Posted on by Munira

How having a hobby can help with postgrad life

I know what you are thinking – ‘I don’t have time for a hobby!”. And that might be true, which might be exactly the reason why you will benefit from a hobby. I have a few hobbies and I thought I would share why they help me, why they are especially important if you are a postgrad student and some ideas for low-cost and easy hobbies. I am going to concentrate on my love of reading fiction and running a blog about my reading – which I have been doing throughout my Honours year and I am still continuing even during my Masters!

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Postgrad is stressful

Deadlines, failed experiments, computers that somehow do exactly what you tell them to do and not what you actually want them to do, supervisors, admin, funding…there is no end to the stress that comes with being a postgrad student. Severe stress for long periods of time can make your life feel absolutely miserable. A hobby is something that can provide some relief from all that stress. It gives your mind something to focus on that isn’t all of your academic woes and bring you lots of joy.

It uses different parts of your brain

Academic work requires very specific types of thinking. When you’re wrapped up in solving equations, pipetting (that’s something that biologists do…right?), or coding all week, it can become mentally exhausting. Picking up a soccer ball, a paintbrush or – my personal favourite – a good novel in your off time can activate the other parts of your brain that haven’t gotten much use lately. Your research-academic brain has a chance to switch off and have a rest for once. This might even stimulate some new ideas for your research!

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You can learn new skills that benefit you both inside and outside the lab

These might be tangible skills – like writing for the public and search engine optimization through blogging – or less obvious skills like persistence and discipline from learning how to do something new without having deadlines to motivate you. Having a lot of practice at writing blog posts has helped improve my confidence in writing – which translates into more confidence in my academic writing.

It can turn into a side-hustle

While I think you should have one hobby that is purely for your own personal enjoyment and has nothing to do with your overall productivity, you might be able to monetize your hobby to stretch your tiny postgrad budget a little further. I recently got to enjoy a box-full of free books in exchange for advertising an upcoming book sale because I regularly post pretty pictures of books on Instagram. This has helped me free up a bit of extra cash since I would have purchased many of those books on my own anyway. If you have got a creative or crafty hobby, there may be easy ways for you to make some money off of it.

It gives you a place to succeed and fail in ways not directly linked to your academic progress

This is something that I think is especially important if you’re someone who takes failure and rejection really badly. I don’t handle those things well, but having hobbies where small failures show quite quickly that I’m making progress. For example, if I a blog post of mine isn’t as widely-read as I would have liked, I can look at it and figure out ways to write a better post the next time. All I have lost is the small amount of time I spent working on the post – and it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad blogger. Similarly, if something goes wrong in my academic work, it doesn’t mean I’m a bad scientist. Failure is an important part of the scientific process and every academic career, and hobbies are a way to make failure less intimidating.

It helps you with your time management

This sounds a bit odd, I know. While there are exceptions during really busy periods, but if you have less time to finish something – you’ll finish it in less time. For example, if you have two days to finish an assignment, then it might take you all of those two days to finish it. But if you only have two hours, you’ll get that same assignment done in those two hours. Similarly, if you’re finding something is dragging on, but you’re looking forward to meeting your friends at 7 p.m. for a soccer game, then you’ll get that work done in time so you can join them. Academic culture often requires our entire lives to be wrapped up in our research and having hobbies and activities outside of academia helps you break out of that unhealthy culture.

Some ideas for hobbies

I would like to emphasise that a hobby is a highly personal thing. If your hobby is binge-watching Game of Thrones and being totally immersed in it – that is awesome because it works for you and helps you de-stress. While reading might be my favourite thing to do, you might not enjoy it at all.  I would suggest trying to have at least one, even if it’s something you’re already doing (like cooking, for example). I have put together a list of ideas for you to try if you are looking for a new hobby. These are just suggestions and are generally affordable or doable with items you already own or could purchase very easily. Most universities also have societies or clubs for various hobbies and activities that you can easily join and gain access to equipment and experts

  • Cooking (putting a bit of effort into it instead of just eating 2-minute noodles…which I am guilty of).
  • Photography (if you have a smartphone, it probably already has an excellent camera that you can use)WhatsApp Image 2019-04-23 at 13.27.45(1)
  • Soccer/Rugby/Cricket/Running/ etc. (either sign up for a class or a club to make it social and even more fun)
  • Sketching (all you need is a pen/pencil and some paper)
  • Hiking (there are hundreds of hiking trails around the country!)
  • Journaling/writing
  • Yoga (I started with free, online classes by Yoga With Adriene)
  • Blogging (get started on WordPress for free!)
  • DIY/crafts like sewing, knitting, making cool things with your hands (this will probably require you to borrow equipment from someone)
  • Reading (you can get books for free from your university library or your nearest public library. You can also get cheap books from second-hand book stores).

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I hope this post has inspired you to try out a new hobby! Let me know what your current hobbies are!

Posted on by Munira

The mysteries of the universe: What do astronomers do?

The other day I stumbled across a question on twitter. “How do astronomers know all of this”, in response to a post showing the scale of the universe and different objects within it. I replied with a simple explanation about how we use large telescopes to observe various objects and simulations to understand the physics, but I thought I would write a longer blog post on this topic. With the South African government investing heavily on some of these large telescopes, it is even more important for people to understand why this undertaking is so important.

There are two main types of astronomers or astrophysicists. On the one side the theoreticians: the ones that mainly work through complicated mathematical equations and creating mind-blowing simulations; but what I am going to talk about here is observational astrophysics, which I focus on, and where South Africa has shown great interest with the development of the Square Kilometer Array and the successful Southern African Large Telescope.

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Image of spiral galaxy M101 in four X-ray, Optical, Ultraviolet and Infrared Light taken using different telescopes

What exactly do we do?

Observational astronomers use telescopes (like MeerKAT, the Southern African Large Telescope, and several others) to study the night sky. These telescopes function as “light buckets” and collect information in the form of optical (visual) or radio light. Most land-based telescopes operate in optical or radio light because the atmosphere prevents any other light from reaching the earth, but space-based telescopes (like the famous Hubble Space Telescope) can detect X-rays, Infrared, and ultraviolet light.

This light can be used in a few different ways. We can take a picture of distant objects like galaxies to study things like their shape, structure, size and position. We can track how the light in an object like a star changes with time – which is how planets around distant stars are often discovered. Or, we can break the light up into a spectrum, which allows us to probe deeper into the chemical makeup of an object. Different types of light reveal different aspects of astronomical objects. While optical light is really good at detecting stars, the faint gas that fuels galaxies is only visible in radio wavelengths and hot, energetic events pop up as X-rays or gamma rays.

Bigger telescopes allow us to observe objects that are fainter and further away. This allows us to see further back in time, to understand the universe at earlier stages of its evolution. The further away an object is (and often the fainter an object is), the longer it takes for light to reach us here on Earth. Therefore, the light we collect with our telescopes essentially lets us look back in time to when the universe was much younger and smaller than it is today.   

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MeerKAT telescope dishes. Credit: SARAO.

Why does this matter?

Aside from being able to detect asteroids that might crash into Earth, astronomy has many benefits. Studying objects in space allows us to work on answers to some of the mysteries of physics. Gravity – something we all interact with on a daily basis (unless you are reading this from the International Space Station) – is something physicists thought we understood since Isaac Newton’s days. Until some astronomers looked at the motions of galaxies and realised that there was something invisible causing these galaxies to move in unexpected ways. This led to the discovery of dark matter – which we are still trying to figure out!

Just two years ago, the groundbreaking observation of a neutron star merger (which our very own SALT contributed to) revealed where heavy elements like gold are originally created. This event, which was detected through gravitational waves and various wavelengths of light simultaneously, was one of the most important discoveries of this decade.

Astronomy teaches us about how the universe works. Although not every discovery will have implications for our everyday life, we have a natural curiosity about the universe we live. Many people experience a sense of appreciation and wonder when they look up at the night sky, especially in the absence of city lights, and wonder what’s out there. Astronomy allows us to explore that curiosity and appreciate our universe.

(At the very least, astronomy gives us a bountiful amount of pretty pictures. You can find a new one every day on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.)

If you are curious to learn more about how specific fields in astronomy contribute to scientific questions, I have a post on Medium that goes into much more detail! You can also learn more about astronomy through Crash Course: Astronomy and by following NASA on social media.