advice – Renaissance Guy

College Tidbits

After returning from the wild woods of upstate, my house is currently caught in the scramble of preparing for college classes. On the whole, I think I am in decent shape. But since it has been the only thing on my mind, here are some assorted pieces of advice which new college students may find useful; tidbits I wish I had known, or in the cases where I did know them, wish I had been able to get them through my thick skull earlier.

Get an umbrella
Sure, there are more important things to make sure you have before going to college. But most of those things are obvious: backpacks, laptops, writing instruments, and so on. No one talks about back to school umbrellas, though. Of the items I have added to my school bag, my collapsible umbrella is the most useful, least obvious. To explain its great use, I will appropriate a quote from one of my favorite pieces of literature:

Partly it has great practical value. You can open it up to scare off birds and small children; you can wield it like a nightstick in hand to hand combat; use it as a prop in a comedy sketch for an unannounced improv event on the quad; turn it inside out as an improvised parabolic dish to repair a satellite antenna; use it as an excuse to snuggle up next to a crush as you walk them through the rain to their next class; you can wave your umbrella in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course, keep yourself dry with it if it doesn’t seem too worn out.

More importantly, an umbrella has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a Prof discovers that a student has their umbrella with them, they will automatically assume that they are also in possession of a notebook, pencil, pen, tin of biscuits, water bottle, phone charger, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, homework assignment etc., etc. Furthermore, the Prof will then happily lend the student any of these or a dozen other items that the student might accidentally have “lost.” What the Prof will think is that any student who can walk the length and breadth of the campus, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where their umbrella is, is clearly a force to be reckoned with.

Find out what programs your school uses, and get acquainted with them
The appropriate time to learn about the format your school requires for assignments is not the night before your essay is due. The time for that is now, before classes, or at least, before you get bogged down in work. Figure out your school email account, and whether that comes with some kind of subscription to Microsoft or google or whatever; if so, those are the programs you’ll be expected to use. Learn how to use them, in accordance with whatever style guide (probably MLA or APA) your school and departments prefer.

You can, of course, keep using a private email or service for non-school stuff. In fact, I recommend it, because sometimes school networks go down, and it can be difficult to figure out what’s happening if your only mode of communication is down. But don’t risk violating handbook or technology policies by using your personal accounts for what’s supposed to be school business. And if you’re in a group project, don’t be that one guy who insists on only being contacted only through their personal favorite format despite everyone else using the official channels.

Try not to get swept up in future problems
Going into college, you are an adult now. You may still have the training wheels on, but the controls are in your hands. If you’re like me, this is exhilarating, but also immensely terrifying, because you’ve been under the impression this whole time that adults were supposed to know all the answers intuitively, and be put together, and you don’t feel like you meet those criteria. You’re suddenly in the driver’s seat, and you’re worried that you never got a license, or even know how not to crash. If this is you, I want you to take a deep breath. Then another. Get a cup of tea, treat yourself to a nice cookie. You can do that, after all, being an adult. True, it might be nutritionally inadvisable to have, say, a dozen cookies, but if that’s what you need, go ahead. You need only your own permission. Take a moment.

Despite the ease of analogies, adulthood isn’t like driving, at least not how I think of driving. There aren’t traffic laws, or cops to pull you over and take away your license. I mean, there are both of those things in the world at large, but bear with me. Adulthood isn’t about you being responsible to others, though that’s certainly a feature. Adulthood is about being responsible as a whole, first and foremost to yourself. In college, you will be responsible for many things, from the trivial to the life altering. Your actions will have consequences. But with a few exceptions, these are all things that you get to decide how they affect you.

My college, at least, tried to impress the, let’s say, extreme advisability, of following their plans upon freshmen by emphasizing the consequences otherwise. But to me, it was the opposite of helpful, since hearing an outside voice tell me I need to be worried about something immediately plants the seeds of failure and doubt in my head. Instead, what helped me stay sane was realizing that I could walk away if I wanted. Sure, failing my classes would carry a price I would have to work out later. But it was my decision whether that price was worth it.

Talk to Your Professors
The other thing worth mentioning here is that you may find, once you prove your good faith and awesome potential, that many items you were led to believe were immutable pillars of the adult world… aren’t so immutable. Assignment requirements can be bent to accommodate a clever take. Grades on a test can be rounded up for a student that makes a good showing. Bureaucracy can, on occasion, be circumvented through a chat with the right person. Not always, but often enough that it’s worth making a good impression with staff and faculty.

This is actually a good piece of life advice in general. I’ve heard from people who work that no one notices that you’re coming in late if you come in bearing donuts, and I have every reason to believe this is true. I’ve brought cookies in to all of my classes and professors before exams, and so far, I’ve done quite well on all of them.

Looking Smart

How do you appear smart? I get this question, in some form or another, often enough. I try very hard not to brag about my abilities, for a variety of reasons, but most sources agree that I’m smarter than the average cyborg. Being the smart guy comes with quite a few perks, and people want to know what my secret is. Why do professors wait to call on me until after other people have struck out, and offer to give me prerequisite overrides to get into accelerated courses? What gives me the uncanny ability to pull bits of trivia about anything? How can I just sit down and write a fully formed essay without any draft process?
Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I’ve tried to distill various answers over the years, but haven’t got anything that anyone can consciously put into action. Given the shifting nature of how we define intelligence, there may never be an answer. Shortest post ever, right? Except I don’t want to leave it at that. That’s a cop out. People want advice on how to improve themselves, to reach the same privilege that I’ve been granted by chance. The least I can do is delve into it a bit.
Sadly, I can’t tell you why I’m able to pull vocabulary and facts out of my brain. I’ve spent more than two decades with it, and it still mystifies me with how it will latch onto things like soldiers’ nicknames for WWI artillery pieces (Miss Minnie Waffer was a popular moniker given by American doughboys to German mortars, a corruption of the German term “Minenwerfer”, or mine-thrower), but drop names and faces into the void (My language professor, for instance, whom I’ve had for nearly a year, is still nameless unless I consult my syllabus). Why does it do this? I don’t know. Is it because I’m brain damaged? Yeah, actually, that would make a lot of sense.
The reason I’m good at writing, for instance, is that most of the time, the words just kind of… come together. In my brain, they have a certain feel to them, like a mental texture. They have a certain, I’m going to say, pull, in one or several directions, depending on context, connotations, mood, and so forth. A word can be heavier or lighter, brighter or darker, pulling the sentence in one direction or another, slowing the sequence of thoughts down or accelerating them. As I reach for them and feel them in my brain, they can bring up other words along with them, like pieces of candy stuck together coming out of a jar. This can continue for entire paragraphs of perfectly formed language, and oftentimes if I allow myself, I wind up writing something entirely different than I had intended when I first went looking. This is actually how most of my posts get written.
I used to think that everyone had this sense about language. I’ve met a few people who I am definitely sure have it. But I’ve also been told that this kind of thinking is actually limited to people with irregular brain patterns. So when people ask me how I write and speak so well, I have to answer that, honestly, I just do. I get an idea of what I want to express, or the impression I want to give, and I find the words that match that description, and see what friends they bring along with them. This ability to write full sentences competently, wedded to a smidgeon of poise and a dash of self confidence, is in my experience all that it takes to write essays, or for that matter, give speeches.
If there’s a downside to this, it’s that by this point I’m totally dependent on this sense, which can desert me when I start to feel under the weather. This sense tends to be impacted before any other part of my health, and without it I can become quickly helpless, unable to string more than the most basic sentences together, and totally unable to apply any degree of intellectual effort to anything. In extreme cases, I will begin a sentence assured that the words will come to me, and halfway through begin to sputter and stare into space, as in my mind I try to reach for a word or concept that just isn’t quite there.
This sense works best for words, but it can work with ideas too. Ideas, especially things like historical facts, of principles of physics, have a similar shape and pull. Like an online encyclopedia with hyperlinks riddled on every page, one idea or fact connects to another, which connects to another, and so forth, making a giant web of things in my brain. I can learn new facts easily by connecting them to existing branches, and sometimes, I can fill in details based on the gaps. All brains do this, constantly. This is why you can “see” in parts of your vision where you’re not directly looking, such as the gap where your nose should be. Except I can feel my brain doing it with concepts, helping me learn things by building connections and filling in gaps, allowing me to absorb lessons, at least those that stick, much more easily.
But there’s more to it than that. Because plenty of people are good at building connections and learning things quickly. So what makes me good at using it? Is there a key difference in my approach that someone else might be able to replicate?
Let’s ask the same question a different way. What’s the difference between someone who knows a lot of trivia, and someone who’s smart? Or possibly intelligent? There’s not a clear semantic line here, unless we want to try and stick to clinical measurements like IQ, which all come with their own baggage. The assumption here, which I hope you agree with, is that there’s something fundamentally different between having a great number of facts memorized, and being a smart person; the difference between, for instance, being able to solve a mathematical equation on a test, and being able to crunch numbers for a real world problem.
There’s a now famous part in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wherein (spoilers follow) mice attempt to build a supercomputer to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The answer? 42. Yes, that’s definitely the answer. The problem is, it’s not useful or meaningful, because it’s for the wrong question. See, “life, the universe, and everything” isn’t really a good question itself. An answer can’t make sense without the right question, so the fact that 42 is the answer doesn’t help anyone.
So, what is the difference between being knowledgeable and being smart? Asking good questions. Being knowledgeable merely requires being to parrot back key points, but asking good questions requires understanding, insight, inquiry and communication. It also shows other people that you are paying attention to them, care enough to ask them, and are interested in learning. And most of the time, if you start asking questions that are novel and on-point, people will just assume that you have a complete background in the area, making you seem like an expert.
Unlike natural talent, this is a skill that can be honed. Asking really good questions often relies on having some background information about the topic, but not as much as one might think. You don’t have to memorize a collection of trivia to seem intelligent, just demonstrate an ability to handle and respond to new information in an intelligent way.

Conference Pro-Tips

So every year, my family comes down to Disney for a major conference related to one of my many diagnoses. Over the years I have learned many tips and tricks that have proven invaluable for conferences. Here are a few highlights:

1) Invest in a good lanyard
Most conferences these days use name badges for identification purposes. Although most places provide basic cardholder-on-an-itchy-string accommodations that work in a pinch, for longer conferences especially, a proper lanyard with a decent holder is more than worth the upfront investment. I recommend one with plenty of space for decoration and customization, and lots of pockets to hold things like special event tickets, and all the business cards that inevitably accumulate.

As an added bonus, if you plan to spend most of your time at the conference site, you can quite easily slide some cash and a credit card into your holder, and do away with carrying a separate wallet altogether. This is especially nice for large conference centers that require a great deal of walking.

Sidenote: Many security-minded people will advise you to take off your conference lanyard when venturing offsite, to avoid looking like an easy mark to potential ne’er do wells, and so using a lanyard as a neck bound wallet may have some drawbacks if you plan to come and go.

2) Dress for walking
This is one that gets passed around a lot, so it isn’t exactly a pro-tip, but it still bears repeating. Modern conferences require a lot of walking. Depending on the size of the conference center, you can expect the distance to be measured in tens of kilometers per day. While this is still spread out over a whole day, it’s still a decent amount of walking, especially for people who aren’t used to being on their feet all day. Dressing for the occasion with comfortable shoes and clothing will help reduce the strain of this, and advanced planning can cut extra walking out of the schedule.

There are two main schools of thought on packing day bags for conferences. One school of thought is to pack as little as possible, so that the amount of weight that needs to be carried is as small as possible. The other school of thought is to carry with you everything that you think you might need, so as to avoid having to detour or go back to your place of lodging to pick up needed items. There are costs and benefits to each of these strategies, and it depends primarily on whether one is more comfortable with walking long distances, or carrying a heavier load.

Whichever strategy you choose to abide by, it is still a good idea to find a good, reliable, and comfortable bag which you can easily carry with you. This will ensure that you have plenty of space to carry all the trinkets which you will inevitably accumulate during the conference. I usually recommend a nice backpack with separate pockets and a water bottle pouch, which also will help stay hydrated.

3) Be cognizant of nutrition
I’m not going to straight up prescribe a certain number of meals or carbohydrates which you need to fit into your conference day. The exact number will depend on your individual health, metabolism, how much you’re doing, and your normal diet. I will say that you should at least be cognizant of your nutritional needs, especially if you are being more active than usual.

4) Download all the apps
Most major conferences use some kind of mobile schedule platform, in addition to hard copy schedules. This can help you sort through sessions and panels, and often will let you set reminders and get directions. If the host location has an app, go ahead and download that as well. In fact, go ahead and download the app for the local tourism authority.

Go ahead and grant them full permission for notifications, and location data if you’re comfortable. This way, not only will you have the most up to date information about your conference, but also about anything else happening in the area that might be of interest.

5) Have an Objective
For attendees, conferences exist in this strange space somewhere between leisure and business. There’s lots of fun to be had in traveling, staying in a hotel, meeting new people, and possibly exploring a new city. And conference activities themselves often have something of a celebratory air to them. Even for work-oriented conferences, sponsors want to encourage attendees to take away a hopeful, upbeat attitude about their product and the future in general.

At the same time, conferences with sessions and panels tend to hone in on trying to educate and edify attendees. Modern conferences are by their very nature, a hub for in-person networking, both professionally and personally. And sponsors are often quite keen to ensure that they fit in their sales pitch. So conferences are often as much work as they are play.

Having an objective set beforehand does two things. First of all, it clarifies the overall goal of attending, reinforcing the mindset that you want to keep. Second, it helps mitigate the effect of decision fatigue, that is, the gradual degradation of decision-making capacity from having to make too many decisions during a short time. Knowing that you’re here for business rather than leisure will make it easier to make snap judgments about, say, where to eat, which sessions to attend, and how late to stay out.

Objectives don’t have to be quite as targeted as goals, which generally have to be both specific and measurable. Objectives can be more idealistic, like saying that you intend to have fun, or make friends, or hone your communication skills. Objectives aren’t for nitty gritty planning, but to orient your general mindset and streamline the dozens of minute decisions that you will inevitably encounter. Having an overarching objective means that you don’t have to spend nearly as much time debating the relative merits of whether to go with the generic chain burger restaurant, or the seedy but well-recommended local restaurant. If your objective is to make career progress, stick with the former. If your objective is to have an interesting travel experience, go with the latter.