Feelings - Belittled leading to isolation

This is a continuation of the emotions series.

I concluded the cause of this feeling quite quickly: the inability to relate when desired.  Now, the reason this came up was discussing emotions with a friend.  Moreover, I couldn't connect on one of the emotions the other was describing.  Particularly in this case was joyful crying.  I've never once cried out of joy.  However, I do admit to crying and it leading to joy, such as when I cried over my performance as a teacher and becoming inspired to do better.  But it was the realizing I hit “rock bottom” that initiated the crying, not the inspirational piece.  The fact seeing “beauty” causes crying does not make sense to me.

Crying during happy occasions is a common occurrence.  For example, I've seen people cry during weddings.  But I almost want to say the tears are brought on by negative feelings, such as a he-doesn't-need-me-anymore feeling.  In that case, I can understand why parents or some family members cry.  Now, sometimes friends of the bride/groom cry.  I can only understand those tears if the person feels a bit jealous or also gets the I’m-alone-now feeling.  Otherwise, why wouldn't you just smile and/or laugh like in every other happy moment of life?

Anyway, the inability (and sometimes undesirability) to relate to people shuts me off.  I know this is why I don’t try to start conversation at the grocery store or other random places.  Now don’t get this wrong, for I do smile and put out positive non-verbals because smiling makes me and others feel better.  Yet, I've been having the feeling of failure to connect too many times when talking with people about their emotional feelings.  In order to fix this, I need to start asking people how they got said feelings so I can get more information and possibly make a real connection.  This way, I can avoid feeling isolated and clearly show myself caring for others.  I think I’m trying to ditch the robot….

Feelings - Sadness

There has been a few friends of mine that compare me to Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory due to  the strictly-logic view of the world we share.  Furthermore, people have said I'm very "robotic" in my thoughts.   This characteristic does not appear to be the best to have, as I've had good friends complain on my "lack of emotions".  So I thought I should spend time sharing my experience with emotions and hope to develop a series of posts to help both others and myself understand this very human experience of life.  It also just happens I'm feeling sad and hope this will help me carry on and positively accelerate me back to feeling happy.

Most recently I was told that I failed at increasing the happiness of another person.  All I could say was, "Okay."  Because I use this a lot and constantly seem to upset people further, I feel I need to explain why I think the response "okay" is justified.  Using "okay" represents a confirmation.  Human feelings can't be shared and even if I want to try to change that feeling the fact is the feeling occurred.  Thus, confirming my understanding is warranted.  But back to the scenario, I had the sad feeling.  I actually was surprised with the analogy I had when asked to describe how I felt.  I described my feeling as a Jenga tower missing a piece - less stable.  Moreover, I also felt locked up or speechless and ashamed.  The ashamed feeling stems from the instant realization of the impossibility of fixing and/or trying anything different.  I've had this whenever I've felt sad: the "bad" child  when my mom died, the "lazy" soccer player when I didn't make the team, and the "disorganized" friend when I forget people's birthdays.

When I come to a point where I know I can't change or fix the situation, that is when sadness reveals itself to me.  So sadness seems to come hand-in-hand with what I consider failure.  And because true failure only exists when dealing with people, because you can't fix something as complex as a human, I think I've only felt sadness when other people are involved.

I think I'm seeing why I developed my "lone wolf" personality...

Consistency, consistency, consistency...

I'm at an impasse in my teaching.  Two inner personalities are constantly butting heads over the issue of classroom management.  One personality is what I will call True Self.  The adversary, so to speak, is what I will Teaching Self.  Let me describe the "gladiators".

True Self is relaxed.  He believes that energy controls the atmosphere of every scenario.  Self control and mutual respect are thought to be present in every individual and by living by the Golden Rule no large scale problems will develop.  True Self places humans above other animals, basically on faith.

Teaching Self is eager.  He believes that energy also controls the atmosphere, but knows behavior is trained. Modeling respect is needed, but so are slight pushes and pulls to guide students into "proper" respect.  Teaching Self understands humans are animals.

Each week one of the gladiators seems to gain the upper hand.  Teaching Self was in complete control the first two weeks, but eventually the feeling of pity for the students took over.  Then, True Self suddenly started to win the fight, with faith that the students knew how to show respect as the weapon....

Faith.  Yet again the thorn in my side... The data clearly shows otherwise....

Questions of the Stars

I recently went out to enjoy the stars and questions kept popping into my head.  I'm going to go about answering these questions in a series of blog posts.  So let's get started!

How large does a star have to be for us to see it?

This was the question I wrote down, but it would be better asked, How much energy must a star give off for us to see it?

In researching this problem, I found this has been a multiple step problem for astronomers as well!  First, they used trigonometry to measure the distance of stars within 400 light years.  To do so, one must measure the angle of a star's location at two different moments on Earth (6 months apart so as to limit the measurement error).  This is the same principle for triangulation.  However, triangulation does not work for stars further than 400 light years due to too high of errors.  Astronomers began collecting data on the color spectrum for the various stars at known distances, which also depends on the energy emitted, or luminosity, by the stars.

Another problem to overcome is the fact light appears less intense the farther away the source is from the observer.  Astronomers have given the intensity of the light as viewed from Earth the name apparent magnitude.  Absolute magnitude is the luminosity of a star from 10 parsecs (1 parsec = 3.09 x 10^16 meters) away.

So a star's visibility depends on both the luminosity and distance the star is from Earth.  There is an equation relating apparent magnitude (m), absolute magnitude (M), and distance in parsecs (d) that can be used to answer such a question.

m - M = 5 log d - 5

For more information, click here!

Some time has passed since I dealt with higher level math, but I'm happy I now understand the basics of this.  Now I just need to figure out how astronomers acquire all the information, such as distance,  in order to calculate the star's absolute magnitude/luminosity.  Another question for another day!

Confusion in the ranks

Today I read my principal's observation summary of my last teaching observation.  Flustered is how I would describe my feelings.  I felt extremely positive after the observation and the post-meeting.  However, I felt ripped apart reading the report.  It does not help that 2 months have passed since the observation and I am just now acquiring the information.  For one, in the post-meeting, I was praised on moving amongst the groups of students and questioning to deepen the connections, yet in the report 9/12 students were "off-task" and "no clear connection to the content was made".  I am feeling attacked and unsupported.

MY STUDENTS HAVE SAID I CLEARLY CARE ABOUT THEIR EDUCATION.  However, I will have no support where it matters in deciding my future in education.  

//rant

*edit*

My final meeting with my principal went quite well.  I got the overall impression she and I both want the best for me in the future.  The most interesting dialogue was her telling me she envisions me teaching teachers how to teach in the future; I found this both confusing and inspiring since I was not offered the position back.

The struggles of defining evolution

It has been a while since I last blogged...I've been focusing on teaching and I would say my classes have been better.  However, I miss this deeply...

My friend asked me how I would define evolution.  A simple task I thought.  Evidence contradicts that thought though, as we have shared 20+ email responses of considerable lengths (though some have not been completely related).  There were many fine details that needed to be ironed out before evolution could be defined.  The most important was determining what time scale should be included.  We agreed entirely that evolution leads to the most able organisms continuing to exist, yet the idea of what influences or defines the most able is extremely difficult.  Also, the question, Are humans evolving? was quite a barrier.  This is where the discussion got interesting, for I posed the idea that the common definition of evolution needs to change.  Evolution currently, to my knowledge, focuses on the genes only.  However, if one considers humans, the success strongly correlates to the level of education/learning one has.  This leads one to pose an inquiry: Should evolution also include the alterations of an organism's brain while living?

I will share one part of an email I wrote which highlights the problem stated above.

I disagree that ALL organisms learn, which is why I am unsure to include it within the definition of evolution.  

The most important parts of defining organismal evolution that I can think of are the following:  

• a change has occurred
• competition is the driving force
• alterations to the genetics of a population is the mechanism

The ability to learn is a product from evolution, yet it allows the individual to evolve during its lifetime and to influence the competitiveness of its population.  Most biologists refer only to genetic change when speaking of evolution, but it may very well be time to change that to better model our world.

The fact our ideas change throughout our lifetime and influences our lives is fascinating and complicated.  My friend and I are close to a definition of evolution, which I will share below, but I still am unsure about including or not including learning.  Like I mention in the email, it may be time to change our definition of evolution to better model our world.


Organismal evolution:  A reproductively advantageous change to a population due to alterations of genetic material caused by mutations.

Viruses: A Cause of Speciation

On an entry from the Discover magazine's blog The Loom, it was found a virus is very probable in the reason embryos attach to the mother.  This is quite important for that is a key characteristic of a mammal.  

What is most peculiar is how genes of different viruses are found in related species.  For example, the rabbit and its closest living relative, the pika, have different "virus genes". This implies that viruses are strongly linked to speciation, and that new species in mammals begin differentiating due to small changes in the placenta's role during development.  

This makes sense; viruses have a very fast adaptation rate (think of how many new flu vaccines are made).  So all the other speciation methods, such as separation due to land barriers, would easily allow 2 very different viruses to evolve and impact the genes of the separated groups.  Fascinating.  Just fascinating.

Cheers to Charles Darwin! Today is his birthday.

I can't believe I almost missed it!  Charles Darwin - the great interpreter of the data exposing evolution.  We owe a lot to him: increased crop yields, improved medicine, an answer to the question of what caused the diversity of life, and a decrease in racial stereotypes.

Here's to a great figure in the history of science.

Student-centered teaching: The Difficulties

Education has many problems with it.  I admit and am aware of these problems.  These problems have led me to attempt to have my classes be much different from the norm.  I have tried to get my students to understand that they all live their own life and their education is in their own hands.  However, I have seen that my attempts have been futile.  I started the year very passionately; I heard many students say they thought I would be an inspring teacher.  As the year has progressed the view has changed.  The majority of students say they do not learn in my class (I can say some do and even admit to it!).  So what happened?  I will say I am scared to answer this question, but it is worthwhile and needs to be pursued.

First, I will admit having four preps has made me not enjoy my life as much; the time it takes is too much for all of my classes to meet my level of "good".  What I have found is that instead of ensuring one or two classes are awesome, I split my time and all my classes end up being okay at best.  What I mean is that I am only able to think of the leading discussion questions and not where those questions may or may not end up.  This has caused many of my classes to seem disorganized, for I have had no chance to predict where my students will take the discussion or what their misconceptions are.

Second, I truly want my students to be in charge of their learning.  This is a big dream that society has seemingly destroyed, for young people get to make very few personal choices (i.e. parents/older people control the young's lives).  As a person of this generation I should have realized this.  When I went to college and actually had freedom, I admit to being, well, dumb.  I also forgot that I was different from most, being passionate about science.  This means my classroom management was/is lacking.

Third (or second and a half), the truth that the majority of people are not fascinated with the universe makes zero sense to me.  I teach the so called scientific subjects because I am fascinated with the universe and the puzzle it is.  To me, this has always been interesting.  To the majority of students, it is not.  The fact humans have so much confidence in knowing what an atom looks like, in understanding how the diversity of species came to to be, and we are able to predict outcomes with such accuracy is downright amazing and impressive.  I do not understand how others do not have the same feeling.  I will admit the students' lack of passion has taken my personal drive out of me.  I often times end my days with thoughts along the lines of "if they honestly don't care, why should I care about them?"

Well that is depressing, admitting I have stopped caring about my students....

Fourth, I hate the fact I am forced to teach specific material.  I would love to be able to go where my students wanted.  I understand people do not need to know about valence electrons to live a positive and productive life.  I understand people do not need to deeply understand evolution to live a positive and productive life.  I understand people will ask certain questions at different times in their life depending on their prior experiences.  I believe any part of life can be reflected upon and logically analyzed.  This is what I believe education SHOULD be.  Teaching people how to think logically.  However, that is not what education is.  Curiosity is natural.  Our brain is wired for it; I have done the research on that fact.  Controlling the curiosity is not natural.  This is where education fails.  This is where students lose interest.  This is what has destroyed my yearning to teach.

I will need to reflect on ways to fix this and still be able to teach.  I still believe the human species' ability to be educated is what sets us apart from other animals.  Unraveling the puzzle of the universe is the ultimate goal and I truly do want to be a part of it.  So I must find a way to fit into a system that inherently hinders this goal; I also must find a way to inspire the students trapped within it (even if they aren't like me and currently dislike answering the deep questions related to the workings of the universe).

An atheist at a funeral

I attended a funeral today and it got me thinking about the differences between an atheist's views and a religious person's views of life.  First, let me just say that I found the funeral to be quite beautiful.  Seeing a community come together to celebrate the life of a person is an inspiring and happy sight.  The atmosphere lends itself to help support the most powerful of feelings: sadness, joy, respect, and angst.

Because I was not close to the person that died, I had the opportunity to observe the ones around me.  What I found was quite confusing; I found myself smiling and feeling joy while others were showing signs of sadness.  I know the fact I was not close to the person is the main reason I could feel this way, but I still feel as though my feelings would be much different if, say, my immediate family passed away.  I say this because the pastor was talking about how one might feel the situation is unfair due to having a loved one pass away; why would God allow this to happen to someone so kind?  I feel this is the difference between an atheist and a religious person.  As an atheist, I acknowledge and accept life can easily be ended and understand accidents happen.  To simplify my views, I know that my family or myself is no more special than anyone else in the world.  This causes me to appear callous during what are commonly seen as emotional and trying times, for my grieving period is much shorter.   While the religious person may be dwelling on the pain caused by the situation, I am already seeing the powerful influence the person had on others while living.

I am beginning to ramble.  What I am trying to get at is the fact that talking about seeing a person "later" does little good now.  I would much prefer to see everyone use a person's passing as a catalyst to do good; note how precious and fragile life actually is.  Ask yourself, What can I do to achieve the most and positively influence the lives of others?

I recently had a few email exchanges with a student about how I would love to think I can see my mom again.  However, without any evidence of that actually able to happen, I am left with only the ability to influence the current world around me.  Am I happy with what I have done so far? No.  Is thinking about my mom beneficial?  Yes.  Is thinking I will see her again useful?  No.  Is that last thought detrimental?  To me, no; to a religious person, probably.  Where I see a waste of energy, others probably see a missing piece of motivation.

I feel as if I could rewrite this piece 100 times and it would all be slightly different.  This just shows how complicated and fascinating life is.  So I will leave it by saying that even though atheists and theists have different views, we all appreciate and value life.  I just do not want theists to think that because they believe in an afterlife, that means they value life more.  I am tired of others thinking atheists "care" less.  Life is an experience; we all experience similar, if not the same, emotions.

Follow our old leader!

The UK has made it a law that creationism cannot be taught, in any form, within public schools.  All content must be scientifically supported in the "science" classes.  Cheers to Richard Dawkins, David Attenborough, and Michael Reiss for being the headliners of this cause (and a bigger cheers to all the supporters)!

Now if the USA also follows this trend there is a chance I will no longer be called the "Gorilla man" for my acknowledgment of evolution as fact in my classroom.  

Reflections about "The Universe in a Single Atom" by the Dalai Lama - Part 3

This post will be brief.  The act of meditation appeals to me greatly for, oddly, it almost reminds me of how I think naturally.  I shared the labeling of my "blindness" by science idea with my students; they agreed and explained that the levels of depth I think about topics limits my awareness around me (I summarized their thoughts, so if any students read this and want to correct it, please do).  Meditation, as I currently understand it, pursues a very similar attribute.  Being able to focus on thoughts objectively, meaning without feelings of the past or future distorting them, is the goal.  

Learning without application to one's life describes the challenge in today's education, for students see no purpose in learning much of the content (which I agree with - sorry stoichiometry, I do not use you in my life regularly).  However, the act of learning and making every part of your life meaningful should be taught.  To make content meaningful to me, I must attach it to my philosophy of life.  The method used in doing so is deep, reflective thought.  For example, just this week in physics I covered the impulse-momentum theorem.  I am able to see that both the greater the amount of force (effort) and time put into something allows an action to take place more easily (or the other way around, with "jumping on the bandwagon" means I have to put less effort and time into something); this philosophical idea is a great lesson to teach humans.  As an "ex-forced student", I know the majority of the students will only view this as an equation and nothing more, for one only gains this perspective by deeply reflecting on the meaning and searching for other pieces of evidence of what the equation is representing.  Sadly, if I took the time to try to teach meditation, or my form of it, it would probably look like a piece of religion.

Current picture of the universe...and its end!

If you have one hour to be super excited, I suggest you go watch Lawrence Krauss's talk.  It goes against my thoughts currently; I will need to look more into quantum.  I am currently one that thinks there is a simpler way of viewing our universe.

If you fall in love with Lawrence Krauss, you can also get his new book coming out which goes into more detail about this talk.  I found out about it from Sam Harris's interview with him.

The most interesting part, to me, about Krauss's talk is the description of the potential future of intelligent beings.  He explains how the universe will become so spread out that individual solar systems will be too distant for light from others to reach.  The light will hit some barrier, but I forget the name of said barrier.  Interesting nevertheless!

I feel bad for my cat

I kept fighting the idea of getting my cat declawed.  I finally gave in; my sister offered to do it for me.  Seeing Roz tread lightly on her paws saddens me.  Having my fingers cut off would not make me happy; it was only done to save furniture.

Sorry, but thinking of weird behaviors done which scientific research is responsible for intrigued me.  Even one as "minute" as cutting a cat's fingers off (just the tip - inappropriate Archer reference).  Basically I dislike my allowance of this behavior; I could have gone the noble route and got the "soft claws" they sell instead.

Double sorry, for me blabbering about animal cruelty I allowed to my cat.