undergrad physics stdyblr

I can’t believe May starts this week. The time has flown by. Here are a couple of excerpts from my bujo. I started adding a highlights section at the beginning of the spread for the month to keep track of nice things that happen-- it ranges from things as simple as having dinner with a friend to doing well in a class or going to some cool event. 

I’m thinking about adding butterflies and flowers to the May page as markers of something, but I'm not sure what...leave a note if you have any good ideas to share :)

In my last post about general relativity, I talked a little bit about Einstein. Even though it is only speculated that he was dyslexic, I would really like to believe it. There aren’t many dyslexic theoretical physicists (at least those that know it themselves + make it openly known) out there (now and throughout history), and it is encouraging to think that Einstein was able to do everything he was with a dyslexic brain. As I work my way through general relativity, it is encouraging to think that a dyslexic has invented/learned this before :)

Some relatable dyslexic qualities: 

Strengths:

visual imagination and spatial reasoning

nonverbal thought process

Weaknesses:

early speech suggested difficulties with word retrieval

difficulty with arithmetic and foreign language in school

In quotes:

“Words or language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought”

“Thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards."

As I pound away at my general relativity homework, I’ve been taking notice of strengths and weaknesses of dyslexia when learning general relativity:

1) indices: If Einstein was really dyslexic, I am extra impressed by his ability to formulate general relativity in the language of differential geometry. You know the common stereotype that dyslexics reverse things (write things backwards, reverse their b’s and d’s, etc)? Well, that gets way worse when dealing with a plethora of indices located in contra- and co- variant positions and constantly being raised and lowered. I am actually pretty decent at tensor manipulations and understanding tensors, however, I have a common problem of copying things incorrectly. I have had this problem (which is quite common among dyslexics) in all of my work, for example, obtaining a result from one step of a calculation, plugging the number back in later in the problem, but writing the wrong number (even though I calculated the correct number earlier!). Now with indices, it frequently happens that I manipulate indices to find some tensor, then plug the tensor into the next step and COPY THE INDICES COMPLETELY WRONG. That’s right; the b’s will go where the d’s are supposed to, and the a will be contravariant when it’s supposed to be covariant. :( It can be very frustrating when I spend a lot of time on a problem and can’t get the right result, only to have a friend point out that I did all the right steps, but ‘why did I switch the indices between the two steps?’ (*bangs head against desk*)

2) word problems vs ‘math problems’: when I turned in my first exam, my professor said the next one shouldn’t be as bad, because it would be more ‘physics’ problems than ‘math’ problems. Something I’ve noticed is that ‘physics’ problems tend to be more word-y, and I get more confused. I think I spent some 4+ hours on a problem, struggling, only to realize I had COMPLETELY MISINTERPRETED the geometry and a large portion of the problem statement. I think that math problems have often been better for me because of the clarity in the problem statement, which is often more straightforward and described by symbols that have specific meanings. When I have to sort out what someone is trying to get across in a problem statement before attempting the problem, it is more difficult and leaves more room for incorrect interpretation, often leading to struggling and frustration.

3) visualizing: that being said, problems that I am able to understand and actually visualize, come more naturally to me. I think a strength for dyslexics in general relativity is the ability to visually interpret mathematics and have intuition about physical situations (even if these visualizations are difficult to put into words :) 

In conclusion, general relativity is an already difficult subject, but presents extra challenges to a dyslexic brain. On the other hand, it took the creativity and visual-spatial skills of a dyslexic brain to formulate general relativity. So there are definitely two sides to the coin!

Midterm season is upon us :0

I have two exams tomorrow, but after that it’s spring break! Then I’ll be able to do homework from the comfort of my own home with my own food and coffee :D

Now entering the second week of the semester! I’ve been very proactive so far, especially with regards to contacting people. Sometimes I’m very bad at getting errands done and sending out emails, but I’ve made a point to improve communication and errand completion this semester. Can’t believe how many things I was actually able to check off my to-do list today :)