CHRISTINA >> Hey guys, it's mid-March 2020 and I just finished lunch. So let's go to work!
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CHRISINA >> So, yeah. Coronavirus is a thing.
And affecting all of our work schedules. For me I already shared a bit about about how I
had been refinishing my basement and I basically turned what was my crafting
area into my new office desk. I took a midnight run over to my office
once we were figured we were going to ramp down,
I grabbed stuff like my cork board to keep me organized, some of the textbooks
I refer to more often and I'm set up here for the foreseeable future.
The scariest thing about a pandemic is the uncertainty. We as humans really want to
be able to influence our future and the future of our loved ones and for
something like this we just don't have the same ability to guide our steps
and to influence what is an entire ecosystem of choices but I think as an
individual you still have to decide what to do with your day and how to spend
your time. So for grad students we're in a
privileged place because people really value our minds and we're able to work
from that especially for a computational list and and I'm trying to see value in
the fact that I can work from anywhere right now because there's a lot of my
friends and family and food service and nutrition work and other service
jobs that aren't able to work and it's it's scary for them not only on a health
level but also on an economic level and just acknowledging that moving forward
is something I don't want to forget and I don't want to take for granted. Beyond
that I think there's a lot of stuff that is going to be challenging. We're going
to have to totally change the way academia does conferences. We're going to
have to figure out how to collaborate with people in a new way and be really
behind on experimental work for the foreseeable next couple of months and
and that can be a lot but I'm trying to look at the silver lining and I think in
this case we really get to cut the fat and so anything that's not essential I'm
no longer expected to do. I'm attending fewer obligatory
meetings and events than ever before and so I get to focus on what I think I need
for my professional and academic development. It's a chance to read in
areas where I'm weak, to reach out to people who have expertise in a certain
area and directly call them instead of just interacting with whoever was
invited to the department for our ongoing seminar series. And all that's
really exciting but I think you have to have a purpose and a passion, and I'm not
perfect, I don't wake up every day super passionate, but I think times like these
allow me to cut through and see what I care about. I'm really intrigued by
certain physical phenomena and you know finding the mathematics to convey the
real world and then making it accessible for everyone to understand how that that
equation came to be and what it means and so I've been reading up on
constitutive equations which is something I always need to do for my
work but often I don't make time for it. And so I think that lining of of having
the passions and then figuring out new and creative ways to share our passions.
I think the amount of digital media consumption is greater than ever before
and so I want to make more more content sharing about my research and also just
life as a grad student so if you have any suggestions anything you want to
hear about please reach out and let me know and I'm going to link some things
down below in the comments just for different resources if you feel like
you're an engineer and and you want to go forward on passion projects I know
there's a lot of open source engineering right now that's trying to 3d print
ventilation systems, DIY different personal protective equipment, and it's
not the end-all: it's a bridge it's a stop-gap measure, but if you want to
contribute to that to have something to focus on that's positive for you, um, yeah
check out the resources.