company and grappling with personal issues, as well as unrealistic expectations from seriously type-A bosses. This time it had everything to do with working too long and too hard, with not setting boundaries (or even feeling allowed to have them), with taking on too much responsibility, and with dealing with systems and processes that felt like they doubled my workload. I hit a point where even though I had a good job (not a bad salary, my passion industry, big travel perks), I wanted to quit.

The thing was, I used to love what I did, probably even worked so hard because of this. The job had made me pivot on it though. This hurt more than anything else. It made me nihilistic. It made me question what the point of it all was. And yes, while I should have taken an absence of leave, my previous boss (they changed my boss every six months), had done so and I didn’t feel I could do it too. Going part-time or contract was a solution I slowly came around to. It wasn’t honestly thanks to me, but rather thanks to friends and family who were perhaps more than a little surprised by my desire to just quit it all.

And yes, could I still be let go? Certainly. In fact, much more easily than before. But, I have time now to recover and begin working on the other things I want to immerse myself in, all while still receiving a paycheck.

The hard part is the days that I have to work. Those are still rife with stress and expectation. I think it will ease up as we get further away from specific events that make it more stressful but the big question then will be how it changes. I’m sure the company will eventually replace my role, though I’ve advised they should do it a little differently given what i know about the role, the organization and the team’s real needs. Hopefully this is taken into account.

All this to say, if you, like me want to pivot and have a security blanket (my partner works and pulls in a good salary and supports what I’m doing) I suggest you start thinking about that conversation I had. You never know, maybe they’ll go for it too. Buy yourself healing time and freedom like I did. It will be HARD at the start but even a couple of weeks in you’ll begin to feel better. Or at least I think so…

And, if you think that conversation was easy for me to have, think again. I put it off multiple times. I almost cried during it. I probably did cry during follow-up requests…it was hard but it was worth it.

Learning

A cheat code to getting started

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When I started my quest to study animal behavior (and all associated fields that I might potentially be interested in) I had a hard time focusing.

Yes, I’d been stressed thanks to workplace burnout and yes I had so many projects that I wanted to work on. The thing was, even though I wanted to sit down and study, I couldn’t make myself do it.

And so, like most excellent procrastinators, I found a course on learning. I was ready to ditch it too, sure it wouldn’t hold my interest for being too basic, or for the instructor being bad at teaching learning herself. Nevermind that the topics looked fairly straightforward, all things I’d been taught in school before. Still, what did I have to lose?

And so, I began taking the course.

I was gripped from the get go.

I learned about two different modes of thinking: diffuse and focused, and about how to use one to make the most of the other, as well as about when to use which.

I learned about how to use the pomodoro technique correctly, because yes, of course I knew what it was but I did not know how to correctly use the last few minutes on a thirty-minute timer: two to five minutes to retrieve or recxall what you’ve learned to strenghen memory traces, and two or three minutes of “restful wakefulness.” I bought a tiny portable pomodro block of my own and began experimenting. It got me through tasks I’d been avoiding for a couple of weeks.

I learned that metaphors and comparisons make learning and remembering material easier than rote repetition.

I learned that sleep washes out metabolic toxins and it’s way more important than you think if you want to be able to think clearly the next day and if you want to keep those new connections neural connections strong.

I was reminded that one of the best ways to learn is through osmosis, simply by doing and getting involved, just as I did when I was learning to scuba dive—joining dive clubs, diving, volunteering to clean the exhibits at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and so on.

I learned that you learn more by actively engaging with a subject. Ask questions, think, talk about it.

I also learned that exercise is great for diffuse thinking time. Go for a run or a walk or a swim and just be. Often your brain will end up coming up with solutions or ideas for whatever you are trying to figure out, not least if you’ve been thinking about it before you begin (as with sleep). In fact, exercise is so important that in the absence of an enriched environment, it can help increase new connections in the hippocampus.

The other trick is to insert yourself into a creative environment where other people are also being creative. That can help with learning and with coming up with ideas. I wish more corporate offices who waxed lyrical about wanting creatives realized that their stuff, metrics-driven bureaucratic policies literally impacted creativity and learning.

The truth is, a lot of success is not about being smart but rather, about being passionate and persistent. Don’t let go, don’t give up.

As I neared the end of the first module of the course I though about what I wanted to learn. Well, obviously I want to learn how to learn better. I want to learn how to structure good nonfiction. I want to learn how to hypothesize and conduct a legitimiate scientific study, I want to learn about how the brain works, I want to learn how to work more effectively.

If there is discomfort in the learning process, well, that’s apparently good news. Some discomfort is key to learning. Struggling with a math problem? Probably a good thing…I know that most of the things I struggled with as a kid ended up becoming some of my favorite problems to work on: computer programming, parsing poetry, complex physics concepts.

Today, I try to give myself more grace. If learning to sail a boat is hard because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to read the wind or the water, well, I’ll get it eventually. I just have to keep at it. Keep trying, even if means looking slow, stupid, or bad at something.

Uncategorized

Scotopic bathing

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I have the notion I have invented a meditative new practice. I’m going to call it scotopic bathing because it involves taking a bath in the dark. No candles. No bulbs. No cell phones. Just the dim seepage of light from beyond the door, or from outside the window.

If you’ve been following along ,you’ll know my last two posts pertained to scotopic vision, or the ability to see in the dark thanks to the power of the rod photoreceptors on our retinas. What most people don’t know is that humans have the ability to see in the dark (albeit somewhat poorly when compared with say a deep sea fish or an owl).

The trick is to allow your eyes to adjust. It’s supposed to take about 20 to 30 minutes, and if you really want to see more detail, given you have more rods on the periphery of your eye and not near the center (the fovea, which is mostly cones), you can even try hacking it by examining the thing you want to see in the dark from the side of your eye.

Why did I do it? Well, call it mad scientist curiosity. I wanted to experience the change. Of course, when I initially turned the lights off and guessed my way into the bath tub, I was a little alarmed. The room felt entirely black and as I dipped my ears below the surface, a very real feeling of sensory deprivation kicked in. When the sound of my blood pumping got to be too much, I lifted my head out of the water and focused on trying to make out shapes.

At first I didn’t see anything. Then, slowly, as the minutes ticked by, raw edges became visible, though it felt like I was only seeing them for seconds before they blipped out of existence. The edge of the wall alongside the bath tub, the cabinet running the length of the room, maybe the shower railing above.

It wasn’t until a few minutes more that other details shifted into sight—the tap, a collection of shampoo and soap bottles, the shower curtain, the rod. And still, as I lay there taking it in, more began to appear and it felt as though light were suddenly coming in.

Startled, I wondered if perhaps a flood light had turned on outside, or if more lights were on in the hall. But, as I lay there and nothing else changed, and as I grew further accustomed, I realized I was experiencing true scotopic vision.

I tested my side eye abilities too and sure enough it was easier to make out more detail (albeit all in black and white) of plugs, razors, and more, all thanks to that periphery glance. A straight on glance sent things blurring back into the mist.

I decided to prolong the experience and do my hair as well as shave in the dark. It was far easier than expected. Though I didn’t get much more out of it than getting to experience science in action, I felt energized by the fact that I could put some of my learnings to the test.

The whole experience made me wonder about other things too: could a dimmer dive light on a scuba dive, encourage more close-up interactions with marine life? Are all fish and invertebrates really light sensitive? And, is that why our blackwater dive guides in Hawaii, jetted out to drop us to hand 5,000 feet over the depths in the dark? The captain hadn’t wanted any lights on on the boat. Was it so his vision could adapt? And surely we too should have dived dimmer lights on these pelagic dives? Might that have helped those skittish critters? I recall now a squid smacking me in the arm. And in fact, the same thing happened to me when diving RMS Rhone in the British Virgin Islands. One night dive on the Rhone, a shoal of squid shimmered by and suddenly, within quick succession I’d felt a couple of hard punches on my body. Lesson learned. Lights not loved by squid!

Musings

The eye of the beholder

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I have become fascinated with eyes after finishing the chapter on spookfish in Jackie Higgins’ boo, “Sentient” and after learning more about scotopic vision, how it works for us, and its relation to where rods and cones are in human and animal eyes, especially in so far as they’re different.

The author is smart to have so closely connected animals and humans as what better way to illustrate how miraculous each of our senses is, as well as our physical bodies that process inputs like photons, sound waves and so on.

If, like me, you’re now curious about how vision works, this video does a good job of explaining things. It even mentions the pirate eye patch theory I talked about in my last post.

Once I’d learned a little more about the remarkable way our eyes work, and indeed how eyes of creatures that rely on seeing in the dark work, I began thinking about how awful scuba divers really are for the underwater world. Were we to dive with biology in mind, surely we wouldn’t do half the things we do?

For example, fish often have far more rod photoreceptors on their retinas, which means they’re very sensitive to light. Why then do we dive with focused beams and intense lights? Yes, we need them for night dives and murky cold water areas, but surely we don’t need the intensity? Surely a flood on low would be much better? No diving organization I know of advocates for diving a primary light that is a flood light because it’s better for the fish. Always the focus is on what’s best for the human (the pinnacle of evolution, unless of course you ask Justin Gregg, author of “If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity” in which case really we’re probably at the pinnacle of stupid). Never mind all the divers and underwater photographers and videographers who film fish and other invertebrates using strong video lights. Notice all those squinting octopus you see in underwater photos? Yeah, they’re not happy. Ever seen a cuttlefish do everything possible to try to get away from your light? Or perhaps an eel recoil? And, on a night dive, what about a sleeping fish, a shark, or a turtle jerk awake thanks to intense light, then smack into a rock as they’re temporarily blinded.

Unfortunately, it feels a bit to me like we bulldoze our own way of seeing the world into other worlds, when really we should be the ones adapting. If that underwater world is indeed light sensitive, let’s change the way we dive. Low floods, critter inspections from peripherals, and, if you’re going to take photos, use strobes so the poor fish aren’t blinded. I’m sure there’s more to learn in this realm.

It’s not just the underwater world that’s affected either. As I’ve moved on to the next chapter in Sentient—which is all about owls and our sense of hearing—I begin to wonder about places like the raptor center I visited in Eugene, Oregon. If an owl’s sense of hearing is so exquisitely sensitive, why weren’t there signs everywhere letting people know to whisper, or at least to be quiet? Surely for these animals kept in cages, it’s torture to hear kids running around yelling, or even loud conversations from adults? Never mind the fact that many of these centers don’t provide hide-out spaces for the animals so those not interested in seeing humans can get away. Truly I don’t feel like we build spaces that take an animals umwelt and innenwalt to heart. It’s time for us to change, not for the animals to change for us, not if we’re the ones rehabbing them, keeping them for science or conservation purposes, or indeed as companion animals.

Learning

Tried your scotopic vision lately?

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There’s a word I’m particularly enjoying right now because it has a susurrus sound and because it’s a new notion for me. 

I came across it a couple of days ago while reading Sentient (which by the way, so far, is a fantastic book. Each chapter focuses on a different animal and could be read alone). Anyway, the term comes up in relation to the spookfish which, incidentally, has excellent scotopic vision, a type of vision that apparently even us humans have. 

If, like me, you are unfamiliar with the term, I’ll break it down. Basically, it refers to an eye’s ability to see under low-light conditions. If you have scotopic vision, well you have some of that ability. 

As you can imagine, the spookfish is a deep sea fish (think mesopelagic deep, down to 1,000 meters) and though this vision comes hand in hand with a poorer ability to discriminate between colors and lower visual acuity, those with scotopic vision are highly sensitive to light and are capable of seeing in starlight-level darkness. Incidentally spookfish are really also quite cool because they’ve got mirror-based eyes. I won’t go into it now but it’s super rare. So rare in fact that only two vertebrates on our planet are known to have a retinal mirror in their eye rather than a lens. 

What struck me as most surprising is that though humans aren’t great at seeing in the dark, after some time—say 20 to 30 minutes—we too can tap into our scotopic powers as we rely solely on our rod photoreceptors cells in our retinas, to make sense of the dark. That marker of time is when rods are supposed to approach near-max sensitivity. 

Though uncorroborated, it’s also apparently why pirates wore an eye patch—so that they could quickly go between the bright above deck and the dark below deck level and still see. It’s also apparently what my boyfriend does when he goes to the bathroom at night. He closes one eye against the light, does his thing, turns off the light, then uses the dark-adapted eye to navigate his way back to bed. 

Of course, I had to test this for myself and so, for the past few nights I’ve been lying awake paying attention to my vision improving without lights. Thankfully, the blackout blinds in our bedroom allow for experiments like this. The results truly are stunning. 

If you head outside to try it at night, I’ve got another factoid you might appreciate: the fovea in your eye (the sort of central area) has no rod photoreceptor cells. This means that the center of your gaze is actually quite poor at night. And so, if you want to see better in near darkness levels of illumination, try averting your vision and looking at the thing you want to see out of the side of your eye. Star gazers will often use this trick! 

And this is what I love so much about learning. Though I’m only at the start of embedding myself in the world of animal behavior, already I’m enraptured. It doesn’t even matter that my first textbook focuses solely on dogs, it too is fascinating. 

All I can say is I’m relieved I’ve switched to a contract deal with my employer (such a hard decision given I had a fairly good position) as it buys me the mental space to start filling my head with new information. It feels like a return to meaning and somehow that makes me both immensely happy and somewhat sad. Why have I taken this long to return to academia? Learning is definitely one of my love languages.

Final aside: I feel so damn sorry for all the ratfish that Pacific Northwest divers blind when diving those darker waters. I still recall the first time I saw the fish. I was bowled over by its enormous eyes. Turns out that like the spookfish (it’s actually part of the same group of deep-sea cartilaginous fish called chimaeras) ratfish eyes are highly adapted to low-light conditions, and they lack the ability to regulate the amount of light that enters them. This means that a diver shining a light in their eye can actually blind them and who knows for how long. If only our dive agencies were required to teach marine behavior etiquette specific to their own areas. And I mean REQUIRED.

Learning

Early morning studies

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I’m starting to love my early mornings kudos of jet lag. I wake up around 4 am or so, make tea and avo toast, and then settle down to learn. It’s one time of the day I find it easy to concentrate as no one else is awake, including the birds. There’s simply nothing to distract me.

Today, I logged in to my site (here) and Coursera, so I could jot down notes and thoughts as I learned.

Though I took a course titled “Research Methods in Psychology” in my undergraduate years when I was hopping from course to course trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I can’t say that I remember a whole lot from the class. We did design and run experiments (that was fun if I recall) but we also did a lot of stuff with statistics which is far less memorable. And, to be perfectly honest, though I’ve studied engineering-level calculus (yes, I once thought I wanted to be a programmer), I have never taken a class dedicated to statistics.

Obviously, I need to be able to hit the ground running if I’m going straight into a Masters program. That means having a solid grounding in research, statistics and study design. At least according to one of the programs directors at a UK university I reached out to.

To bone up, I’ve decided to take a series of courses on Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology specialization on Coursera. I settled on this series because it was created by the American Psychological Association and if they don’t know what they’re talking about, who on earth does?

I expected the course to be completely dry and have so far been pleasantly surprised to find it interesting. In the back of my head the storyteller in me can’t help but think qualitative research is quality research because it relies on stories…and, well, because it’s in the name. Also, in some form and fashion, as a digital marketer for many years, I had to do a bit of it in order to develop user personas—the fictional characters marketers make that are intended to synthesize some segment of a user group or audience profile. Usually they come packaged with stupid names such as Savvy Sally (an accountant who likes to do her research before making a purchase), or Adventurous Andy (a tech nerd who makes more emotional purchases and who is swayed by energetic and heartfelt language).

Anyway, you get my drift, qualitative research feels familiar.

At one point in module 3, the course talks about the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative research and presents this lovely image that I believe perfectly illustrates the magic of research and how much there is to it, though most people only ever see the tip (the techniques used, or the method). I wanted to share it here. I’ve no idea who designed this illustration unfortunately as there’s no credit given. But, given this article is just for me and just for educational purposes, I’m going to hope it’s okay to share.

I did, however get really hung up on the philosophy section focused on ontology, axiology and epistemology as it was very poorly explained.

And then…well, after muddling through that, I decided to take a break and switch to a cup of coffee and actual paid work.

Balancing (quiet and secret) future plans is one thing but I still have to pay the Coursera bills!

Musings

Self-indulgent “student” purchases

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One of the things I love about being in the greater Raleigh area is that Amazon deliveries come fast. Living in Wilmington, NC and Fort Walton Beach, FL was a nightmare as Amazon deliveries showed up a week later. Now, it’s next day or even same day.

Capitalism gripes aside, this morning I ordered a couple of packs of pastel-colored post-it notes, pastel-colored highlighters, and a set of 0.5mm Pilot Precise V5 pens. Yes, I’m a stationery nerd.

I wanted to have supplies to highlight my textbooks and add thoughts to them that wouldn’t ruin them. The highlighters are gorgeous and they’re double-sided, with one side being a pen and the other the wider highlighter nib.

I also intend to take some of the courses in my to-do list and write them on to the post-it notes, then stick those on my wall so that I have a real-life kanban board of sorts. This helps me easily keep track of what I’m working on and what I have on the backburner.

Right now I’m trying to keep it simple, though I’m dying to start some of the other courses on my list.

I’m just doing the Codecademy R class, the Qualitative Research Coursera class, and soon, the Animal Behavior class with UW (starts in a few days time).

This is all, I think, only possible because I’ve “gone contract” with my employer. It took months of planning to get to this point (sometimes I wish I’d just quit) but I’m hoping it will tide me over so that I have some income but reduced hours in order to allow me to focus on learning and studies.

I forsee next year being the start of my Masters, likely in England, and possibly after that, a PhD. But, at 38…it all feels like I’m chasing the clock…

Learning

My first forays into R

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I’ve started my Learn R course through Codecademy and am pleased to report that much of what I’m learning feels like familiarization.

Why R? Well, I’m told that psychologists, researchers and many scientists need to know how to code using R in order to analyze data.

Though I’ve never taken an R course, I did take computer programming in high school (Borland Delphi graphic user interface programming) and in my first year of university (C programming). In another life I wanted to be a programmer.

The one gripe I have thus far, though I’m only in the first of 10 modules, is that I don’t think some of the concepts are explained that well. Thankfully I already know what a variable and a string are, and a whole lot more about writing programs but still, not ideal for helping people really comprehend. There are other R courses on many other sites but I’m going to keep plugging through as it’s still a simple format.

I think the crux to this programming language, like all IRL languages, is that repetition and practice is going to be the best way to learn. You need to work on problems, and write code. The only way is through!

Musings

A sort of secret start

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I’ve started this blog in a somewhat secret manner. By secret I mean it’s not attached to my social media accounts. If readers stumble upon it fine but really it’s for me and I hope to keep it that way for now so that I can write honestly and openly. I want a space to catalogue the things I learn without the pressure of turning them into polished articles that are thematically appropriate for the site. This is the catch-all space intended to track my journey from one career trajectory into the next. Namely from a career in marketing to one in animal behavior and ethology. Perhaps even with a bent towards fish behavior and cognition.

I knew I wanted to make a pivot somewhere back in 2017 or 2018 but one thing or another kept me from getting started. First it was not wanting to take out additional student loans. Then it was knowing I’d have to take the GRE, a standardized test I don’t believe in. Then (and this one stuck for a long time and was perhaps most insidious) it was wondering what on earth I’d do with a degree in marine biology or animal behavior once I got it. Marine biology is an incredibly saturated market with every other scuba diver having a degree in it (so being a diver and even a dive pro doesn’t even make me stand out).

Finally, once I’d figured out that it would be best to apply for animal behavior programs given my interest in animal cognition and as most marine bio programs do not truly study fish behavior and cognition outside of marine mammals, I had real trouble finding programs that studied cognitive ethology. In fact, this is still a problem I’m dealing with. I think I’ll likely be best served to study animal behavior and then possibly also study marine biology and then (yes, another then) go on to formalize with a PhD and study in more depth.

So far the U.S., where I’m presently based, is looking pretty bad in terms of programs. Most programs related to animal behavior are supported in part or entirely by the agricultural industry, an abhorrent and abusive industry I want no part of. Help people figure out how to raise, feed and manage animals so they can be better slaughtered? No thank you.

Though I know animal welfare is an important sub-sector of animal behavior, it’s not where I want to focus given it’s close relationship to the ag industry. I know we need the people to make conditions better for animals in those situations however, so kudos to all those studying it. Hopefully one day we’ll live in a vegan world.

Rather, I want to focus on furthering what we know about animal cognition and behavior in natural settings, or indeed in relationship to humans. I do not want to focus on animals as widgets for use by humans. I want to help advance the science, help animals become recognized for the incredible conscious beings they are.

While I am finally registered to take an Applied Animal Behavior certificate through the University of Washington to truly dig into whether or not I want to pursue this course at the Masters level and possibly further, I still have a lot more to learn and to refresh. I need to bone up on my psychology research methods, need to take a statistics course, and need to learn R programming. I’d like to hit the ground running next year if I decided to go for it and do the Masters.