What's meaningful?
“Why did you study the commonality of brains and fish schools, what is meaningful about it?”
Haibao asked me. He is one of the art classmates who chatted with me last week as part of their illustrated interview series to learn about the possibilities in life from college and beyond.
Haibao had attended a demo talk I gave to an online chinese project community where I presented an overview of the collective information processing field of research; its examples, questions, methods, findings. During the interview we talked more about our value in interpersonal relationships, be it being a plant rooted in the place you live or the worries and excitements around being of help or importance to someone else. Haibao told me that he understands why I value relationships, but it was less clear why I value this research topic about biophysics — “why am I interested in seeing the connection between different biological scales? why are other researchers interested?”
My immediate answer was “it’s pretty, it’s something I want to understand but don’t, it’s an important extension to evolutionary theory, it’s useful for interacting with ecology via drone farming etc.” But the answers don’t feel quite right yet. This question has been on my mind a lot as I write research interest statement and experience the obstacles and hypes in my research projects this past year.
Although I feel queasy about this difficult question, this busy week has been a good collection of new answers, discussions, and action-based discoveries around it.
What I did
Collective knowledge - with researchers
Monday-Tuesday: I finally wrote a proposal to revise my thesis manuscript into a report that would be valuable to someone else in the field. discussed the plan with a former mentor/collaborator. agreed upon a weekly progress and feedback meeting. decided to focus on writing the foundation section with biological and theoretical literature backing for the significance of a model that investigates modularity, perception constraint and information transfer.
This is a continuation from visiting friends in new york last year in that i see my friends cannot help me step by step to do the decisions and troubleshooting i must do. and that it is probably not as hard as my delay brain makes it. if others can work hard and repetitively I can probably do it too. the lowering of psychological barrier really helped.
Disorder protein
Monday-Tuesday: close-read “Zeno (2018). Synergy between intrinsically disordered domains and structured proteins amplifies membrane curvature sensing.“ Prepared a presentation of its background, experimental setup, main findings, potential connection to our project in journal club. documented the discussion outcomes, focusing on the parts that relate to the hypothesis tested in our next set of experiments. as well as the papers to read after this and the experiments / analysis we can potentially replicate in our setting. I will post the more in depth literature review and project thoughts later.
Collective knowledge - with the public
Wednesday-Friday: prepared a general audience facing presentation on collective information processing research, with some personal notes on my project’s preliminary results and my interest in learning about how social organizers can use these ideas. got to practice less stressful preparation and feedback cycles. received discussion of interest from community members who know more about chinese society. felt overall energized by the agency of a side project mutual help community. I can post more on this discussion with public later.
Informant, possibilities, college, meaning, holobiont
Wednesday-Friday: I had the interview with younger classmates of a chinese art class that was formative to me. talked about holobiont, university, interpersonal meaning, highschool social and science. i benefited from hearing about the things they are reading and the honest questions they ask after listening to me or our shared interests. they are going to make a comic or illustrated essay about this interview for younger people to see the possibilities in life partially exemplified by my experience. i had worries about my privileges that don’t apply to the difficulty of access, but i found that those privileges were not always beneficial or relevant in the context of our chat.
Body and emotion, awareness and care
For the past 2 weeks I doodle journal what i ate and how my body felt. This is a continuation from new york in that I showed my year reflection about how i dislike the way i look and the way i work to trang and maya. they gave me compassion and inspiration in thinking about the full cycles of food and body. The striking memories include seeing that so many people in the world don’t like themselves from various reasons… and the excitement from figuring out what kind of stretching can address which kind of pain or exhaustion in your own body.
Although not academic, I am considering my exploration into relationship with food and physical-emotioanl health as research. More specifically, the research has the sample size of 1 (me) and can benefit from experiments, evidence, and discussion: about the effect of sugar and other macromolecules on the body in short and long terms, about the social and personal levels of health and its many possibilities.
I posted some related drawings and thoughts onto a chinese platform that evoked a lot of resonance and response about low self esteem and self-denial, overly strict standards and the frustration with not being there yet.
I also shared an illustrated reaction to a comic I really like called “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness.” What I found most powerful was the strength of nuanced expression and brave attention to the sometimes disgusting or painful faces of loneliness and a need for love. For different people the circumstances vary, but it appears that at the similar core there is a deprivation of safety from self and others and the world. When many strangers from the internet commented and told me they feel the same, or they want to read the comic I was describing on these topics, or talk about their own numbness of bodily sensations … that makes me feel like it’s not just me who find this problematic or interesting or meaningful.
I also talked to family and friends about feeling ugly part more and got a lot of new adjectives to describe the dynamic and evocation of what my presence can do to others. “Lively, natural, energetic, cool, good, lovely.” So I don’t have to worry about people who I care about leaving me because of my present imperfection and chaos. That’s a big comfort.
After or while feeling more settled with the appearance bit I talked to friends about the health part of what to eat and how food affects the body more isolation from self image. a crisis from December getting socially and actively addressed.
Takeaway
I have come to accept that meaning for me comes from social resonance and is iteratively discovered from more attention and action.
Talking to people (through writing, presentations, questions, interviews, conversations) are beneficial. In my current stage it’s better to get feedback often than sitting and getting stuck. Although, it’s a fine balance of how much to make beforehand on my own in order to make the talking more valuable.