[ Posted by Janka
Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:22:44 GMT ]
Some time ago, I volunteered to participate in a QN Podcast's "Voices" episode. These episodes consist of the awesome Sage asking questions about a particular topic from 4-6 people, and then combining the answers (either recorded by the participant themself or read by someone else) to an interesting, beautiful, inspiring glimpse into various human lives.
The below is a modified version of my answers to her questions concerning career choices. If you want to hear what she did with these, see QN: When I grow up (4 Voices). I was absolutely delighted about the reader who did my part; I feel she managed to portray my feelings despite being a complete stranger to me.
This is highly personal and publishing it is pushing my confort limits for this blog. Which is partly why I do it. Enjoy.
What did you want to be when you were twelve? Why?
Sometime between ages 10 and 12 I became aware of the fact that the world in general is a nasty place. Like, I suspect, many idealistic children grown up in relatively safe environments, I was shocked hearing about such things as wars and famines, and quite unable to believe that adults could not stop those things if they wanted to.
I decided to become a doctor, so that I can travel to the places with these problems and help the people. Being a naive and idealistic child, I was convinced that human suffering can and will be solved in my lifetime. I never doubted that. After all, it is just a question of the rich giving food to the hungry, and all the people deciding together that they will not fight the wars anymore. That's all it takes, and since people are inherently good and sensible, we just need to organize things a bit, and it'll be alright.
Part of me still believes that. But like the child, I have no idea where to start from. (Unfortunately, they did not teach that in medical school, after all.)
What did you want to be when you were eighteen? Why?
At 18, I was still planning to become a doctor. To be honest, that was probably more because I had spend the last six years telling everyone that's what I will become, and it would have been to embarrassing (I felt) to change my mind. Appearances were very important to me at that time of my life, though you might not have figured that out if you saw me, as my chosen appearance was to be more than a bit peculiar.
Now that I think about it, so was propably everyone else's at the time - we all wanted to be unique, just like everyone else.
I suppose I was still five years old in one sense: I was still unable to envision myself as an adult with a job, and I picked a career that sounded fancy, without really understanding what it means. Very rarely during my studies did the thought enter my mind that I had better learn the stuff, because I will need it when I am a doctor. When I went to see a doctor myself, I did not really imagine myself on the other side of the desk.
For someone having entered medical school out of the wish to help people I was paying very little attention to the tools that could help me do so. I still had a genuine belief that doctors help people, and I still had the genuine wish that someone would do something. I just could not imagine myself as that someone.
What's your career now?
Telling you about my current career (if you can all it that) would require a longer answer than a podcast episode. I went on to finish medical school, then (partly because I did not find I was ready to be a doctor - unsurprising after not spending all the years preparing that I should have) went on to get another degree in computer science.
Currently, I am doing my PhD on the applications of a certain computational method on certain type of medical research. It is highly specialized and about as far as you can get from concrete helping of people without actually leaving the field of medicine altogether or using your MD title to cheat money out of patients or the public.
I have also recently gotten back to actual work at a clinic, in child psychiatry, but after 1.5 years of working half time in both I decided I need to actually concentrate on one thing at a time, and I decided to try and finish the PhD first. I have now given it a mental deadline, and then I'll be out, one way or another. (I am not sure if I have said this with quite these words to my supervisor, so, if you heart the episode or are reading this: yes, I seriously mean it.)
How do you feel about your current career?
Sometimes I hate it, and sometimes I love it.
There is a lot in science I detest. Or, rather, not in the science itself, but in the culture of science. For one who was very concerned with appearances in her youth, I have come a suprising way and started to feel terrible about the necessity and pressure to keep them up. And there is a lot of that in science. There are days - one day every week, probably - when I think I just cannot take it anymore.
Many things in the culture of science need to change, and will change in the coming decades - but I am not sure if I have enough in me to be part of that revolution, either.
But of course, it is not only that. It is also exciting to be part of the community that spends their time discovering new things and disproving old truths. It is a fairly free job, too, most of the time: I can decide when to come to work, when to leave, I can work late if I want to and no one thinks me weird, I can take a day off to just read at home if I am trying to learn something new... That kind of things.
The practical side of my work, with actual patients... well, I love it and I hate it, too. And for much of the same reasons: I love the work itself, I like patients - yes, in the end, I do like helping people, and I am told I am and I feel reasonably competent at psychiatry for one without that much experience. But I hate and detest the public health care bureaucracy, especially with the panicky reorganizations that the supposed global economical depression causes just when we would need more time to work in peace and more resources because of it.
I suppose there's the 12-year-old me speaking here: I like the work, I want to do it, I see what should be done, and I cannot understand why we cannot just do it the sensible way.
What do you plan to change in the next five years?
During the next two years or so, I want to get my PhD (or quit trying), and I want to get my full lisencing as a physician so that I can do private practice, which requires about a year's worth of full-time work in health care still.
I mostly want those, and especially the lisence, because I think they are my current best option to freeing myself to pick and choose my own work.
I still want to change the world, even if I now think that my 10-year-old self's idea that we will see the end of wars and famines in our lifetime simply because people are good and don't want those things was, uh, slightly exaggerated. That if it was likely to work that way, it would have happened already.
I am at a point where predicting where I'll be in five years is pretty much impossible. And I am excited about that: an adventure is starting. Closing 40 years, I've finally realized that I can become an adult, and that it sounds like a lot of fun.
Posted in Plain English | Tags self, työ | 3 comments
[ Posted by Janka
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:02:15 GMT ]
I seem to be able to separate four distinct parts to my thought processes. In all seriousness they are probably neither distinct from each other nor undivisable into further subclassifications, but it would be interesting to know if these divisions make sense to other people.
So, four parts or maybe rather four types of thought processes. The order I present them in is not consciously significant.
Firstly, there is what I call "the perceiving mind" or sometimes "the impulse generator". Other people have called it "the monkey mind, constantly jumping from thought to thought like a monkey jumps from branch to branch". It is the part that sees, hears, reacts; it presents random concepts, ideas, impulses, desires, memories, judgments to the other parts. "Oh, the sun's out", "what time does the the Monday meeting start again", "need to remember to read that private message", "I'm hungry", "let's check Facebook", just to give examples of what it came up with while I was typing the previous sentence. In addition to outside perceptions, it seems to bring up internal impulses, negative and positive: such as "I feel cranky/content", "I am a useless/clever person", memories both when prompted by something and at seemingly random. It has no conception of time or place or continuity, really; each impulse surfaces and immediately dies, to be replaced by the next.
Secondly, there's "meta mind": the observer/commentator/decider that I think most people think when they think about "I". This is the meta-process that can think about thinking and about doing. It seems to constantly talk to or about the impulse generator, occasionally commenting on the flow mind (see below). "Glad the sun is so down that I don't need to close the curtain. Hey, I'm not concentrating again. I don't need to check the meeting time now, really. It was really a good idea to make that dish, it smells very good and I did not have to go do groceries. Then again, groceries would mean I would go for a walk... I didn't do any exercise yesterday. I really need to concentrate now, and not check facebook. --- See, that was a nice stretch of flow" - it is the "internal voice" in your head, constantly talking with itself, talking to the rest of you.
Thirdly, there is a "flow mind" that can think or do without thinking about the thinking or doing. I think the flow mind is active all the time, but it is easiest to introduce to the meta-process after you have been very "concentrated". During periods of "full flow" the observer/commentator dies down, and there are no "metathoughts" either about what you are doing or about whatever the impulse generator comes up with. The impulses sort of still are there, but they are not picked up, and the metaprocess sort of still is there (because it is part of you you), and it can recall the flow afterwards. Flow is usually thought about in the context of creative work, where it is a desirable thing: the state of thinking/doing/creating where nothing else exist to the creator. It is not only good or good in itself, though; it is also possible to be in a flow that is harmful, for example when some worry or anxiousness or the desire to be more drunk is all that is in your mind, and the metaprocess does not manage to intervene.
Fourth, there is my "tao mind", which is hard to describe because it is not verbal or an impulse that I can talk about verbally - and this is where it gets its name from too, the essence of the concept of "tao" being that it cannot be named or described. It is what is there when all the other three manage to be quiet at the same time. It does not mean there is a blank, or that observations stop; it is just that they are not picked up by the other processes. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I am told, describes it as "the mind in between of two thoughts", and various meditation traditions exist that attempt to invoke it - though most seem to be designed to invoke it in a particular state of peacefulness, instead of just what is. It is the "core self", while not really even being much concerned in the distinction between "self" and "world".
These are, naturally, parts of my conscious mind. There are other parts of "me" - my personality traits, my body, probably something like my internalized moral code, as some examples.
It has made my life better when I have started to think that neither of these alone is "me". When I am in an anxiousness flow, it is not "me" that is there, it is a runaway process that does not listen to the other parts, but which the metaprocess can interfere with as soon as it manages to wake up. "I" am not the one that has all sorts of silly impulses when she should be concentrated; it is a part of me that offers these impulses and I can take them or leave them. "Flow" is separate from the "meta" process, not directed meta thoughts. And so forth. I am more complex than any of the "I" I perceive, and it's fun to be consciously aware of this.
Posted in Plain English | Tags psykiatria, self | 4 comments
[ Posted by Janka
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:15:51 GMT ]
Some time ago I wrote about the concept of "motivation" and why it does not appeal to me.
Another concept that's lately started to seem unhelpful is "willpower". This came up when I talked to a friend about how I had managed to make some changes, and he remarked that he does not think he would have the willpower(*) for similar decisions.
As is manifested e.g. by how it is typically modeled in role-playing games, people tend to think that the willpower to do things or to refrain from impulses is something you generate when you rest. You then store it in your brain (or wherever). When you are doing things, or refraining from impulses, you use up smaller or bigger amounts of it, until it gets depleted, and you rest again.
I don't think that's how it works. It is obviously harder to resist temptations and to get off your arse while being tired, be it mentally worn out or physically exhausted or lacking sleep, but once you are better off, it does not get easier to start and do things instead of opening another can of beer the longer you stay idle. In fact, it gets harder. You do not generate willpower while you are not using it. The rest does not give you willpower; it simply removes a block (the exhaustion) from using what you already have.
Instead, you generate the power to resist temptations and to do what you want to do by doing it. The trick is to do it, but not to overdo it. It is like cycling: if you move too fast, you exhaust yourself and fall over, but if you move too slow, you also fall over and starting up again is harder work than keeping on going would have been.
Or with another silly metaphore, willpower is like the water in a river. As long as you stand in the river, you do not run out of water to wash yourself. Surely you can also stand on the shore, lug the water up with a pail, wash one part of yourself, and do the lugging again, but why should you bother? It's nicer to swim. Just don't go into too strong currents or you will drown.
(*) To said friend: yes, I know I oversimplify the discussion almost beyond recognizable, but the rest of it is not important to this post.
Posted in Plain English | Tags unsolicited advice, willpower | 1 comment
[ Posted by Janka
Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:53:37 GMT ]
Been thinking of psychoses lately. Here's something fairly interesting: compare how we see schizophrenia and the bipolar disorder, or rather patients who suffer from them.
The stereotype of a schizophrenia patient has competely surreal delusions and hallusinations and is a total victim to them, barely aware of what is really happening. He has lost himself, and we rarely think of him as a "self" experiencing these things, and if we do, we tend to assume his personality is changed or disturbed by the experience.
The stereotype of a person in a manic or depressive psychoses is someone who is delusional about the magnitude of his capabilities. We see him as the extreme of excited, or the extreme of sad. When you think of a manic person, you tend to think of an exaggerated, extravagant, embellished version of the person.
We tend to think of an acute schizophrenia psychosis as the destruction of self, but a bipolar episodes as the exaggeration of it to unhealthy extremes. Are these perceptions true? Is a bipolar person, during an episode, really "hyperconscious" somehow, despite being delusional? Is a person's sense of self destroyed in an acute schizophrenia psychosis in the way it seems to be lost to an outside observer? Or is this just a stereotype, an artifact of what the conditions look like?
Is there good literature about the internal experiences in psychoses?
Posted in Plain English | Tags psykiatria, psykiatria | 1 comment
[ Posted by Janka
Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:58:58 GMT ]
The Capo Ferro project being over, I made a page with links to all those posts in order, mostly for future reference for myself. Not that I mind if it is useful for others.
To finish, here are the words of the philosopher John Locke, born in 1632 (two decades after Capo Ferro's treatise), on whether fencing should be taught to young gentlemen (Some thoughts concerning education, 1693).
As for fencing, it seems to me a good exercise for health, but dangerous to the life; the confidence of their skill being apt to engage in quarrels those that think they have learned to use their swords. This presumption makes them often more touchy than needs on point of honour and slight or no provocations. Young men, in their warm blood, are forward to think they have in vain learned to fence, if they never shew their skill and courage in a duel; and they seem to have reason. But how many sad tragedies that reason has been the occasion of, the tears of many a mother can witness. A man that cannot fence, will be more careful to keep out of bullies’ and gamesters’ company, and will not be half so apt to stand upon punctilios, nor to give affronts, or fiercely justify them when given, which is that which usually makes the quarrel.
And when a man is in the field, a moderate skill in fencing rather exposes him to the sword of his enemy than secures him from it. And certainly a man of courage who cannot fence at all and therefore will put all upon one thrust and not stand parrying, has the odds against a moderate fencer, especially if he has skill in wrestling. And therefore, if any provision be to be made against such accidents, and a man be to prepare his son for duels, I had much rather mine should be a good wrestler than an ordinary fencer, which is the most a gentleman can attain to in it, unless he will be constantly in the fencing-school and every day exercising.
But since fencing and riding the great horse are so generally looked upon as necessary qualifications in the breeding of a gentleman, it will be hard wholly to deny any one of that rank these marks of distinction. I shall leave it therefore to the father to consider, how far the temper of his son and the station he is like to be in, will allow or encourage him to comply with fashions which, having very little to do with civil life, were yet formerly unknown to the most warlike nations, and seem to have added little of force or courage to those who have received them; unless we will think martial skill or prowess have been improved by duelling, with which fencing came into, and with which I presume it will go out of the world.
Posted in Plain English | Tags training | no comments
[ Posted by Janka
Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:00:38 GMT ]
There, we have a new theme. A bit late, because I managed to misplace the note to myself that I wanted to change over New Year.
I have a couple of ideas what to write about now that the CF stuff is over, but for a couple of weeks at least I think you will get random observations of life, if anything.
Stay tuned. Assuming someone still is tuned after that swordsmanship flood.
Re: swordsmanship, here's an observation for you all. (A total butchering of terminology follows. You have been warned.) With rapiers, you can always counterattack in seconda. After all, a scannatura is nothing much but a "semicircular parry" (to use smallsword terminology) and an attack in single-tempo. Hence, if he attacks on your outside, you can parry with your point high and riposte in single tempo normally ("counter-attack"); if he attacks on your inside, you can parry with your point low and riposte in a single tempo ("scannatura").
Posted in Plain English | Tags meta, training | no comments
[ Posted by Janka
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:26:23 GMT ]
This is the final countdchapter.
Secure way of defending oneself from every sort of blow with a parry of a riverso and striking always with an imbroccata.
Ok, I wanna finish this now.
Prima and quarta are the two guards that really rock. Going to quarta can defend against anything, and prima can always offend.
They also always go together. A cut from prima ends in low quarta; a cut from quarta goes to prima, and you need to never stop.
Any cut or thrust can be parried with a riverso, towards the right side of the enemy, followed by a thrust in quarta.
When you are in quarta, the enemy can only attack to your right, and then everything he can do can be parried by an ascending parry into prima.
All courage, sharpness of the eye, strength and speed of the legs, quickness in parrying and striking, agility of the body, can be demonstrated only in these actions.
This is the nature of these two guards.
THE END
Posted in Plain English | Tags paraphrasing Capo Ferro | no comments
[ Posted by Janka
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:11:16 GMT ]
I was planning to put some pictures here about how to use a cutting weapon, but then I got lazydecided I can just give the following pieces of advice instead.
If he's in terza or quarta with his point towards the middle of your body, take quarta with your point slightly high and crossed toward your right side. From there, approaching a little towards his sword, you can strike his sword with a dritto, and then him with a rising riverso.
Should he try to cut you with a riverso to your face, parry with your dagger in high quarta, over your sword arm. Then you can thrust him in terza, or cut his leg. You could also parry with your sword in quarta. I showed this in that one picture earlier, where it is followed by a dagger strike under his arm.
You could also start from by putting your sword low in quarta and waiting for him to attack you from the outside, parry upwards with the false edge and then cut him in the face with the true one. Or parry with the false edge and thrust him in the chest.
Should he try to beat the blade, on the same tempo as his cut to your blade you can cut him in the face. If it is a dritto to the blade, on the same tempo cut with riverso to his face, and if it is a riverso to the blade, you cut with a dritto.
For what to do in case he tries to cut directly at your head, see that picture where we had the parry with the sword and dagger crossed.
Should he try to cut you on the lower parts of your body, parry in seconda with your point low. If it was a dritto, parry, then disengage over the edge, put your dagger on his sword, and cut with a riverso to his arm. And if it was a riverso, parry and give him a thrust to his chest, putting your dagger on his sword on the same tempo.
Can't think of anything else to say about this, really.
Posted in Sama suomeksi | Tags paraphrasing Capo Ferro, paraphrasing Capo Ferro | no comments
[ Posted by Janka
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:55:32 GMT ]
DIE!
What's the exact difference between this plate and the previous, I have no idea.
Considering the amount of feints and deception that goes on in armed combat, it is necessary to pay careful attention when fighting. Especially it is often dangerous to parry without responding in the same tempo, as this picture and the following explanation also demonstrate.
This play starts with one party (E) in quinta, with his point low and the rotella in front of his chest. The other party (F) is in sesta, with his rotella arm extended forward and his sword held back.
E will, once in measure, throw a thrust outside the rotella into F's face. F raises his rotella to parry, which blocks his view. E will then disengage under F's rotella, and strike him in quarta as the picture shows.
Now had F been an experienced person, when E thrusted, instead of first parrying and then intending to riposte, F would have parried by stretching out his rotella arm while passing forward with the left foot, and bending his body and head over to the right would have thrusted E in the chest instead.
Alternatively, he could have parried the thrust with the sword, in quarta, and immediately passing forward hit E's sword with his rotella, struck him with a rising cut in terza. That way he would have been very safe.
Posted in Plain English | Tags paraphrasing Capo Ferro | no comments
[ Posted by Janka
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:59:02 GMT ]
42 down, one more to go!
Here we discuss the use of a shield. He mentions bucklers in the text as something that are used, but does not discuss them; I assume this is because all small items in the left hand are in the end sort of equal.
His point here seems to be that it is unsafe to parry or stringere with the heavy rotella because 1) it is heavy and so slow to come back, and 2) it can block your line of sight, but that the shield is best used by first parrying with the sword and then using the shield to control the enemy's sword that is already off the line.
I will now discuss the use of shield in the case that the adversary also has one.
Sometimes we end up in situations where one party of the fight is less versed in the use of the weapons involved. The rotella is a most dangerous weapon to use when you have no experience about it, so I will give some advice about it here.
You should hold the rotella on your left arm in a sort of "curved" manner, so that it faces somewhat but not completely to your left side. It must be to the side enough so as not to block your sight of the enemy at all.
Let's say he is in a guard with his point in line ("guardia stretta"). Then you must first stringere him, inside or outside depending on his guard. Once you have done this, advance on the left foot, hit his sword (that is already stringered) with the rotella, and strike him vigorously in terza, with a rising thrust.
Let's say then that he is in some guard with his point off the line ("guardia larga").(1)
Say he cuts you to the leg, on either side. In this case, you must parry with a false edge cut and then respond with a cut to his leg of your own.
If he cuts or thrusts you in the face or chest, you can parry it with the rotella, but it's not really clever to do so(2).
This is because the rotella is quite heavy, unlike a buckler, so it is not very quick, and thus you must be careful not to parry feints with it.
In the figure, the person labeled E has started with a feint to the outside of F's rotella. When F raises his rotella to parry, it will block his vision, giving E time to go around it and strike him in the base of his body without the movement of her sword being seen.
F would have been much safer first parrying E's sword with his own, and then advancing with the left foot, striking the already parried sword with the rotella, and striking E with a rising cut in terza.
(1) If he is, it is likely he is preparing to cut.
(2) I do some heavy reordering of sentences here, but as this it not being clever seems to be the point he is arriving to, I thought I might as well state so to begin with.
Posted in Plain English | Tags paraphrasing Capo Ferro | no comments
