Advice for when life makes you a little stressed. I’ve written about Astrobites before: it’s a collective blog by astronomy grad students explaining recent papers and research in the field. Besides the science, they have a category in the blog called "Career navigation", which has advice on how to handle the practical aspects of a career in science and astronomy. All the entries are good, but I want to specifically point out this one by astronomer John Johnson, an exoplanet hunter at Caltech.
I met John last year at a panel I hosted last year about the search for planets and life in space, and immediately liked him. He’s smart, funny, nice, and seemed like he had a pretty solid outlook on things. The article he wrote for Astrobites is about how to retain your mental health while under the ridiculous amounts of stress induced by grad school. For most of us, if we were to wake up five mornings in a row with excruciating pain in our right arm, we’d probably go see a doctor and get it checked out.
THIS. Determine Your Stress Level. Are you stressed out right now? How stressed are you? Are you “I need a vacation” stressed or “I need to go to the hospital” stressed? This is a way for you to find out in 2 seconds, thus avoiding a time consuming visit the doctor. Of course, this is all in good fun. I wouldn’t trust this to make any kind of accurate medical or psychological prognosis, but you know that. When I first found the website with these images, it was 3:30am, completely dark in the room, and I was just about to make coffee. I saw these pictures moving very slowly, and then I read the text. Bottom line, if you look at these and they are not moving, that means you are relaxed.
The really crazy part is that when I relaxed and took a long deep breath, they stopped moving. Via: [Picktur] Header Image Credit: [Minerva Studio / Shutterstock] Maturity. A beautiful revolution. 7 minimalistic posters. Revenge of the Introvert. There are as many introverts as extraverts, but you'd never know it by looking around. Introverts would rather be entertained by what's going on in their heads than in seeking happiness. Their big challenge is not to feel like outsiders in their own culture. by Laurie Helgoe, Ph.D. After ten years as a psychologist practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy , I reclined on the couch of my own analyst feeling burdened by my chosen work.
After a day of seeing patients, I was drained. Then I heard myself say: "I don't like being a therapist. " Suddenly I felt free, loosed from expectations that never fit. As a card-carrying introvert , I am one of the many people whose personality confers on them a preference for the inner world of their own mind rather than the outer world of sociability. Over the past two decades, scientists have whittled down to five those clusters of cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors that we mean by "personality" factors. Introversion in Action. Distorted Thinking.